• BoosBeau@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            4
            ·
            2 days ago

            Fools, the lot of you. I leave my cheese on the rocky shores of Ol’ Merry Bertha near the concrete jetties of man. There, the sweet mother deep slices my cheese with her sharp, salty caress, leaving my belly full and satisfied.

      • Miles O'Brien@startrek.website
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        7
        arrow-down
        5
        ·
        2 days ago

        Because we have knives already in our kitchens, and they don’t take up extra space in a drawer that would otherwise go to another more useful utensil.

        Also my cheese slicers have all been cheap as shit and snap after a few months, and the nice heavy duty one I had with a replaceable wire got lost in the move earlier this year and they discontinued it and I’m sad.

    • Flamekebab@piefed.social
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      9
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      2 days ago

      The texture and flavour of a hard cheese cut with a cheese slicer is different from when one cuts with a knife. I like both but on a sandwich the cheese slicer wins every time.

        • Flamekebab@piefed.social
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          12
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          edit-2
          2 days ago

          The proof of the pudding is in the eating. I’ve eaten both, side by side, because it’s a really interesting difference. A cheese slicer makes a wafer thin piece of cheese that I cannot replicate with a knife. It is not a skill issue either. A chainsaw and a fretsaw produce different results, regardless of the skill of the user.

          However you’ve decided that your reckoning is better than my experience, which is astonishingly arrogant.

    • DV8@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      5
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      2 days ago

      Cutting the type of cheese you use a slicer on, with a knife, compresses the cheese more. Young cheese is solid, but too fatty and soft to really easily slice through. You can ofcourse, but the quality of your slice will not be similar to the easily and reproducible quality you get with a slicer. Especially if you need many slices.

        • CentipedeFarrier@piefed.social
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          8
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          edit-2
          2 days ago

          “Instead of getting the tool designed specifically for the thing, just get a different tool that isn’t designed for the thing, and then learn to make really precise difficult cuts!”

          I come from a big cheese area, and genuinely, no. A sharper knife isn’t the problem, the surface area of the blade is the problem. Even an oiled ceramic knife doesn’t cut cleanly through many cheeses (ceramic is extremely sharp, oiling is to attempt to prevent buckling and breaking because the cheese sticks to the blade). A wire cheese slicer is consistent, and safe and easy enough for a child to use (I know because that was my first experience with one, around 5-6).

        • DV8@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          edit-2
          2 days ago

          No. There’s different types of tools for different types of cheese. Don’t get one if you only need it once. But a good slicer is as cheap as a decent short kitchen knife (€10).

          • vateso5074@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            1 day ago

            I understand the tool, we used to have one when I was younger. I’m just saying that a knife will do zero compression if the edge is properly sharp. Most people use knives that go dull quickly and never bother to sharpen them, but a good sharp knife is a game changer for any type of food prep.

            A cheese slicer is just a convenience thing like an apple slicer.

            I mostly use a mandolin for the same purpose anyways, but a mandolin is just the convenience of a sharp knife with more consistent uniformity.

            • Flamekebab@piefed.social
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              1 day ago

              Whilst my knife is unlikely to be sharp enough, I don’t have the hand skills to shave a 0.6mm wafer of cheddar off a block even with the best knife. My fine motor skills are excellent and I’m a professional miniature sculptor and have particular preferences on which specific scalpel blades I like to work with! My point being that I have significantly above average skills and that’s not sufficient.

              If you happen to have the tools and skill to shave cheese that way, fantastic, well done you, but that’s an extremely uncommon set of circumstances. As you say, most people’s knives aren’t up to the task. Meanwhile even a child can use a cheese slicer to get a decent slice off a block.

              …and yes, I did go and grab some calipers to check because I’m tired of this insane discussion. If you feel they’re a useless kitchen gizmo, cool, but lots of us love our cheese slicers because they’re tremendously useful and accessible.

              • vateso5074@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                1
                ·
                1 day ago

                I love the effort of actually breaking out the calipers, sincerely gave me a chuckle!

                Don’t get me wrong, no kitchen gizmo is useless if it gets the utility you need from it! If it’s something you use often, that’s worth it.

                I just generally try to live by the idea that less is more, so I try to prioritize the things I use more often and find additional uses for things I already have instead of buying something new. For me it’s just that having a good kitchen knife provides a lot of inherent utility, and for someone who doesn’t need to slice cheese very often, it falls into the “good enough” niche.

                But I’ve been in way too many home kitchens where they have 10 drawers full of all sorts of implements and gadgets that do exactly one thing and seemed neat when they bought it, yet they never get used more than once a year or two. We incur an environmental debt with most every product we buy, and that’s a lot of plastic and scrap metal waste that will need to be dealt with someday.

                • Flamekebab@piefed.social
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  1
                  ·
                  1 day ago

                  Whilst that’s perfectly sensible, our household has at least two cheese slicers in case one is in the dishwasher. They’re very common in Swedish households!

    • Saapas@piefed.zip
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      2 days ago

      People are pretty handy if they can make those long and thin slices of softer cheese with a knife