Len's News, Notes, and Stuff

& Vegetables">Knife Test: Peeling Fruit & Vegetables

I have to admit that my knife skills need a lot of work. By this, I mean my skills using knives in my hands, as well as my skill sharp­en­ing them to their full poten­tial. Peel­ing fruit & veg­eta­bles is actu­ally a very good indi­ca­tor of a chef’s knife skills — how sharp has the chef main­tained his or her knife, and how well does he or she wield it?

Here are two clips of peo­ple who are very good with their knives and who have obvi­ously kept them super-sharp. The first is a Japan­ese chef demon­strat­ing the kat­sura­muki tech­nique of rotat­ing & slic­ing a cylin­dri­cal veg­etable (in this case a diakon radish) into a thin sheet. Thin­ner is bet­ter, while obvi­ously main­tain­ing the integrity of the sheet! The sec­ond video — at the 4:00 minute mark —  is Iron Chef Hiroyuki Sakai peel­ing an apple.

I bring up this topic today because I sharp­ened my new aogami (blue 2 steel) Tanaka nakiri on the week­end and got to use it for the first time today. I sharp­ened on a 1000-grit stone and then on a 5000-grit stone, and it feels pretty darn sharp to my fin­gers. How­ever, the real test was the cucum­ber that I katsuramuki’d ear­lier today. All I can say is: the knife isn’t sharp enough, and I don’t think it’s the knife’s fault.

Basi­cally I was peel­ing my cucum­ber before mak­ing a quick cucum­ber salad for a snack. I’ve peeled cucum­bers before using the kat­sura­muki tech­nique with a proper single-edged usuba, but also with my sim­ple VG-10 Tanaka petty knife. My nakiri sim­ply did not feel as sharp, and I could tell it wasn’t slic­ing through the cucum­ber, just under its skin, as cleanly and as eas­ily as it should.

I can only con­clude that I did not sharpen the nakiri to its full poten­tial, and I’m going to have to hit the stones again with the nakiri some­time in the near future.

Now what about my skill level using my knives?  I’m work­ing on my kat­sura­muki tech­nique because it’s just so darned use­ful when­ever I need to peel some­thing like a cucum­ber or zuc­chini, or if I’ve got to make really thin juli­enne out of some­thing cylin­dri­cal like, again, zuc­chini or cucum­ber. I don’t use daikon radish much in my cook­ing at this time. My skill level isn’t quite there yet, though, because I can’t cre­ate any­thing quite as thin as what you see in the video above, I can’t keep the sheet going as far, and because I am an absolute tur­tle when I try peel­ing fruit, pota­toes, or car­rots with a knife.

If you want to put your­self to the test and see (a) how well you’ve sharp­ened your knives, and (b) how skill­ful you truly are with your knives, you need go no fur­ther than the local fruit & veg­etable stand. Pick up a nice cucum­ber or daikon radish and try to kat­sura­muki it. Pick up an apple, a potato, and a car­rot, and see how well and how cleanly you peel them.

If you haven’t tried this before, I guar­an­tee you’ll find it eye-opening!