I would probably just by the meat from the deli.

I'm lazy like that... LOL

We have an electric meat slicer. I will look up which one.

In Germany and Austria where they eat a lot thinly sliced meats for their meals they have these monster commercial versions in their kitchens. Our small one is not as good but good enough,

I guess I don't slice meat much for sandwiches, or at least not thinner than I can easily do with a knife, but I know in the past, I have used the slicing blade on my Cuisinart to make nice thin slices of meat. When my husband was alive, we ate a lot of roast beef and ham and used an electric knife, which worked great. I think they make cordless ones now, which would be even easier.

I do both…buy from the deli and cook something myself to slice. I just bought a small sirloin tip roast for dinner with the intent of using the excess for sandwiches. I have some very nice knives so that's what’s used for slicing…no problem. I prefer fairly thin slices but DH wants thicker. In the other thread I mentioned buying turkey half breasts from TJ’s to roast for sandwiches.

Chef's Choice 610 German made cost about $60 way back when. I expect it has gone up some by now but works really well. It doesnt take up a whole lot of space. It had no cover so we keep it in a clear plastic box with a lid in the pantry

When I slice gravalax very thinly, I just use a really sharp knife, and resharpen every 8 or 10 slices.

I have a small electric meat slicer (which I mostly use to make a particular Christmas cookie) but I have used it to slice meat on occasion. Usually I use a finely serrated knife, the kind they used to advertise you could slice through a shoe or a small branch with. It’s also good for slicing bread or cake layers.

Well now I gotta know. What cookie do you make with a meat slicer?

I'm a chicken, tuna, egg salad kind of gal. No slicing. But I buy deli for my family. 😀

I have a home meat slicer :) Usually for meat. I too am curious about the cooking cutting Colleenoz does.

At one point, post kitchen remodel, I really wanted a folding meat slicer. My mother had seen a review on TV that said they weren't any good, though I think it might have been helplful for my intended use. I hadn't been hinting for one. I hadn't even figured out where to put it. But my father, armed with the notion and my mother's report, went to the chef store and bought me a table saw. He had a large table saw for cutting wood in his atelier. I think he thought it was small and cute. It came in an enormous box wrapped in holiday paper. Luckily, the book was on top and after reading that, and about the rigmarole for cleaning it--while trying not to cut off fingers--plus just the footprint which would have eaten up a third of the useable counter space in my not yet cluttered kitchen, and I knew it had to go back. And since it hadn't been unpacked, they were gracious enough to take it. I could have handled the small folding one, but at that point I gave up the notion.

I'm not great at slicing (Father was), which is why I thought I'd like the slicer. But when I do slice, whether it's a brisket for further cooking, or a turkey breast for sandwiches, I use a long slicing knife with a Granton edge. The hollows keep the meat from adhering to the blade. In general, I like to buy small amounts of fine deli slices in sealed packaging (True Story or Applegate) which can languish a little in the fridge, for individual sandwiches, but will cook my own or get custom sliced for a sandwich bar or similar. Frankly, I prefer deli meats for sandwiches, or even snacks. My salt levels test way low. And the beloved helpers don't have issues either. Sliced for sandwiches is not my go-to for leftovers.

I have the deli slice it. One of my stores has a poster of slicing thicknesses so you can tell them exactly what you want. They usually hold up the first slice to ask "how's this?". I like that.

Meat we cook at home, well, I just do my best.

For sandwiches made with freshly cooked poultry (turkey or chicken) I like very thick slices. When we have leftover steak, I slice it very thin with a good chef's knife that DH keeps nicely sharpened. If I buy deli meat at the counter it's usually ham and I ask to have it sliced "very thin but not shaved" - otherwise pre-sliced cured meats like salami, pepperoni, prosciutto etc. I just buy as packaged.

We don't eat sandwiches very often - I'm more likely to use all of the above in salads of some sort.

I use a chef's knife - and I also don't care if poultry is sliced thin. Roast beef or lamb I do like as thin as I can make it.

Growing up, we had a mechanical slicer that you cranked by hand. It did an excellent job. I think it was like this one:

My dad used it to slice his homemade corned beef

I use a sharp knife, and sharpening them often (every couple months) with different grid belts on a belt sander and stones. I use honing steels on the knife before I start cutting something and even between cuttings if its a lot of cuts. My knives aren't great and considered budget knives, and would guess most of you have less then the best, and doubt any have premium super stainless steal knives in the kitchen, I don't. The difference isn't that great between a budget and premium knife when they are brand new and sharp, but the difference is how long between sharpening or hold up before needing re-profiling. Premium knifes will hold their sharpness 10 times longer than budget but require high buck diamond or Cubic Boron Nitride abrasives to sharpen or re-profile these metals I just don't want to buy.

It's all about the steel used, and even all industrial meat slicers will need honed, sharpened and re-profiled at some point otherwise it becomes another dull cutting tool. I have a cheap machete worth about $10 bucks but can put an edge on it so fine it's like a Japanese samurai sword until I use it once, then it's scrape metal again. If you're using stainless steel knives from the seventies or even 80's they're not much better than a butter knife from the 2010's. Super stainless was only invented in the 1990's and got better in the 2010's.

An electric knife isn't a knife, it's a thin saw with no teeth with jagged edges sawing through the meat. Save it for the crusty bread, a good sharp knife will cut better, thinner and faster through a hunk of raw or cooked meat any day of the week. I sharpen my own knifes because they're cheap, if I had a $150 to $500 premium knives I would need to take them to a professional shop to have them sharpened or re-profiled and something I just don't want to get into, so I use cheap knifes and sharpen them often. Oh, and just because a celebrity puts their name on a knife doesn't make them good, just expensive.

