Len's News, Notes, and Stuff

Gyuto Sizes: Gotta Have ‘Em All!

Some things don’t change much with age.

I remem­ber once when I was a child, and my par­ents had just bought me a new Trans­former, there was a brochure that showed all the other mod­els that then existed in the world of Trans­form­ers.  It was a pretty pal­try list.  There were maybe a dozen dif­fer­ent char­ac­ters.  3 of them were, in fact, the exact same toy but in dif­fer­ent col­ors: Starscream and his two other F-15 fighter jet buddies.

My father saw that I was all excited, and he asked me, “You want all 3 of them, don’t you?” “Yes!” “But they’re all the same thing.” “No, they’re not.  They’re different!”

I never did end up get­ting any of them.

It’s a lit­tle dif­fer­ent now with my cook­ing toys.  I decide now which new gad­gets and knives I get.  Yet, a sim­i­lar dynamic still exists, whether it’s between myself and most peo­ple I talk to about my inter­est in cook­ing knives, or even with myself as I debate each time over my lat­est intended purchase.

I now have 15 dif­fer­ent knives in my kitchen, not includ­ing lit­tle odd­balls like the oys­ter knife or the cheese knives.  Plus another 2 exclu­sively for use at the office, but that’s get­ting off-topic.  4 of these knives are the same fun­da­men­tal design: they’re chef knives.  Or, in the Japan­ese knife world, they’re gyutos.

I already have a Henck­els 210mm (8″) chef knife.  This was the baby I started learn­ing to cook with. It’s no longer my star per­former, but it’s still so com­fort­able in my hand because I’m used to it. Some­times I need some­thing shorter or stur­dier and this is the knife I reach for.

I have a Henck­els 240mm (closer to 250mm, 9.5″) chef knife.  I res­cued this bad boy. It had been abused in a for­mer home, but I knew the steel was good.  It took some effort, and repeated sharp­en­ing ses­sions, but I even­tu­ally got the edge nice and sharp.  It’s my go-to knife for tak­ing apart items like mel­ons or large cab­bages.  With its res­cued edge, it’s actu­ally pretty good at fine work like mak­ing the cab­bage into a chif­fon­ade, too!

I have a 240mm Tanaka gyuto with VG-10 stain­less steel core, wa-handled.  This is cur­rently my main go-to gyuto.  At first the length felt a lit­tle unwieldy, but I stuck with it because I loved the edge on the thing.  It’s got a keener edge than either of my Henck­els, and it really is a much tighter, much more finely tuned kitchen cut­ting machine.

I have a 300mm (12″) Fuji­take gyuto in solid VG-10 stain­less steel, western-handled.  I’ve only used this bad boy a hand­ful of times because I’m not quite used to it yet.  It feels very large, even though it’s actu­ally my light­est gyuto.  But it is won­der­ful when I need to make clean slices in a yanag­iba (“sushi knife”) fash­ion but also have other prep work to do.  The extra length is also a god­send when I have to plow through and mince a huge pile of herbs or leafy vegetables.

Each knife has its pur­pose.  Each knife has its strengths and weaknesses.

Yet, there is some­thing miss­ing in the sta­ble.  I don’t mean hav­ing one from every make — I don’t think I want to spend the money doing that.  What I mean is, there’s still an entire cat­e­gory miss­ing from my gyu­tos.  Two, actu­ally: 270mm, car­bon steel.  There is a size and a mate­r­ial miss­ing.  I have car­bon steel tra­di­tional Japan­ese blades, but not for any of my gyu­tos.  Why car­bon steel, which can rust, which devel­ops patina, and which needs more care and atten­tion than stain­less steel?  Because it gets sharper and cuts even more cleanly.

So, like the 3 F-15 fighter jet Trans­form­ers, I find myself need­ing to get another toy to com­plete the col­lec­tion.  I have made a deal to buy a second-hand Takeda 270mm gyuto with aogami super (“blue super”) steel core.  It is in a length that I do not have, and uses what every knife knut acknowl­edges to be an excel­lent car­bon steel.  This thing should be an absolute cut­ting mon­ster.  Only when I get my hands on it, take it to the sharp­en­ing stones, and then use it to prep a meal will I know for sure, but that is the promise and the hope.

Some things don’t change much with age.  I still want to com­plete my col­lec­tions.  But some­thing is dif­fer­ent now.  The gyu­tos aren’t exactly the same as one another but in dif­fer­ent col­ors.  They are dif­fer­ent lengths and they have dif­fer­ent steels, thus they have dif­fer­ent cut­ting prop­er­ties.  Do I need to have so many gyu­tos?  No.  I can prep a meal with my orig­i­nal baby, the 210mm Henck­els.  But I have more fun, and arguably my food is higher qual­ity when I use the right knife for the right job, at the right time.

Don’t believe me?  I can tell you my beloved Fuji apples — I’ve been slic­ing up and eat­ing about 4 of them every day for the past month while they’ve been in sea­son — have bet­ter tex­ture and are more enjoy­able when I cut them with a good knife, and the right knife.  I also enjoy the expe­ri­ence of prepar­ing my apples nicely.

It’s no longer about the exact same thing in dif­fer­ent col­ors.  It’s about slightly dif­fer­ent things for slightly dif­fer­ent uses.  Kind of like get­ting dif­fer­ent sports cars for dif­fer­ent pur­poses: a Fer­rari for on-track rac­ing, a BMW M-Series for road dri­ving, and a rally-modded Sub­aru Impreza for off-road rac­ing. Does any­one need to have 3 sports cars? No. But it sure as hell is a lot more enjoy­able to have them all, and you’ll do bet­ter in each envi­ron­ment when you have them all and can choose the right one to suit your mood or your activity.

Gyuto sizes: I just gotta have ‘em all!  210mm, 240mm, 300mm… and I’ll soon have a 270mm!