I used the Ulu today to make "Pantry Minestrone". This is a soup I make where I raid the pantry and fridge for various ingredients and leftovers to make a Minestrone-inspired soup.
First, I've been using a classic chef's knife, 8"-10", for year and years. I can use one blindfolded. So switching to a small Ulu was really strange. And felt a wee bit dangerous at times.
The Ulu is a very instinctive knife to use, at times it almost feels primal, like using a sharp shard of obsidian, but after using a chef's knife for several decades, the Ulu is also foreign. As a result, I was fairly slow and a bit clumsy with this knife. I guess time will tell if I develop better skills and a bit more speed.
First up, mushrooms:
This Ulu is sharp! it cut through these 'shrooms with ease. My cuts were not consistent and I ended up with some significant variations. For this 'rustic' soup, that was just fine.
Next, carrots:
I tried breaking down the carrots by splitting them lengthwise. This was tricky. The asymmetric edge grind led the knife to veer off from a straight cut. With a chef's knife, this is an easy task. I really had to focus and play with the cutting angle to get a clean split. Once split, dicing was easy. I used a simple rocking motion to effect the dice.
Celery:
I felt my skill-set improving here and I did a bit better cutting the celery lengthwise into strips. Again a simple push cut and rocking motion completed the dice. I felt a bit faster here, too.
Onion:
Here the problem was "big onion, small knife". Rough chopping an onion with a chef's knife is a simple and quick task for me. This was trickier. You can see that in the end I essentially used the Ulu to split the onion. Here I wished I had a bigger Ulu.
Once split, however, the Ulu did a good job slicing the onion.
I then used it crosswise to effect a nice chop. Here again, I stacked up the slices, used a push cut and rocking motion to complete the cut. It worked well, and I felt myself getting faster with practice. However, I'm used to using the side of a chef's knife to guide the knife and protect my fingers. That seemed trickier to do with this small Ulu and at least once I came close to nicking a finger. Maybe twice.
Lesson learned (I hope).
Lastly, I cut up some Italian sausage:
I used the Ulu to remove the casing, split the sausages, and then chop them into 1/2" pieces. The Ulu did a great job wit this. Again, I use a push cut to start the chop, then a rocking motion to complete the cut. Worked well and was reasonably fast.
After all that work, I cleaned the Ulu and wiped it dry. I tested the Ulu on my leg and it was still shaving sharp. While the materials I cut, e.g. mushrooms or sausage, aren't hard on an edge, I was cutting for a long time against a wooden cutting board (plastic for the sausage). I was pretty happy to see that the D2 steel had held a nice sharp edge.
Here's the soup simmering away:
Thanks to the Ulu, dinner is looking pretty good!
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