Japanese knives

Some of the best knives in the world are those made in Japan and other parts of Asia. We all know, that Asian neighbours have heavily influenced modern Australian cuisine. With the cuisine comes cooking techniques and cooking utilities.

One of the most popular styles of Asian knives to catch on in the kitchen is the Santoku style knife. But the re are others: gyuto, Asian chef’s knife, nakiri, petty knife, deba, yanagiba, and possibly usuba and kiritsuke.

Let’s make it simple and define what they are. Following knives are double-beveled, meaning that both sides of the edge are ground at an angle to the center-plane of the edge.

Gyuto literally means something like “cow blade,” and it is an equivalent to the French-style chef’s knife. As a rule, Japanese-made chef’s knives (gyuto) are less deep-bellied than their German equivalents, and are closer in profile to French-made knives (e.g. the many Sabatier lines).
A santoku is essentially a Japanese housewife’s knife, and became popular in roughly the 1930s or so — fine details on this are unclear, and it could be as late as the 1950s. The term “santoku,” means “three virtues” and is supposed to be an all-rounder. It has precisely one virtue by comparison to the chef’s knife: it’s short. The ideal for the santoku is about 165mm.
“Asian chef’s knife” means nothing consistent. Probably it’s something like a santoku, but possibly not. This is very loosely used term.

A nakiri is an old-fashioned Japanese housewife’s knife, the one superseded by the santoku. It has some slight advantages over the santoku when it comes to chopping vegetables, but it loses out for every other purpose. Nakiri are double-beveled, although some are ground so asymmetrically that they are similar in many respects to single-beveled knives.

A petty knife is basically a slightly longer paring knife. They’re quite useful, but they can be expensive by comparison to paring knives. On the whole, the petty is probably a better design, but not by so much that you should pay a lot for one.

Now lets talk about single-beveled knives:
A deba is a fish-butchering knife, which is not commonly sold in Australia. It’s for breaking down whole fish. It is massive and stiff. A deba requires a fish-cutting technique that is radically different from the French system, so if you are familiar with the latter you should not purchase a knife like this unless you’re planning to re-learn completely. If you do buy one, 180mm is a good length for normal usage; old-fashioned Japanese pros lean toward 210mm or so, because they use the heel of the knife to mince things, but if you have a chef’s knife of some kind that will work just fine and a shorter deba will be easier to manipulate. They are mildly tricky to sharpen and keep that way.

A yanagiba (could be called yani, yanagi, yanigaba, or yanigiba by westerners, is a slicing knife for slicing raw fish to make sashimi. It has no other function in life, although people quite good with them do use them for other slicing jobs. The ideal length is about 300mm. A decent yanagiba is quite expensive, they are quite tricky to sharpen and keep that way.

A usuba is a professional’s vegetable knife. The edge is die-straight and it is truly single-beveled. Good length is about 210mm, give or take. It comes in square-tipped (Tokyo-style) and sickle-tipped (Kyoto-style). It is about the most awkward, irritating knife you are ever likely to use, and in the hands of a master can do frightening, beautiful things.
A kiritsuke is a peculiar half-breed professional’s knife that is sort of like Japan’s answer to the chef’s knife. Some people love them, many hate them. It’s supposed to be an all-rounder, like the chef’s knife, but a lot of serious knife people think that it ends up being just a little bit mediocre in every way. Good length is about the same as for a chef’s knife, i.e. 240–300mm.

Today, use of these knives depends enormously on the type and location of the kitchen. Sushi chefs in Tokyo have embraced the petty knife and chef’s knife (gyuto), and retain the usuba primarily for peeling sheets of daikon, carrot, and cucumber (katsura-muki). Kyoto kaiseki chefs commonly retain the traditional set, and some disdain the use of any double-beveled knives; serious Kyoto chefs also have a lot of use for hamogiri in season, as hamo (pike conger eel) is a favorite summer fish in Kyoto and unusual elsewhere. Santoku and nakiri are almost exclusively used in home cooking and the occasional low-end professional kitchen.

Single and Double Bevels

A double-beveled knife can be ground symmetrically or asymmetrically. If it is symmetrical, the two angled lines flaring outward, forming the two bevels, are at the same angle from the plane. If it is asymmetrical, those bevels are at unequal angles. Any double-beveled knife may be ground this way if desired. There is some debate as to whether, and under what circumstances, there is anything much to be gained by doing so. It is fairly usual in Japanese double-beveled knives.

A single-beveled knife has advantages and disadvantages.

Advantages: The flat bevel means that sharpening is less a matter of hand stability, which allows a great deal of precision grinding. The hollow knife back tends to refuse to stick to food. This shape works well to produce relative blade strength despite a very thin total included angle (the total of the two bevels’ angles from the plane).

