When we first got our Shun knives, the block came with kitchen shears. At the time, I really didn’t understand why the knives came with scissors. For years the shears went untouched except for the occasional snip of kitchen twine or to cut hard-to-open plastic lids off containers. Little did I know just how helpful these “scissors” would be to my cooking adventures.

About two years ago I was cleaning a large package of chicken breasts, the kind of breasts that have all that hidden fat and chicken jank that you don’t see when its wrapped in the package. I had about 9 breasts to clean and I was kind of in a hurry so I grabbed the kitchen shears and used them to clean the meat. Best decision ever! This was by far the quickest way to clean that kind of chicken.

A few months later I was preparing pork tenderloin. You know that “silver skin” that you are supposed to remove from the meat before cooking? If you have removed this skin in your own cooking adventures then you know that its not so easy to slice away with a knife. Well I took my shears to that silver skin and what used to take forever removing with a knife came off the meat in seconds with the kitchen shears.

I continued to use the shears for the “heavy duty” meat cleaning, so last year when I tried my hand at homemade pork carnitas, I once again reached for my shears. Not only did the pork butt have a ton of fat that needed to come off, the recipe called for the pork to be cut into big chunks and I found using the shears to be the best way to cut the meat into manageable pieces that I could then use my knife to slice to the appropriate size.

As I conclude today’s post, I am honestly feeling kind of lame. I guess many of you reading this may be thinking “Okaaaayyyyyyy?” I can’t really think of a good way to end this one. I just know that a good pair of shears can make your life in the kitchen alot easier when you are faced with something and you think “this would be so much easier if I could just cut it with scissors.” Well, guess what, with a good pair of kitchen shears you CAN cut anything you want and may end up saving yourself a ton of time.