Seagrass brought up a nice memory for me. Back in the late 60s/early 70s mom would buy a ham and have the deli shave it. Those were the best sandwiches!

Thanks, Kevin. All very good info. I was sort of figuring the electric knife idea was best left a no-go.

Kevin, you're right, but my Bob Kramer designed knife (made in Japan, possibly at Shun, and sold by Zwilling) is not just pretty, it's an awesome cutting tool for the price. Sometimes celebrity is okay... 😉 I hadn't considered trying it on meat, though, since my habit is the Granton edge.

Plllog, I might need to correct my post, you actually have a premium knife $$$$, can I borrow it?

It was only $$$ but was on sale. :) The handmade Bob Kramers, which you have to literally join his club for—they're auctioned to club members—are another story. But, yeah, it's an awesome knife. So, what I say about knives, including my 30 year old Wustoff work-a-day chef, is how I was taught, to only cut on a yielding surface (i.e., wood or nylon), and reduce force before you hit bottom. That way you preserve your edge and need far less honing and sharpening. But I appreciate your dedication to proper sharpening, and if I were going to let anyone else touch my blond beauty, you'd be in the running.

I have a meat slicer but we cure and smoke our own bacon and corned beef so we do not buy deli style lunch meat. I occasionally use the slicer for cheese but it's mostly for meat products. I don't care for ham but the family does so we occasionally cure and smoke one and it'll get sliced, but usually by hand with a knife, same with chicken breast.

I will roast something like eye of round and slice it very thinly. Elery's favorite sandwich is tomato, LOL, no meat at all but I've been known to make a cheesesteak type sandwich or a french dip. More likely would be pulled pork from the smoker. I do have a couple of briskets that I've been trying to convince Elery to smoke but we just haven't done that yet.

The slicer isn't an industrial size but is one of the bigger home slicers and it has to live in the back store room because there isn't room in the kitchen. It gets pulled out only when we have a project that needs slicing. We had a cheaper/smaller one and it was terrible to clean. I still have one of those hand cranked ones stored in the pole barn, I remember Dad using it when I was a child so I just keep it, but I don't use it.

Annie

I don't buy deli meat, but get a 1/2 turkey breast and roast. I used this pictured knife originally for tomatoes only and it is perfect. Then I started using it on steak. Wonderfully sharp knife. Nobody touches this knife. I still use a1980's electric knife for roast turkey, and slicing brisket.

A top seller in Rada’s lineup of great knives, the world-famous Tomato Slicer

^^^ I have two of those Rada tomato knives but I've never used them on anything but tomatoes.

I‘ve used this knife for tomatoes for years. I think the box was labeled either sausage or sandwich knife. I have to keep this from DH. I once caught him using it to cut through very thick cardboard.😖

I've been contemplating why I like good deli meat, since many of you don't, or don't have access to the better kind. I think a lot of it is texture. Plus, flavor, of course. It's already salty so I don't have to think about seasoning, I don't really like seared flavor in sandwiches But it's really texture. Of course, my first love was the garlicky, peppery salami that seeped fat and flavor into the bread requiring no other ingredients, My father would make me that for school lunch when we'd run out of "more appropriate" sandwich filling. But just finding a proper salami nowadays is such a problem!

I have the plastic handled, thin serrated blade tomato knife that was sold on a blister card in the produce depatment. The kind that cuts through fingers if you blink. It's the only knife with which I cut flat even tomato slices, but I rarely bother, and just use my chef's knife for the whole platter. Or the big V-slice mandoline if I'm cutting enough to be worth the washing, I don't know how my cheap but deadly weapon compares to Ladypat's nice looking tomato knife. I daresay it's in the running. (I don't care about mixed metaphors....)

I love the sandwich meat at my fancy pants independent market. They pull hams and turkeys from the oven, slice off pieces for you. I like a thick cut of meat on a sandwich with lettuce and tomato to juice it up. I want a high meat to bread ratio.

I also have a mandoline It is stainless and really fancy. Cost almost $200 thirty years ago. You can slice stuff so thin you can read through them but I rarely use it as I have to dig it out of a big drawer. I was supposed to julienning carrots and such for bisque but a knife is so much faster if not as elegant in what it produces.

I've had an electric slicer for years now- a German one that's stayed really sharp. It scares the living daylights out of me so I'm super careful. I bought it to slice home-cured bacon as I like it really thin and have found it really useful for lots of other things....... thinly slicing baguette for aperitif "toasts", bargain jambon cru - I slice it up and freeze..... and home-made luncheon meats sliced and frozen. It wasn't very expensive and it works well. It is a bum to clean, though.

I have both of those knives, the Rada and the Wusthof. The Rada came from a local Amish store, it was less than $15. The Wusthof was a gift from Nancy/wizardnm when Elery and I got married, clear back in 2008, and it's still sharp as a scalpel. I've never cut meat with either of them, now I'm going to have to give them a try!

Annie

These 3 Wusthof knives are some of my favorites. The wave blade is especially nice for slicing crusty breads/rolls without crushing. Also good for meats, hard sausage, melons or squash. OTOH, it also cuts through more delicate things (like cakes) nicely. I’ve had them a very long time and still sharp as ever.

I have one of those tomato knives - the handle is aluminum and turned dark in the dishwasher. It's great for all kinds of fruits - stays so nice & sharp. I've had it for years and I have no idea where it came from 😄