A cleaver is a large knife that varies in its shape but usually resembles a rectangular-bladed hatchet. It flatten meat largely used as a kitchen or butcher knife and is mostly intended for splitting up large pieces of soft bones and slashing through thick pieces of meat. Tools described as cleavers have been in use since the Acheulean period. Cleaver used to be spelled clever in the late 17th Century.
In contrast to other kitchen knives, the cleaver has an especially tough edge meant to withstand repeated blows directly into thick meat, dense cartilage, bone, and the cutting board below. Part of the momentum derives from how hard the user swings the cleaver, and the other part from how heavy the cleaver is. The tough metal and thick blade of a cleaver also make it a suitable tool for crushing with the side of the blade, whereas some hard, thin slicing knives could crack under such repeated stress. Some cleavers have a small hole, at the top front corner, for hanging them on a wall. A butcher does not typically lay them flat, as the blade may dull or get damaged. Cleavers are primarily used for cutting through thin or soft bones and sinew. With a chicken, for example, it can be used to chop through the bird’s thin bones or to separate ribs.
Cleavers can also be used in preparation of hard vegetables and other foods, such as squash, where a thin slicing blade runs the risk of shattering. Cleavers occur with some frequency in traditional Chinese thought. A story from the Zhuangzi on the proper use of a cleaver tells of a butcher who effortlessly cut ox carcasses apart, without ever needing to sharpen his cleaver. When asked how he did so, he replied that he did not cut through the bones, but rather in the space between the bones. In explaining his ideal of junzi, Kǒng Fūzǐ remarked “Why use an ox-cleaver to carve a chicken?
The Chinese chef’s knife is frequently incorrectly referred to as a “cleaver”, due its similar rectangular shape. For butchering tasks and to prepare boned meats, there is a heavier Chinese “cleaver”, used in similar fashion to the Western one. Side knife, a woodworking tool resembling a cleaver. The origins of the Acheulean: past and present perspectives on a major transition in human evolution”.
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. Why Use an Ox-Cleaver to Carve a Chicken? The Sociology of the Junzi Ideal in the Lunyu”. Look up cleaver in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. Use commercial meat choppers and meat grinders to make your own ground meats, sausages, and burgers. Slicing through bone to cut even, precise portions of meat is easy with an electric meat and bone saw.