This man actually makes razor sharp knives out of pasta

In the world of cooking, there are many nations at the cutting edge of knife production. From Sabbatier to Global, different companies bring a range of expertise to the dining room table. However, ask any chef where the best knives are made, and the country that will crop up time and time again is Japan. After centuries spent honing their craft, Japanese knife makers are considered to be at the pinnacle of the profession for their products’ elegance and quality. So expert have some practitioners become that they have decided to take a complete departure from knife making convention.

Credit: Kiwami Japan

In a recently published video, artisan cutler and YouTuber “Kiwami Japan” sets out to craft spaghetti into a potentially lethal weapon. The 14-minute demonstration reveals a highly complex process that demonstrates how, in the right hands, even the most innocent of materials can be transformed into something significantly more sinister.

Kiwami starts by nailing a stainless steel mesh to a wooden frame, before blending a packet of dried pasta into a fine powder. The powder is carefully sieved and combined with water in a metal saucepan, and subsequently rolled inside a Ziploc plastic bag. The outline of a knife is traced and cut out, before being blasted in a microwave and placed within the wooden/steel frame to dry thoroughly for a week.

Credit: Kiwami Japan

The next stage reveals the master knife-maker meticulously shaping and sharpening the blade of his new tool on a series of different whetstones. After he feels satisfied, Kiwami offers a demonstration, showing the new creation easily slicing through tomatoes and cardboard boxes, much to the joy of Italian loving aichmomaniacs everywhere.

However, despite spending over two weeks creating his knife, Kiwami shows that pasta can be delicious as well as deadly. After boiling it for over an hour to soften the razor sharp tool, he serves it with a mixed cheese and cream sauce. Though the result looks more like the bottom of a Wellington boot than food, according to an interview Kiwami gave to the Press Association, the boiled pasta-knife was “delicious”.

Credit: Kiwami Japan

While the ability to make a knife out of pasta is undoubtedly impressive, it is by no means the only trick in Kiwami’s impressive arsenal. Other videos on his increasingly popular channel showcase the construction of knives made of everything from wood to chocolate, as well as knife restoration and a guide to knife maintenance techniques. Perhaps the most impressive video shows Kiwani making a perfectly usable paring knife out of bonito tuna.

While for the majority of viewers the idea of transforming dinner into something inedible is a pointless – if admittedly cool – task, it is nonetheless impressive to watch a master take a familiar, everyday object and utterly alter it beyond all recognition. For anyone who fancies a stab at unorthodox kitchen-based creativity, Kiwami Japan’s videos are a great source of inspiration. The full pasta knife video can be viewed below.