WO2009118447A1

WO2009118447A1 - Cutting utensil

Info

Publication number: WO2009118447A1
Application number: PCT/FI2009/050201
Authority: WO
Inventors: Jopi Siirtola
Original assignee: Jopi Siirtola
Priority date: 2008-03-28
Filing date: 2009-03-16
Publication date: 2009-10-01
Also published as: FI20085254A0; FI120386B

Abstract

A meat cutting utensil for making a pocket in meat. The blade (210) of the utensil (200) is typically disc-shaped, and it joins a shaft (220) the width of which is clearly smaller than the diameter of the blade and the height the same as the maximum height of the blade. The edges of the shaft are blunt, and there is a handle (230) at its other end. A relatively large pocket can be made inside the meat although the mouth of the pocket is small, because the diameter of the blade is small and the shaft does not cut the mouth wider when the blade is moved.

Description

Cutting utensil

The invention relates to a kitchen utensil by means of which a pocket is cut in meat for introducing a stuffing into the meat.

Filling different meats, such as the grilled beefsteak and chicken breast, with a stuffing is a quite common manner of forming a serving in restaurants. Such a filled meat could be made simply by placing the stuffing between two layers of meat and then cooking the meat. However, a disadvantage in this case is that too much of the stuffing extrudes from the meat during cooking. A better way is to make a cavity, or a pocket, in the meat of a suitable thickness from the side, in which pocket the stuffing is then placed. Fig. 1 shows an example of the known way to make such a pocket in meat. The cutting utensil is a kitchen knife 100 of filleting type. In the drawing, meat ME to be cut is shown as an outline and knife 100 in positions which correspond to two working stages. The knife is first inserted in the meat from the side and then turned in the direction of the cutting edge so that the mouth of the pocket does not enlarge unnecessarily. At the same time the knife is moved in the longitudinal direction backwards and forwards when needed. The first side of the pocket PO is thus formed . Then the knife is withdrawn and turned around, after which the second side of the pocket is cut in the same way as the first one. The knife positions seen in Fig. 1 are the extreme positions. It appears from them that a considerable part of the meat area in the cutting plane will not be cut when avoiding the enlargement of the mouth and, of course, the forming of openings in other points. An untouched area A1 remains on the side of the first extreme position of the knife and another untouched area A2 on the side of the second extreme position, which areas typically constitute about a third of the desired area of the pocket.

The fact that the pocket area remains smaller that desired for the above-described reason is a drawback of the use of the existing meat cutting utensils. An additional drawback is that the opening of the pocket becomes larger than desired. This drawback is emphasized if the stuffing is relatively fluid, such as sauce.

The object of the invention is to reduce said drawbacks of the prior art. The meat cutting utensil according to the invention is characterized in what is set forth in the independent claim 1. Some preferred embodiments of the invention are set forth in the dependent claims.

The basic idea of the invention is the following: The blade of the utensil cutting the meat is typically disc-shaped, and its diameter is relatively short, in the order of 114 cm. The blade joins a shaft, the width of which is clearly smaller than the diameter of the blade and the height the same as the maximum height of the blade, and the edges of which are blunt. At the other end of the shaft there is a handle, of course. The pocket is formed by moving the blade horizontally inside the meat.

The invention has the advantage that a relatively large pocket can be made inside the meat by means of a utensil according to it although the mouth of the pocket is small. This is due to the fact that the diameter of the blade is small and that the shaft does not cut the mouth wider when the blade is moved. The small mouth results in that the stuffing of the meat hardly extrudes from it during cooking. In addition, the invention has the advantage that the structure according to it is simple, in which case the production costs of the structure are relatively low.

In the following, the invention will be described in more detail. Reference will be made to the accompanying drawings, in which

Fig. 1 shows an example of the cutting utensil according to the prior art and of its use,

Fig. 2 shows as perspective drawing a meat cutting utensil according to the invention, Fig. 3a shows from above an example of the blade of the utensil according to the invention,

Fig. 3b shows from the side the blade of the utensil according to Fig. 3a,

Fig. 4 shows from above a second example of the blade of the utensil according to the invention, Fig. 5 shows a third example of the blade of the utensil according to the invention,

Fig. 6 shows an example of the utensil according to the invention, and

Fig. 7 shows the forming of the meat pocket by means of a utensil according to the invention.

