Japanese Knives and How to Choose One

hi this is Ian this video is about Japanese knives and I have 10 different knives here to talk about and kind of give you a idea of what different kinds of knives there are what they're used for my own preferences and we'll go from there so I'm going to be going from my left from my most used knives all the way to my right which are the least used knives in my own kitchen so in the very beginning the first one is butyl Guto is the Japanese version of a chef's knife this is a 210 millimeter youth doll and this also has a Japanese handle sometimes call it called a wah handle and the Japanese handle tends to be lighter because of the material and the fact that the metal of the knife only goes part way through it doesn't go all the way through and there are no rivets like the western-style knives you would see on German and other European style knives so do you hundred ten millimeter that's about eight and a half inches very common size this is the knife I use every single day it's very very sharp very thin very useful in the kitchen so you throw is a Japanese chef's knife I highly recommend these next my next favorite style knife is called petit and petit is usually called a utility knife in the western knife language and this is a 150 millimeter petit which is a common size I love it because it works both in your hand for cutting peeling and things that you would normally use a paring knife for works just as well for that but also you can put it on the board and do cutting with it so very versatile I use this every single day I always highly recommend getting a petit knife to to complement the you dull very very useful the third most used knife in my kitchen I use this almost every day as well is a serrated bread knife so this is a 240 millimeter or nine nine and a half inch serrated bread knife and pretty much it's the only reason I have it is to cut bread crusty bread is no problem when you have a serrated knife so it can't cut other things as well but for me it's all about cutting crusty bread works really well for that so longer serrated knife is better than shorter ones I believe so go longer if you can that way you can do long draws and get the bread cut without having to do a whole bunch of sawing next is the santoku santoku means three virtues or three uses in Japanese and this is supposed to be able to do fish vegetables and meat and that's that's the whole reason why it's called santoku it's a very very popular style of home kitchen knives versus the Guto is professional cooks usually you prefer the you dull for the fact a few different reasons but one is the the longer length so this is a 180 millimeter very typical santoku size one of the reasons why people I think like it is because in general Japanese blades are like this but especially the santoku and the next one I'll talk about has a pretty flat profile on the belly here so it instead of using it for rock cutting which it can work for rock cutting it's it's very useful for for push cutting or cutting up and down and because the there's a wide area that will make the contact of the board in one hit it's very useful for that kind of that kind of use so santoku very useful I would never pick this up compared to a doodle for me but sometimes if I need a shorter blade then this is the one that I would want to use on the board if I want to use it in the hand then the petty is the one next one is sort of similar to that is nakida nakida means to cut vegetables and sometimes it's called a cleaver although I don't think that's maybe the best way to think about what an icky D does Nike has this this rectangular shape very very flat profile on the belly here and again just like the santoku it can make contact with the board and you can cut a lot of vegetables very quickly with this kind of knife so I used to use this a lot more but after I got a GU toll and the santoku after getting used to having a sharp pointed tip I started missing that so I don't pick this up nearly as much anymore but if I have to do a whole bunch of cutting of vegetables maybe a certain kind that does not need a tip for example cabbage to make sauerkraut or something like that then I might use this but otherwise it doesn't get too much use in my kitchen anymore when people are thinking about getting a knock ID I always say why don't you look at maybe the santoku or even the cute doll because those are probably a little bit more versatile than than having us squared off and tip end next for me is the paring knife so a lot of people would put the paring knife really higher up in a priority list but for me the pedi does the same thing as a paring knife but I can also use it on the board and I appreciate the extra length so this is a hundred millimeter paring knife and it's a nice knife it works in your hand but it doesn't quite work on the board and it's a little too short for me so for me I don't really get that much use out of it but I can see why people would want to have a paring knife around but for me the petty is by far more useful than the paring knife next I have a different kind of doodle this has a little bit more of a Western chef's knife profile here you can see the belly is more rounded also the handle is one that the metal goes all the way through and goes to the end so this does not have rivets but if the metal does go all the way through and it's quite back heavy the handles quite heavy so the balance point is quite different compared to the japanese-style