Len's News, Notes, and Stuff

It’s True: Japanese Cooking Knives will Spoil You

I finally realized yesterday that I have been permanently spoiled by my Japanese cooking knives.  I can’t look at a German knife quite the same way ever again.  Not that it’s about the look, it’s about the feel.

For now, I’m going to limit myself to the chef’s knife.  This knife is the core of many chefs’ toolkits, and given my Western culinary training, it is the knife I go to most often.  It is said that 90% of the work that North Americans will do in the kitchen can be accomplished with the chef’s knife – the other 9.5% with the paring knife, and 0.5% with whatever specialty knives you might have.  I think that’s true.

Although the Western chef’s knife and the Japanese gyuto are technically different beasts, for all practical intents and purposes, they are exactly the same.  The gyuto was designed based on the French and German chef knifes.  These are your 8″ to 12″ cooking knives, though expressed in millimeters for the J-knives (210mm to 300m).  Typically 8″ is the largest you’l find in a knife block set, and I’m willing to bet it’s the largest most people have.

One of my favorite knives until lately has been my Henckels 210mm/8″ chef’s knife.  I feel very comfortable with that thing.  I’ve hand-sharpened it to the best of my abilities.  It is, in my opinion, noticeably sharper than any of my friends’ knives.  It is fun to use.

But lately I’ve been starting to spend more time with some of my gyutos.  Most often these days, I’ve been reaching for my 240mm Tanaka gyuto.  This isn’t even close to top-of-the-line, but it is a very well made VG-10 stainless steel gyuto.  It is thinner and lighter than my Henckels.  As of yesterday, when I finally realized how spoiled I have become, I fully acknowledged that it is sharper, more nimble, and yes, more comfortable.

I was doing something very simple.  I was cutting up a huge pile of cherry tomatoes with my trusty Henckels  for my pasta dish when something just felt … odd.  My favorite piece of German steel felt oddly like the proverbial battle-axe that I had long heard other J-knife aficionados talking about.  It felt a little clumsy.  It felt a little unwieldy.  It felt like a crude instrument rather than a precision tool, like a construction worker dancing on stage rather than a prima ballerina.

My best German steel, one that I had so lovingly cared for and had long considered my workhorse, was no longer the star performer that I had always felt it to be.  I had to acknowledge to myself, once and for all, that my middle-of-the-road gyuto was dancing circles around my Henckels.

I will still use my heretofore-beloved 210mm Henckels.  I have to specify it like that because I do have a 260mm Henckels chef knife (which, really is a battle-axe and not at all for precision work) and a 190mm Henckels santoku.  I wills till use my 210mm Henckels for certain jobs, because it is still relatively nimble, and it rocks better on the cutting board than my gyutos.

If I want to rock cut on the cutting board, I will use my trusty Henckels.  You may wonder why it rocks better.  The answer is very simple, actually.  The Henckels, made as sharp as I know how to on a series of quality whetstones, is not sharp enough to catch in the wood fibers of my cutting board, and will slide just a bit to let me rotate the blade a few degrees on the board as I rock and cut.  Not so with my J-knives.  They are sharp enough to bite right into the wood without any effort.

That would explain why the asian way to use gyutos tends to be push-cut rather than rock-cut: their run-of-the-mill knives are so much sharper than top German knives.  Once you use Japanese steel in the kitchen, you won`t want to go back.

Trust me, Japanese knives will spoil you.

And that, my friends, is an intensely pleasurable thing if you are the sort who likes to cook!