Fig. 1 was already dealt with above in connection with the description of the prior art. Fig. 2 shows as a perspective presentation an overall picture of the meat cutting utensil according to the invention. It is a passive hand tool with a blade 210, shaft 220 and handle 230. The blade and the shaft are of one and the same unitary object. The handle again is formed in this example by a widened continuation of the shaft and elongated pieces fastened to each side of the continuation so that a body with a roundish cross-section is created. The handle can also be an object implemented by means of for example the injection moulding technique, inside of which object the continuation of the shaft remains wholly invisible. The blade means the part of the utensil the outer edge of which is the cutting structure part proper. Blade 210 is in this example disc-shaped, and there is a hole in the middle of it. When moving from the widest point of the blade towards the shaft, the width of the blade gradually decreases until it is at least approximately the same as the width of the shaft. Shaft 220 is thus narrower than the blade, but its height equals the maximum height of the blade. The cross-section of the shaft is here a rectangle with slightly rounded angles. For this reason the edges of the shaft are blunt without cutting characteristics. The length of the shaft naturally corresponds to the size of the meat pockets which in practice come into question.

In this description and the claims, the 'horizontal plane' means a plane parallel with the plane of the cutting edge of the meat cutting utensil according to the invention. Correspondingly, the 'vertical direction' means the direction of a normal of such a horizontal plane. The 'longitudinal direction' means the direction of the centre line of the shaft of the utensil in question, and the 'width direction', or 'transverse direction' means the direction perpendicular to the longitudinal direction in a horizontal plane. The 'width' of a structure part then means its extent in the transverse direction and the 'height' its extent in the vertical direction. Further the qualifiers 'lower' and 'upper' refer to the usual working position of the utensil.

Figs. 3a and 3b show an example of the blade of the utensil according to the invention. In Fig. 3a the blade is seen from above and in Fig. 3b from the side. Blade 310 is disc-shaped like the one in Fig. 2. This means that the outer edge of the blade forms, starting from its free end, an arc which is more than a half of the arch of a circle. The maximum width of the blade is then the diameter d of this circle. At the blade end on the side of the shaft the width of the blade approaches gradually, without points of discontinuity, the width w of shaft 320. The width w is substantially smaller than the diameter d; in this example their ratio is about 0.35. Blade 310 has been machined to be oblique so that its height increases steadily from zero to the maximum height, or the thickness t, when moving a certain distance s from the cutting outer edge of the blade towards the centre. The outer edge is in this example in the plane of the lower surface of the blade, and the oblique angle is e.g. 23 degrees. The portion of the blade with a roundish cross- section, from the outer border of which the blade height begins to decrease, is called the middle portion. In the example of Figs. 3a, b the middle portion is solid such that its height is constant, or the thickness t.

When following the outer edge of the blade towards the shaft, the height of the outer edge begins at a certain point to increase from zero and reaches then the height t of the shaft. In Figs. 3a, b the longitudinal distance from the blade end to the transverse line, to which the outer edge of the blade is sharp, is marked by the symbol /. The distance / is here approximately the same as said diameter d. The longitudinal transition distance, during which the outer edge of the blade thickens from zero to the height of the shaft, is marked by the symbol a. In the example of the figure, the distance a is an ample third of the diameter d. Thus the blade is considered to extend to the point, and shaft 320 to begin from the point, where the sloping machined area of the edge of the utensil wholly ends.

In Fig. 4 there is a second example of the blade of the utensil according to the invention. Blade 410 is shown from above, and it is similar to the one shown in

Figs. 3a, b with the difference that there is now a hole HL in the middle portion of blade 410. The hole is nearly as large as the entire middle portion so that the middle portion comprises only a relatively narrow framing, the height of which is same as the height of the shaft. The hole HL improves the cutting characteristics of the utensil regarding some types of meat.