handle on this cute tool so this is an older knife that I've been using for a long time I got a long time ago and while it's a very good knife it's much heavier than my Guto my other gift oh and because of that as well as some other issues also this this round belly it's um not my own preferred profile a blade for my all-purpose chef's knife or you dose so it doesn't get that much use anymore although it's still a very good knife the last three are traditional single bevel knives in Japan traditionally the knives are single bevel and there are many many different kinds of single bevel knives with very specific purposes so I just had the three most well-known most common single bevel knives but if you start researching traditional Japanese single bevel knives you will find so many different kinds dozens and dozens and dozens of different kinds of shapes and sizes and uses that are meant for that one thing so also traditional Japanese blades were not stainless steel some of these here are stainless steel and some are a mix between carbon steel and stainless steel these traditional knives here I have our carbon steel which means that they need a little bit more care they are prone to rust and staining and but they do work really well because their carbon steel for their own intended purposes and the fact that they sharpen extremely well and very easily and they get very sharp when you sharpen on wet stones so the first very common one is the debe deba is the traditional fish knife so if I had a whole fish I would pick up the dead ball and maybe fillet it or take the head off or do whatever I need to it's very heavy the spine is very thick and has a certain shape it's a single bevel knife meaning that this side has a bevel on it and the other side is not just flat but it's actually slightly concave so it takes some getting used to if you have never filleted a fish with this kind of knife it's a big difference between using a chef's knife for example and single bevel debba something like this is quite different but it's it's fun to use I don't think it's necessary actually none of these are really necessary all I would really need would be the first three and then the rest are sort of nice to have or or depending on your mood or it starts to become a collector's thing the next single bevel traditional knife is janna giba Yanagi ba this is the this is a 270 millimeter sashimi knife that's basically what Yanagi bi is used for is to have that fish that's already prepared with the debba you have fillets that you need to cut into smaller pieces for sashimi or sushi or things like that that's what is very very good for that's why the length is there for slicing it's quite thin as well and it works really well for that it doesn't work well for many other things I would not call this all-purpose blade if you try using this as a chef's knife you probably going to be disappointed because it doesn't do a lot of those things well but for slicing fish you could also slice other other meats or proteins but it's meant for slicing fish and for that it's really really great and then the finally the last traditional single bevel knife is the suba suba translates to fin blade it's the traditional vegetable cutting knife and in Japan sometimes you see very very ornate vegetables cut into certain shapes that are garnish on your plate and those are traditionally made using the tsuba and the tsuba like the name says it's very very thin the spine is not that thin but because it's a single bevel knife the blade itself is very very thin and it can do all that detailed work one of the most common uses is called the cut Tsutomu key where you take a piece of daikon or cucumber and you just shave go around and you're shaving a very very thin piece that becomes long and then eventually you cut it into very very fine julienne you would see that kind of dye comb or preparation or some kind of vegetable preparation on a fancy sashimi plate for example so the tsuba unfortunately it's all the way over here on this side where I don't use it that much just because I don't do that kind of cutting but it's a fun knife to have it's fun knife to experiment with once in a while sometimes I feel like doing some kind of decorative work or having this kind of precision to do something and this is a great knife for that but for everyday use definitely for me it's not something I use or is really needed it's just more for fun so really those traditional single bevel knives they're fun they work for their intended purposes but definitely for me they're on this side where I don't really need to use them every single day again these are the every single day use ones and then over here are the ones that they're useful but it's not something that I would use every single day so in another video I will talk about some of the accessories that might be very useful for having Japanese knives and also sharpening so hopefully this is somewhat useful and if you have any questions about Japanese knives this is just scratching the surface so if you're curious about what kind of knife to get or where to start looking or have any other questions please send me an email and I'm always happy to talk knives any time anyway I'll see you next time Thanks

Channel: Eien Hunter-Ishikawa

Views: 344,664

Keywords: knives, japanese knives, japanese knife imports, #gyuto, #deba, yanagiba, usuba, santoku, nakiri

Id: oGohHtSOcjY

Length: 13min 54sec (834 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 06 2020