Vintage Sunday: The Most Bad-Ass Kitchen Tool In Existence

One of the things I really love about rummage sales are the miscellaneous junk boxes that you always find near the back of the hall.  No one ever feels like sorting and pricing all the jumbled stuff in the boxes, so they just stick a sign on it like, "ANY ITEM 10 CENTS."  I could spend hours poking through those boxes.  They've always got such treasures in them.

Treasures like this:

Look at that baby.  The tapered, ergonomic handle that feels like it was custom-made just for my grip; the graceful sinuous curve of the bar below the handle; the sharply tapered tines at the leading end; the wicked conical teeth jutting from the bottom.  It looks like it was stolen from a Klingon kitchen.  Designed to make it easier to hold a roast steady as it's carved, this hardcore serving fork is so badass that ordinary kitchen utensils tremble with fear and piss themselves when confronted with its awesomeness.

You don't use this fork. You wield it.

They're like culinary knuckle dusters.  You think Bobby Flay would ever win a throwdown if his opponent had one of these?  Hell no.

I wish I knew more about this nifty wicked bodkin.  It's made of cast aluminum, with similar lines to a late-1940's cast aluminum ladle that was handed down to me by my grandmother, and the awesome Deco lines lead me to believe that the "fork" is about the same age.  There isn't a clue to be found on the tool itself other than an uninformative "Pat. Pending" mark near the handle.  So I dubbed it the Death Fork.

From a purely practical standpoint, the Death Fork can sometimes be hard to use.   Cuts with exterior bones (pork or beef rib roasts, for example) are difficult to hold with it because of the size of the spiked bar, and the fork tines are too short and stubby to get a good hold,  Likewise, the complex curves of a turkey and the small size of chickens make the Death Fork less useful for poultry.  Except in the case of Cornish game hens.  You should see the way you can destroy the hell out of a Cornish game hen with just a swipe or two of the Death Fork.

But for standard beef roasts, boneless pork cuts, hams, and joints with deep internal bones, nothing beats the Death Fork.  It completely dominates the meat and holds it rock-steady for slicing.  It's truly awesome.  Probably one of the best ten cents I've ever spent.