Every Item In A Cheesemonger's Toolkit | Bon Appétit

i'm nicola bailey and i'm a cheese monger at italy and this is every tool that i use to prepare our cheese every day [Music] so our first knife that i want to show you is our machete knife now the machete knife is perfect for opening most wheels of cheese behind the counter the blade is going to be long and thick from the base all the way to the tip so that we can split those larger harder wheels of cheese because i can cut as quick as i can and get a whole quarter wheel cut down in less than five minutes the offset knife is used for softer and semi-soft cheeses you want it to be super super thin at the main cutting spot so you're going to have less surface area for the cheese to stick to that blade you don't want it to like snap in your hand so you need it to be thicker at the base this style of knife allows you to have a little bit more wrist control and so you're not going to wear out your wrists as you're chopping these small cheeses over and over again this is our vertical meat slicer we slice a lot of prosciutto we're talking we break down full legs every single day we use our vertical slicer exclusively because it locks the leg in with our blade arm here i'm not putting any more pressure on one side of the leg versus the other it makes a nice clean even slice so this is our gravity slicer so whenever i'm slicing meat all the time i'm putting my prosciutto on the vertical slicer but anything else i'm going to slice it over here and use the power of gravity to help me during the slicing process so if the slice isn't as thick as i want it rather than pressing down hard i'll just open up the blade to get a better slice this is our scimitar knife or butcher's knife we use this knife to open up our prosciutto legs or to open up any coppers or salami that might have a skin to it this blade is going to be probably the sharpest knife that we have but i also need a really long blade so i can trim off most of the leather with one fell swoop we also used the scimitar knife over in the mozzarella lab to split our mozzarella curd so that it's ready to go through the katara so we're back of house at our cheese counter so this is with the main area where all of our production tools live so this is our double handle wire this is what we use to break open those big more soft wheels of cheese so this wire has a grip on both sides i'm going to hold this piece of the wire here and from there i'm going to take the wire up over and it's going to go straight down into the cheese and i'll pull it free and it's going to make a nice even cut harp wire this wire is what you want to use when you're splitting a fresh wheel of blue cheese the hard wire fits directly over the wheel it's going to give me a nice even cut so a wire is going to create less resistance from the blade because it can go just straight into the cheese but if i'm using like an offset knife it's going to smear those blue veins on the cheese this is our box wire i've used the box wire to open up blue cheeses i've used to open up like a big pecorino gigante anything that's going to fit mostly on this base i'm typically going to use the box wire i don't have to worry about the back end of the wire maybe like flicking around anywhere because the wire is stuck with these springs on the bottom so all i have to do is pull straight down and my cheese is split beautifully saving me a lot of time and also a lot of energy because it's really easy to just pull a wire rather than cutting up wheel of cheese especially when it's gonna be like a really cold wheel of cheese i just pulled from the walk-in scoring knife also known as the key knife so not all cheeses have like super hard rinds to them but a big wheel like a parmigiano-reggiano it's got a thick fire-branded rind to it the scoring knife has only one tiny little blade right at the tip here the rest of this thing is super super dull so that when i'm dragging the knife along the top of the cheese or the side of the cheese i'm not digging in too far and i'm just giving a nice even cut giving it an easy way to split a parmesan regina wheel this is our stiletto knife the important thing about this knife is it's sharp and pointy after i've scored my wheel of cheese i'm going to grip it with both hands i'm going to press it down i'm going to wedge it back and forth go to the next part do my little wedge motion again and again and again flip the wheel of cheese do it again and so i can split open that wheel of cheese this is our wedge tool with my stiletto i'm piercing the wheel of cheese where the wedge is just helping me split the wheel of cheese you put this on one side you have this one on the other you do a motion like this and it cracks the wheel for you i would say my record of breaking down a wheel of cheese is probably like a minute and a half and we're talking like an 80 pound wheel of cheese [Music] we're here in the mozzarella lab where we cook mozzarella every single day for our customers and for our restaurants so this is our kitara which translates to guitar and you can see that it's essentially almost like a stringed instrument and we've