Disadvantages: Single-beveled knives are very tricky to set up initially (see below). They are expensive. Sharpening requires special care to avoid having the flat bevel stick to the stone, making the edge jump toward one’s hand. They are very strongly “handed,” meaning that a lefty and a righty knife are mirror images of one another and will not work at all the same for both cutters. Lefty knives (for those who need them) are far more expensive. The knives tend to “steer” in a cut, something requiring considerable technique to overcome.

A Note On Opening

A single-beveled knife must be “opened.” That is, it must be ground the first time to set it up for use. This is very hard to do well, and you will regret it if you don’t do it well.

Living With Carbon Steel

Carbon steel can rust easily; stainless can rust, but not easily. With time and contact with food, carbon steel will patina: it will react with onions and other acidic foods and start to turn a dull, blue-gray color. Once this patina has formed, it will not discolor your onions. Some people force a patina, and there are a number of methods for doing so, generally involving an acidic paste and a controlled exposure — for example, spreading prepared mustard on the surface for a given time and then washing it off.

To take care of carbon steel, simply wipe it with a damp cloth every time you switch ingredients, and as soon as you are done cutting for a while, rinse it very well in hot water, dry thoroughly with a dry kitchen towel, and then put it up in a rack or the like, out of the way, to “rest” for about half an hour — during this time the trace moisture will evaporate, leaving the knife bone dry. Now you can put the knife in the block or sheath or whatever. Scouring a knife with a ScotchBrite pad and detergent, in place of simply rinsing with hot water, is also workable, and probably a good idea when dealing with meats of any kind.

As a rule, the best single-beveled knives are made of carbon steel.

Japanese Forging Styles

Kasumi means “mist.” It refers to a misty line on the blade, down near the edge, on a single-beveled knife. This arises because the knife is a sheet of steel welded to a sheet of softer iron. The edge is steel, the part up the bevel from the foggy line upward is iron.

Many makers distinguish between kasumi and hon-kasumi. This normally means nothing technical: it is a grading, such that hon-kasumi is higher grade than kasumi. Both are made the same way.

Honyaki means “true-forged” or something like. It means that the entire knife is made of steel, not steel and iron welded together. Honyaki knives are much more expensive, a little less consistent, and tend to hold their edge fractionally longer.

Some high-end professionals insist on honyaki knives for certain applications, notably for their yanagiba that slice raw fish. This is because they retain their edges a little longer. Every time you grind the knife, it produces just a little bit of metal in the first several cuts, and thus if you don’t have to grind it as often, your sashimi will be that little bit better. (Note: very few people can actually tell the difference in the flavor or texture of the sashimi.) Bear in mind that this assumes you’re dealing with the finest fish, have superlative technique, and will grind your knives every single day on a fine polishing stone; otherwise it’s largely irrelevant.

Some high-end professionals, by contrast, claim that honyaki knives are quite inconsistent, in the sense that two honyaki knives in the same line from the same maker or brand vary, and as a result they prefer to use the very consistent kasumi knives.

Cladded Knives

A “clad” knife consists of a core of carbon steel surrounded by a jacket of another metal usually stainless. These knives are made in several ways. They are easier to care for than pure carbon steel (or kasumi knives with iron and carbon steel welded together), but harder to care for than pure stainless knives. Some experts find these knives “dead” to the touch, meaning that the vibrations that pass along the knife as you cut with it are deadened by the cladding, but others maintain that this is an illusion or a myth.

Handles

Handles on Japanese-made knives come in three basic varieties: Japanese-style, Western-style, and custom.

Japanese-style handles are normally made of ho wood (Japanese magnolia), which does not become slippery when wet, and requires little maintenance.

Western-style handles are what you expect, more or less: shaped, grip-formed handles. They may be affixed to the knife in various ways, depending on the maker and design. There is no longer much truth in the notion that a full tang is necessary: an excellent Japanese knife maker’s blades will not fall out any more often than those from your favorite Western maker. Sometimes the term “yo-” attached to a knife title refers to a handle like this, but not always. Most notably, the term yo-deba means a very heavy, tough knife — like a deba — that is double-beveled (thus yo, Western-style). The handle of a yo-deba is whatever the maker chooses to put on it.

Custom Handles: Some purchasers enjoy elaborate handles made of all kinds of things, from rare woods with inlays to lacquer and the like. Functionally, the only issues are (1) weight, (2) hand-feel, and (3) durability under expected conditions. The only one of these that can be commented on in general terms is weight: a long, heavy knife such as a yanagiba or kiritsuke, if used largely on a draw-stroke, benefits from a heavier handle. Standard choices for such handles are itchii (a type of Japanese oak) and ebony, the latter being quite a bit more expensive. This extra weight is not really necessary, but it can be nice. Most knife dealers can arrange handle changes – for a price.

Ferrules

In general, Japanese-style handled knives have a ferrule made of water buffalo horn between the blade and the wooden handle. Some makers and dealers offer different colors of horn, but the standard is slightly irregular black. A plastic ferrule is a dead giveaway of a cheap knive.

Knive Technique

Using good-quality Japanese knives requires (and allows) somewhat different techniques than are normally taught as French-style classical technique.

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