Everything You Need to Know About Alaskan Ulu Knives

[Music] welcome to Skagway Alaska and the Lynch Kennedy building my name is John Skye and um I'm here today to teach you guys a little bit about Ulus Hulu's have been around for thousands of years they've originally were made out of bone antler glass obsidian and they use them for anything to to make their lives easier metal didn't come along until until the Europeans came when the native people in the north they saw metal they found that it could work so much better it wouldn't break it wouldn't it wasn't brittle and they could use it for many things the basic ULU looks like this these are stainless steel ones it's the ones we sell at Legend Kennedy they're about four inches across and what we do with Ulus is first of all we find something that's comfortable in our hands when you're going to use ULU you want to you want to be able to let the knife work for you basically going to roll it like this we use them for anything from filet and fish to chopping Pizza to garlic to whatever you want I'll just show you how you do garlic most of those have grown up with French knives but with the ulo it's a multi-purpose tool and because it has such a wide blade you can use it more than a French knife in this case right here I'm going to chop this little garlic basically what you do is just take the ULU you're going to press down once you get it pressed down you're going to roll it this way again you want your hand to be really comfortable when you're cutting it you just do that a few times you want the knife to just roll that's the purpose of a ulu you want to roll then you grab the knife like this you put your garlic in this and you're going to chop chop chop chop the other part is when you get ready for your hot pan you just pick it up like that you put it into your hot pan and you're off to the rodeo on that say you don't have a peeler and you got a carrot you can take your Hulu you take your bedroom side and outside take your carrot you can just basically can peel it this way okay so it's a multi-purpose tool so you you don't even need a peeler you can just use your Hulu and just you're just going to do this number so you're gonna cut your ends off like you were the with a regular French knife again you want your bevel side out okay because that's going to push that's going to push the food away start with your small side and you're going to roll the knife just like this you just roll it okay you'll get a nice even cut when you get down to where your finger is you can get the perfectly sliced and then you just take them you see they're all sliced up nice grab your ruler you're going to throw them in a saute pan put some garlic in there some onions make a little stir fry [Music] the natives in the north all across the Arctic all the way to Quebec Alaska even into Siberia they use they use the traditional ones and they were mostly made out of carbon steel this is more of what a carbon steel one would look like now these are razor sharp they're high carbon steel they're much sharper than a stainless steel this is 440 stainless this is carbon if you can imagine these could be up to a foot long and they would put them on a 12 to 14 foot pole and they'd be fleshing out whales in the north the culture up there the people are called the new pic and Western Alaska they're U picks so the new big people from point barrel all the way down they will be flushing whales they get one bale one whale a year and they they flush the whale they also use them for cutting seals and they're very very sharp and usually make one once in a lifetime the reason we go mostly with stainless steel is because if you don't put a little oil on them they're much sharper than stainless steel but they won't they will they will Rust the stainless steel ones they won't rust but they won't pull quite the edge that a high carbon level the one thing I do want to tell you is that if you choose one of these lures you want to get something that is going to be very comfortable in your hand it's really the most important thing especially if you're going to use it all the time you want to be comfortable you don't want to end up with a blister so you'll see a lot of fancy ones like this right here is old artifact it's beautiful and everything but it's very thin so the knife tents that want to go like this so it's not a knife that you want to use every day it's use it once in a while Thanksgiving dinner Christmas dinner but you want something that's really functional and that's why you try to find one that fits your hand well I like these impact impregnated wood ones they work really well they can fit either a right-handed or a left-handed and that's what's really important if you're buying a gift from someday if you don't know if the right hand or left hand so that works really well I can tell you that you will find them everything from from wood to Stellar sea lion to Fossil Ivory here we've got we've got Caribou we've got mousse and then we've got Jade again they'll vary from 69 all the way up to this one's 267 and we do have some really really special ones all the way up to three 400 range it just depends on what you're looking for and how much you want to invest but just like a good french knife you have to realize that what you pay is what you get if you buy a very inexpensive one it's probably not going to do what you want to do especially if you really want to use it for the kitchen and and you want to make it work my best advice I can give you is if you buy one just put away your friend's knives put away everything and just make a little commitment to yourself to use that knife for a month straight before you know you'll be Hulu king or Hulu Queen but you've got to practice just like anything else with a musical instrument with a new language you've got to practice and again it's it's the way you hold it I hold mine like that again I want the knife to work for itself I want to roll it I want to make it work so that I'm not working I'm working less if I had a bowl here I would show you could just basically put lettuce in it you can cut salads you can imagine cutting a potato just down that Center just roll the knife a few times you got home fries and you really can use it for anything um it's amazing the things you do these rules will come as I said earlier they come from a foot right down to a little one inch a lot of the native women they'll put them in a little pouch on their neck and they'll cut they'll cut when they're weaving baskets they'll cut little sea grass they'll cut other grass um they'll use them to cut anything dog runner sleds you know send you anything you want to use them for so they will they'll vary but they really are useful tools and I'll leave you with this um again find one that's comfying your hand don't put them in a dishwasher they're hot epoxied include if you put them in the dishwasher just like any good knife you'll change the temper of the steel and also the glue and epoxy will get loose and what I do normally is I just put a hook right above my prep area and I dry them and I hang them up I wash them in hot soapy water I hang right above my cutting board and then whenever I need it it's right there if you're gonna get one of these these uh mousse ones or Caribou ones you can put them back in the stands but just remember this was a living antler at one time so you want to make sure this is dry you don't want to throw this back into the stand if it's soaking wet because all the little little weird little creatures can be grown on this and that's something you definitely don't want so if you're going to use a stand that's fine but just make sure that after you wash it you dry your ruler well and you can put it back in a stand and just put high enough where the where the little ones aren't going to cut the results and oh yeah practice you'll like it I hope you I hope I talk to you a little bit any other questions come up in Skagway and see us we'll be glad to help you thank you [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: Voyij

Views: 11,995

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Id: z6S8XW5v2nk

Length: 7min 43sec (463 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 17 2023