One-Handed Chopping: The Rocker Knife With the Handle on Top

An onion won't hold still for a knife. With a hand on it, it behaves. Without one, the first cut sends it rolling and the half you got tips onto its back.

The rocker knife is the usual answer, and at the plate it's a good one. Press the curved blade down, rock it, and a plate of food is in pieces without a second hand. Then it's your night to cook.

One cook in r/stroke uses a rocker knife on their own food at dinner, but says it isn't ideal for food prep for the family. They'd been looking at ulu knives, shaped, as they put it, like a hatchet with the handle hacked off.

If you cook with one working hand, after a stroke or with an arm out of action, and the rocker knife stops at your own plate, this is the step after it. A knife with the handle on top, and a board that holds the food for you.

Isn't an ulu just a rocker knife?

Mostly, and that's the confusing part. The rehab pages describe the rocker knife by its motion, the curved blade pressed down and rocked back and forth, which gets many foods cut with one hand. The usual one is the plate knife, a T-shaped handle on a short blade, for your own dinner.

An ulu is an Inuit knife with the same curved blade and the handle mounted on top of it, so your fist sits over the cut. In r/disability, someone who loses the use of one arm at times says rocking knives take their inspiration from it. The mezzaluna, the Italian herb chopper, is a cousin with a handle at each end.

The Fstcrt knife is sold under both names, rocker knife and ulu, and it's the shape this piece means: a wooden grip standing straight up over a short curved blade. Even the person in that thread arguing against the ulu says the handle above the blade is the one design feature that makes it usable one-handed.

How do you cut vegetables with one hand?

With the grip in your fist over the food, and something other than your hand holding it still. Back in the stroke thread, someone who's had hand trouble since well before a pair of TIAs does every bit of kitchen prep this way:

I use Ulu knives for all my kitchen prep. Carving a turkey, cutting up a massive steak, thin sectioning ginger or garlic and veggies, etc. Buy the curved cutting board-it makes a huge difference.
u/Turbulentlightning08, in r/stroke

Two more people in the same subreddit name the kind, a line each. One had just got a mezzaluna and was loving it so far; another says a crescent knife helped with one-handed cutting.

The disability thread is firmer. Asked for a knife for someone one-handed, the commenter who loses the use of an arm at times recommends an adaptive cutting board and calls rocking knives fantastic. A right-arm amputee at the shoulder seconds it: ulus and an adaptive cutting board are the way to go.

What is a one-handed cutting board for?

It's the second hand. The board holds the food, so your one hand can stay on the knife.

CHASA, a hemiplegia and stroke charity, says what to look for: a board with a vise and stainless steel spikes that hold whatever you're cutting, so nothing needs a hand on it.

The Homecraft Kitchen Workstation is that board: steel spikes, a clamp, and suction cups underneath so the board itself stays put.

The quote above says a curved cutting board, and doesn't say which one. The board with spikes and a clamp is the one two ulu owners and a charity name, so it's the one to start with.

It's the same idea that opens a jar one-handed: something fixed does the holding, and your hand does the moving.

Seen across the board, Digby chops carrot with his paw wrapped round an upright wooden handle, its short curved blade in the pile. Half an onion is wedged against the steel spikes at the board's corner so it can't roll, and he's smiling.

Ulu knife or a regular knife?

Not everybody in the disability thread agrees. The person who started it came back with a case against the ulu: "A person with two hands doesn't use a semi-circular blade for chopping vegetables." A straight blade suits produce, they argue, and they point to a chopper with the same overhand grip on a straight blade.

That leaves the thread split on the curve, two owners for and the thread starter against. What nobody there argues about is the handle on top.

What do the rehab pages say?

The rehab pages we found back the rocker knife for the main cutting, not the ulu. Flint Rehab's list of adaptive kitchen tools, reviewed by an occupational therapist, recommends the rocker knife, which cuts with a rocking motion instead of sawing. Rebuild After Stroke says the same.

CHASA lists the ulu, but for chopping fresh herbs, with the rocker knife for meat.

So the case for the ulu at the prep board is the owners', and the rocker knife you have might be enough. In the stroke thread, asked how it does on raw meat and vegetables, one person says theirs is very sharp, has never needed sharpening and gets used daily.

Arm still in the sling, Digby holds a bowl of chopped onion and carrot in one paw and smiles at the steaming red pan on the hob. The cutting board in front of him is empty.

Where to start

Buy the board first. A board with spikes and a clamp is the half of the job your other hand used to do, and the owners who describe their setup all name a board beside the knife.

Then the knife. The Fstcrt is the compact kind with the grip on top. A rocker knife that already gets through your prep has earned its place, so the money goes on the board.