In Fig. 5 there is a third example of the blade of the utensil according to the invention. Blade 510 is shown from the side. The difference to blade 310 shown in Fig. 3b is that the outer edge of blade 510 is not in the plane of the lower surface of the blade but between the planes of its lower and upper surfaces. In this case the increase of the blade height when moving from the outer edge to the border of the middle portion takes place from the plane of the outer edge both upwards and downwards. In the example of Fig. 5 the blade is symmetrical as seen from the side so that the oblique angles of the upper and lower sides are approximately equal. They can naturally be also unequal. Fig. 6 shows an example of the utensil according to the invention. The blade and a part of the shaft of the utensil are seen from the side in the figure, as in Fig. 3b. The difference with regard to the structure shown in Fig. 3b is that there is now a double bend in the object constituted by shaft 620 and blade 610 such that the lower surface of the shaft is a little higher up than the lower surface of the blade. In the example of Fig. 6 the difference δ between the lower surfaces is 0.5 mm. The height of the shaft is e.g. 2 mm. In Fig. 6 the planes of the lower surfaces (as well as of the upper surfaces) are parallel. The planes can also be at a small angle in respect to each other.

Fig. 7 shows the forming of the meat pocket by means of a cutting utensil according to the invention. Utensil 200 has there been drawn in four positions inside meat ME. It appears from the figure that the pocket can be formed to have the size substantially of the cross-sectional area of the meat so that no untouched areas like the areas A1 and A2 seen in Fig. 1 remain. In addition, the width of the mouth of the pocket remains almost the same as the diameter of the blade without widening from it.

A meat cutting utensil according to the invention has been described above. It can naturally vary in detail from what is presented in the figures. For example, the outer edge of the blade can be e.g. a parallelogram by shape, one tip merging with the shaft, of course. The corners of the parallelogram can be rounded or unrounded. The shape of the outer edge of the blade, the solid blade/the blade with a hole, the blade being oblique on one side/two sides and possible bends in the shaft-blade-combination are features, which are independent of each other. Each of them can change without the others changing. The inventive idea can be implemented in different ways within the limits set by the independent claim 1.

Claims

1. A meat cutting utensil (200) for making a pocket (PO) in meat, which utensil comprises a blade (210; 310; 410; 510; 610) and a shaft (220; 320; 520; 620), which are of one and the same unitary object and a handle (230), characterized in that an outer edge of its blade (210; 310; 410; 510; 610) is ring-like and has a certain maximum width, or diameter (d), from the point of which the width decreases gradually when moving both to the free end of the blade and to the end on the side of the shaft, the height of the blade increases steadily from zero to the maximum height, or thickness (t) when moving a certain distance (s) from its outer edge towards the centre, or to a border of a middle portion, and the width (w) of the shaft (220; 320; 520; 620) is substantially smaller than said diameter (d), the height of the shaft is substantially the same as said thickness (t) of the blade and each edge of the shaft is blunt to keep the mouth of said pocket small when forming the pocket itself.

2. A utensil according to claim 1 , characterized in that the blade (210; 310; 410) is disc-shaped so that its outer edge on the side of the free end resembles an arc of a semicircle, and the width of a part on the side of the shaft decreases from said diameter (d) to at least nearly the width (w) of the shaft without points of discontinuity.

3. A utensil according to claim 1 , characterized in that the outer edge of the blade resembles a parallelogram by shape, one tip forming the outermost end of the utensil, in which case the distance between the adjacent tips of said tip is said diameter.

4. A utensil according to claim 1 , characterized in that the middle part of the blade (310) is solid.

5. A utensil according to claim 1 , characterized in that there is a hole (HL) in the middle portion of the blade (410), the hole being nearly as large as the middle portion.

6. A utensil according to claim 1 , characterized in that the outer edge of the blade (310) is in the plane of its lower surface, in which case the increase of the blade height, when moving from the outer edge to the border of the middle portion, takes place only upwards from the plane of the outer edge.

7. A utensil according to claim 1 , characterized in that the outer edge of the blade (510) is between the planes of its lower and upper surfaces, in which case the increase of the blade height, when moving from the outer edge to the border of the middle portion, takes place both upwards and downwards from the plane of the outer edge.

8. A utensil according to claim 1 , characterized in that there is a double bend in the object constituted by the shaft (620) and blade (610) such that the lower surface of the shaft is higher up than the lower surface of the blade.

9. A utensil according to claim 8, characterized in that the level difference (δ) between the lower surfaces of the shaft and blade is of the order of 0.5 mm.

10. A utensil according to claim 1 , characterized in that a projection (/) of the cutting outer edge of the blade (310) in the direction of the shaft has substantially the same length as said diameter (d).

11. A utensil according to claim 1 , characterized in that the diameter (d) of the blade is (17±5) mm and the thickness (t) is (2±0.5) mm.