Oyster Knives
Best Oyster Knives & Accessories
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New Haven Oyster Knives

The New Haven oyster knife is a very different knife than a Frenchman or Boston oyster knives. This knife has at least two features that make it unique for cracking open oysters.

First of all, the main feature of this knife is that it has a hinge that will deffinitely help to prop an oyster open no matter how big or small it is. The classic hinge method of opening oysters works well with this knife when the oyster is held down with one hand on a table (a stable flat surface) while with the other hand gently working towards damaging the hinge that holds the oyster shut. When you get past the hinge and a little bit into the oyster itself, turn the knife a little bit so that it'll spread the shells even more (avoid thrusting the whole knife into the shell because it might touch the meat and mess with it). After you can get the tip of the knife inside the oyster, push it through towards the adductor muscle. The adductor muscle doesn't take much to cut, all you need is to damage it enough so that it lets go.

The New Haven oyster knife comes in handy here when you're working towards getting inside the shell and have the tip of your knife inside the oyster already. This is when you gently press on the handle while holding the oyster with your other hand to widen the gap so you can slide your knife further and cut that adductor muscle.

Another great thing about New Haven knife is how the "lever tip" helps to really get under the shell once you're inside without doing damage to the meat of the oyster. Because it's curved a little upward you can really get in there and cut the muscle without messing up the meat. That comes in handy.

The blades on New Haven knifes are often wide and not particularly sharp around the edges. They are also shorter, comparing to their fellow Frenchman knives. The lenght of New Haven knife starts at 2.5 inches and it works really well on all sorts of smaller "slurper" oysters.

It's important to note that some of the contemporary oyster knives made nowadays have a higher upwardly formed tip design to help split the oyster halves even easier. Some manufacturers make the blade wider than regular to make the knife last longer.

I would definitely put this knife in my top 3 to travel around with... especially if I travel to places that have small to medium oysters.