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All photo credits: Logan Walker, Pepper Nix
There are beautiful things that do nothing but be beautiful. A cut diamond. Polished brass. A photo of a horse blowing frosty plumes in a field of snow.
And then there are beautiful things that work.
That is a different kind of beauty.
Imagine you’re at a party—a holiday get-together, say—and you find yourself drifting between islands of guests, through currents of conversations, eddies of laughter. Suddenly, something catches your eye. A flash of silver. The gentle whir of machinery at work.
You step closer.
It’s a meat slicer, sure, but not the kind you remember watching as a kid behind the grocery store meat counter. Not one of those industrial monsters that spit out slices like playing cards at a blackjack table.
No, whatever this is, it looks like it wandered out of another century. No buttons to push. No digital display. No electric cord. Just elegant, old-fashioned engineering, a sleek circular blade whispering as it drops ribbons of meat so thin you can see light through them.
You can’t look away.
Who has not felt the fascination of watching something beautiful at work? It is a very old (and very human) pleasure.
Maybe you felt it when you watched a glassblower rolling a glowing orange bubble on the end of a metal pipe, breathing life into something beautiful, coaxing a miracle out of sheer heat and air and gravity and skill.
Or maybe you’ve seen the mesmerizing whirl of a potter’s wheel as slick fingers shape a lump of clay. Or laughed in surprise when the image finally emerged in the sketch under the artist’s hand. Maybe you’ve marveled at a skilled chef’s knifework, or smiled as a bartender conjured a cocktail with playful panache.
We love to watch hands that know their work.
The Omas Heritage Flywheel
And that brings us back to the meat slicer.
That thing that caught your eye at the party? It was a meat slicer, yes, but that feels a little like calling a Stradivarius a wooden box with strings.
Because this particular machine, the one pictured in this article, is a beautiful piece of Italian engineering designed around an idea that sounds almost quaint now: that a machine can be both extraordinarily useful and exceptionally good-looking.
The basic ideas are as old as human ingenuity itself. Literally. A wheel and a sharpened blade. The blade cuts. The wheel turns.
But that’s not why guests gather around, whispering in awe and watching the Omas drop slivers of whole muscle prosciutto like ribbons from a magician’s sleeve. In fact, it’s not even the anticipation of the meat itself—although that pleasure will certainly come later!
No, what holds us enraptured is something mystical that we feel at the sight of excellence and engineering and mastery. Something primeval. We struggle to put into words, maybe because—go with me here—the impulse is older than language itself. When our ancestors struck one stone against another to make a cutting edge a million and a half years ago, they earned the name Homo habilis, the “handy ones.”
And we’ve been entranced by the elegance of craftsmanship ever since.
The Craftsmanship of Cutting
We have all seen sliced meat countless times. We’ve seen it in packages and plastic trays and behind glass and on sandwiches and arranged in delicate folds on plates. Nowadays, machines do things so quickly that the doing disappears entirely. The magic of a beautiful machine like the Omas Flywheel Slicer is that it makes us stop and watch. And feel.
But, honestly, is slicing meat really “craftsmanship”?
In most cases, probably not.
But let me put it like this: there is a difference between doing something and mastering it. Sometimes that difference is almost invisible, maybe only a fraction of an inch. But it matters.
If I’m slicing a silky mortadello, for example, or an Iberico ham, I’m asking myself exactly how thin should the slices be. Should they be translucent and delicate, or substantial enough to have some chew? How much pressure should I apply? How should the meat be presented, with slices lying flat or folded softly upon themselves? There’s no way an industrial slicer could give me the control I need to make those little decisions. Sure, a chef’s knife would give me more control, but on my very best knife-skill days, I don’t have the precision and consistency of a machine. So it’s a combination of the two I want—the precision tool and the practiced hand. That synergy, artistry, and control is what separates cutting from craftsmanship.
How Thin Slicing Improves the Taste of Meat
So, okay, our fancy new slicer is fun to watch and gives the user exceptional control. But does it actually make food taste better?
Actually, it does!
A super-precision slicer like our Omas improves the flavor of meat in at least six ways. (Forgive me while I get a little geeky here.)
- Maximum Freshness. The flywheel slicer allows us to slice meat on site, to order, right there in front of the diner. That means that each sliver is shaved onto the plate just moments before it hits your palate. That’s as fresh as it can possibly be.
- Texture. A thick slice of prosciutto is chewy, but a paper-thin slice is silky and soft. It practically melts in your mouth. The same meat, same cure, same ingredients—but a radically different experience on your tongue.
- Fat Distribution. When meat is sliced very thinly, a higher percentage of the fat is on the surface. Once you take a bite, that fat is then distributed more evenly across a large surface area. Your own body heat and saliva can soften that fat quickly, releasing more of its flavor. This effect is especially important with prosciutto, mortadella, salami, coppa, and other marbled or fatty meats.
- Aroma. Flavor isn’t just taste. In fact, a huge part of what we perceive as flavor comes from aroma through a process called retronasal olfaction. As you probably know, your tongue can distinguish only five basic tastes (sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and umami). The vast majority of what your brain perceives as taste comes from your nose, from the airborne chemicals in food that are released in your mouth and travel up the back of your throat into your nasal cavity. When meat is sliced very thinly, there’s a lot more exposed surface area relative to its volume, which means that more of its volatile aromatic compounds can reach your nose. So you can literally taste a thin slice of meat better than a thick one.
- Moderation. Slicing meat thinly puts the right amount of meat on the palate. Especially with intensely flavored charcuterie meats, a large slab of cured meat can assault you with its salt, fat, smoke, or seasoning. A delicate slice allows you to get the most out of each morsel without overwhelming your senses.
- Temperature. A very thin slice comes toward room temperature quickly. For fatty cured meats, that’s important because fat becomes dramatically more aromatic and pleasurable as it warms. A refrigerator-cold, thick chunk of prosciutto and a delicate slice that has had a moment to warm are almost two different foods.
Food Is Experience
In 40 years of luxury catering, we’ve learned that food is never merely what we put in our mouths. It is what we see, what we smell, what we hear, what we anticipate. It is the conversation surrounding the event. It is the whole experience.
And craftsmanship is a crucial part of that experience.
Culinary Crafts was a pioneer in bringing experiential dining to Utah. Our chef action stations brought cooking out of the kitchen and introduced our guests to hand-stretched mozzarella, three-way tartare, pasta made on the spot, wood-oven pizzas, and hundreds of other food experiences. Our Omas Heritage Flywheel slicer is one more way we take diners behind the scenes to enjoy the theater of fine dining.
It’s beauty-meets-craftsmanship, form-meets-function, a showpiece, and a conversation-starter. If you see it at one of our catered events, come and watch! Ask questions. Taste the difference. Enjoy the show.
Eat well!
Ryan
