You’ll often see Americans in cooking videos using scissors to cut food, cheese, green onion, you name it… The idea of using scissors this way is foreign to me. I don’t have anything against it, but I never even thought about using them for anything but crafts/opening packaging. Do you guys have kitchen scissors?
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Yep. They are quite useful.
Yes? They’re usually dedicated scissors for the kitchen, and not for anything else.
We own kitchen scissors, use them occasionally but mostly a knife will do + less hassle to clean.
We actually need to replace our kitchen scissors
My grandma had a pair, but as far as I know they were only ever used for opening difficult packagings
I have TWO pair. They work really well.
We have two pairs of kitchen scissors and use them a lot. We run the dish washer just about every night, and there’s rarely two days in a row that the kitchen scissors haven’t been used for something.
Yep, kitchen scissors stay in the kitchen and are only used for kitchen things!
Oh yeah. Its a dedicated pair that gets washed in the sink, and the knife sharpening people by me will sharpen kitchen scissors as well
yeah, I have them.
Yes, I have a pair that you can pull in half and throw in the dishwasher when dirty. My regular scissors would rust if I did that with them.
I always thought it was more of a Korean thing.
Yes but I see this in almost every country. Kitchen shears are pretty standard I thought
I mostly use them for opening packages, but occasionally for food.
I have a pair of scissors in my kitchen, but I just use them for cutting everyday household things, the same as any other pair.
Rarely/virtually never do I use them on food. The exception is cheap frozen pizzas because once I couldn’t find my pizza cutter and just cut it with scissors and worked pretty well.
Now that I’m typing it out, why do we call them a pair of scissors when there’s just one? Is each blade a scissor?
I have them, but I didn’t until I saw them in use in S. Korea. They work very well.
Yeah, they’ll come with any type of knife set you get usually. They definitely have their place.
They’re usually called “Cooking Shears”, but yeah. There’s cooking scissors (used on food) and scissors (used on everything not food).
I have scissors in the kitchen for opening packages of food but I don’t use them on the food itself. I can see their utility. I just prefer knives on my food.
Yes but they stay in the kitchen. We don’t use them for anything else but their designation and they go in the dishwasher after use.
Yes but you would never cut cheese with them.
I have them.
Yes absolutely, thought they were a normal thing everywhere, they’re dedicated for kitchen uses, not for use for anything else.
Yes, they’re in the butcher block. It comes with it but I have two other pairs in a drawer.
So I know you aren’t Korean right away lmao
Yes, I cut bacon in half before frying. I also use them to butterfly chicken breasts to quicken cooking time. Lots of other uses as well. My main reason is that I don’t have to dirty the actual cutting board as I don’t need it for most tasks.
Not an American specific thing, but it is something we do here. They’re a great tool in your “kitchen toolbox”, not a replacement for knives.
Kitchen scissors are normal in Japan and South Korea too.
They make cutting things like herbs and other greens super easy
Typically they’re made a little different than regular scissors and come in a standard knife block.
Yes, a few pairs. Hopped on that train after a Korean BBQ outing. Love those things.
Yes. Useful for opening the plastic packaging that a lot of food comes in….
I think every American home has a pair of kitchen scissors. How much they actually use it on food though Im sure varies wildly. I think most Americans will simply use knives for stuff you mentioned like cutting cheese (no clue why anyone would use them for cheese?) green onion and raw ingredients.
They can be quite nice if you’re like separating chicken, de-shelling shrimp or anything else the involves getting through bone, cartilage or tendons. Thats what I use them for. Everything else is just a knife on a cutting board.
Have you ever met a Korean? Lol!
Yes, we use them. They’re also a huge deal in Korea.
Yes. They’re a separate set of scissors kept clean and sharp and stored with the kitchen knives to only be used for food.
We’re actually not the only culture that does this. Koreans use scissors a lot for food too! In the US, we mainly use scissors when we’re cooking, but Koreans use them to cut up the food that they’re eating into more bite-sized pieces.
There’s a lot of packages that need to be opened in the kitchen and shears are also good for cutting food into smaller consistent pieces. If ok cooking a chicken meal with bite size chicken, I’m gonna use shears to get good bite sizes
Don’t they have scissors on the table at Korean barbecue places?
Just wanted to add that a lot of “kitchen scissors” are able to come apart for easier washing, another subtle difference.
Yep! I just bought some that are bat shaped because I love all things Halloween
Just wait until you see what we do with game sheers, kitchen scissors big brother.
I use them so much that I have more than 10. We wash most of our dishes in the dishwasher, and it isn’t uncommon to have between 5 and 8 in the dishwasher to be washed. I even have poultry shears. They are perfect for making a spatchcock chicken.
They’re mostly used for opening food packaging (a lot of meats are sold in thick vacuum-seal plastic, which is really awkward to open with a knife). But kitchen shears are also really helpful in cutting large bunches of small stuff like chives, spring onions, parsley, and cilantro. They stay in the kitchen and are only used for food or food packaging.
Yea many knife block sets come with cooking scissors aka kitchen shears
Hardly just an American thing.
I’m an American and I never had dedicated kitchen scissors until I got a job at a Chinese restaurant and part of my side work was using scissors to snip the ends off green beans.
I thought it was a Chinese thing I adopted, the same way I still make congee when I’m sick or sad even though that was a decade ago, I didn’t know it was an American thing
Wait until OP learns about our garbage disposals in the sink.
What kind of savage society do you survive in without kitchen scissors?
(I cannot, however, understand taking scissors to cheese.)
It’s not just an American thing
2 pairs in the kitchen: 1 for packaging and 1 for food.
Fabric scissors not to be used anywhere else.
Paper scissors
Craft scissors
Weed scissors
More paper scissors for gift wrap
Kitchen/Butcher’s scissors are standard in every knife set here. Never used them for cheese tho, and only rarely for green onions, etc. I mostly use them for deboning chicken, which is why they’re often called butcher’s scissors. Highly doubt they’re an Americanism. But, yes, quite standard.
Kitchen shears* (differentiates them from other types of scissors). A good pair of shears can cut through bone.
You saw them used first in high volume food service. They were just using sewing shears a first, but they sped some tasks up so much that people started asking for specialized shears that could come apart to be washed more thoroughly .
I like them to take backbones out of chickens. I can do it with a knife, but it’s faster and less messy on the hand than traditional knife technique.
Yes, I have kitchen scissors. Every set of knives I’ve purchased has come with some. Also, I don’t know that this is strictly an American thing. I’ve lived in both Europe and Asia and seen them used there too.
I was in a Korean restaurant and the waitress brought out a big chunk of kimchi, which she proceeded to cut up at my table with scissors.
The best kitchen scissors I own are from the UK and Germany.
Amazon UK lists lots of them; they’re really not some special American-only thing.