Core77

As a formerly trained chef, this is eye-candy. For a mincing blade to work well ergonomically, it needs to have a much shallower arc over a longer distance.

Cute design, but not really practical. I could see someone rolling over the blade and opening up their hand pretty easily.

I'd be concerned that it's unstable and hard to control. The curved cutting surface also means you don't have much contact with the cutting board, and therefore not much working area. The closest I've seen to such a thing is a northern (Inuit) implement called an ulu, which is a curved blade running parallel to a handle. Look it up on Wikipedia, and you'll see pictures of examples.

Yeah, nobody who has ever cooked professionally would go for something like this, and not just because cooks are notoriously conservative about their tools.

It's unstable because you're putting a single point load at the top of an arc, and difficult to control because your hand is high above the cutting board surface.

A real mincing knife has two handles at the end of a shallow arc (and usually two blades). That makes it much easier to develop a fast rocking motion, and stable because the loads are balanced. Even then, it's something you very rarely see in a commercial kitchen. In the time it takes you to go find your mincing knife, I can mince the stuff with the chef's knife that was already in my hand.

This will be useless for slicing, julienning, opening packages, cutting up a chicken, or any of the other things I routinely use my 8" chef's knife for every day. It's a single-purpose gadget that isn't even better at that single purpose.

As a knife no...as a fancy mezzaluna maybe!

Yeah, this thing is essentially a poorly designed Mezzaluna blade. It looks neat, but I don't think it would be very practical.

Holding it on top like that has got to affect users' control of the blade, and bearing down on top of something like that would just be begging for a slip.

Also, all the pressure is going straight down on the blade all the time. I would think that wouldn't be good for keeping a sharp edge, at least not for long. And dull knives in a kitchen are more dangerous than not having knives at all.

It actually looks a lot like an Ulu blade of the Inuit tribe. Not that new of an idea and I don't know how that handle would actually feel comfortable when gripped.

I am quite the novice cook but don't you want control between your thumb and forefinger?

I think they should investigate the ulu instead.

Mike.

Unless you have tiny hands, that grip is not going to be comfortable or practical. There's a reason most mezzalunas have two upright handles.

This design is similar to the ulu that has been used in Alaska by the Inuits. It's actually rather handy for mincing when paired with a concave cutting board that has a similar curvature to the blade.

Similar to an Ulu?

This is great. I want one, a modern interpritation of the ulu!
The peoples of the Arctic have been using knives with similar blade shapes for centuries (even millenia). The Ulu knife is one of (if not THE) most used knives in the arctic and subarctic native cultures. Read about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulu

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