even used guitar stringers to help restring it after these wires start to break down it would take forever to just split this curd with a knife and cut it into the small pieces that we need for our production so once we split our curd into small little bricks we'll push this curd through the kitara into our mozzarella pot so this is our mozzarella cooking pot this is the pot that we use to cook our mozzarella in every single day we want the pot to be stainless steel because not just are we using hot boiling water every day but it's also salted water and we don't want our pot to become all corroded and rusty this was designed specifically for our flat iron store so that it can fit into all of our different crevices not only does it have the handle here but it's really easy with the lift to use so that when i'm pouring out that hot salty water i'm not getting burned but i also have really nice control over how to use the pot this is the paddle that we used to stretch our mozzarella curd we need it to be long and skinny so that it can go all the way down so that we can stir all of the broken curd in without hot salt of water we can use it to then stretch the curd and focus on getting that right texture for a beautifully smooth and elasticy mozzarella ball this is made out of the same material that some of our cutting boards are made out of polyurethane which is going to hold up to the wear and tear of making mozzarella [Music] we're now here in scola and this is where all the education programs happen at italy whether that's pasta making classes pizza making classes or my personal favorite how to make a cheese board the slate is really dark the cheese is always gonna pop on this board because of that sharp sharp contrast when you're using something that's a little more muted in color the cheese might get lost on the board when you're talking about wood even though you're gonna clean it and scrub it as best you can this one just wipes right off and it's an even clean surface so you don't have to worry about little bits getting into the crevices of the wood so this is our cheese knife called the fork this tool is going to be used for breaking apart a really hard dryer cheese the prongs on this knife allow you to dig into the cheese and all you have to do is twist it and then rinse it free into these nice little bite-sized rustic chunks and then you can use to pick up the cheese itself cheese spreader the spreader is going to be used for spreading those really soft cheeses like maybe a fresh goat chev or you can even use this to spread a piece of like a brie style cheese like maybe a moses sleeper and so there's a slight blade here but it's not super sharp because the cheese that you're using for this is already super soft and i'm just going to use this to spread over whatever i'm going to eat the cheese on so this tool is our prong knife because at the very tip is going to have a prong finish to help break apart the cheese the holes help to make sure that you can cut through a soft cheese and not keep all the paste on the blade itself this guy is probably the most useful cheese knife you can have at home chisel knife i'm able to use this to break into those larger wheels of cheese the blade is going to be at the tip of the knife because you're dealing with like firmer cheeses and so you need to put a little bit more leverage when you're breaking apart like a harder cheese like parmigiano-reggiano so this is our heart knife so after i've chiseled off a nice piece of cheese i'll use the heart knife to break it into those last pieces this one's pretty much just used for those harder cheeses that you might have at home so like a cheddar or maybe an alpine so this is our raclette grill so when i got into the cheese world this is probably one of the very first cheese tools that i got you know we have your cheese knives but if i really wanted something to steal the show and i'm having folks over i really want a cool tool to do that so the raclette grill is something that's really going to be your center stage showpiece for the night all you really need are a couple tea lights to get this metal going and then before long you'll have the cheese start to bubble and get all ooey and gooey and that's when you know that it's ready to take the girl off and then scrape the raquette onto whatever you're serving with potatoes cornichons this is like my pride and joy this is my baby having the right tools is important as the cheese itself i could have the best wheel of farm in the world but without the right tools no one is getting a bias [Music]

Channel: Bon Appétit

Views: 94,870

Keywords: bon appetit, cheese, cheese explainer, cheese guide, cheese knife, cheese knifes, cheesemonger, cheesemonger tools, cheeses, cut any cheese, eataly, eataly new york, eataly new york cheese, every cheese, every cheese explained, every cheese knife, every cheese tool, every tool, food, fresh mozzarella, gourmet cheese, gourmet cheeses, how to cut cheese, how to serve cheese, professional cheesemonger, raclette, serve cheese

Id: hXNGXq1UVLI

Length: 10min 54sec (654 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 24 2022