How To Use Every Japanese Knife

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Hi, I'm Christine, I'm the executive chef at Kimika

and today I'm gonna show you how to use...

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Every style of Japanese knife!

I've only owned Japanese knives at this point,

and to be honest,

I don't actually see very many professionals

using anything but Japanese knives these days.

I'd very surprised if you buy a Japanese knife

and you don't continue to want another one

after you buy your first one.

A knife should last you a lifetime,

so it's important to take care of your knives

like they're your best friend.

These are the basic tools for knife care.

A knife roll, sharpening stones, and this is a saya,

a wood cover made out of magnolia wood.

One of the first things you learn

is that you would never give your knife away

to anybody to sharpen, you have to do it yourself.

Make sure you've soaked the stones in water.

These are not oil stones.

We only sharpen Japanese knives with wet stones.

Using any kind of sharpening wheel

or mechanism really just shaves off too much knife.

So we're gonna do this Western style petty here.

You have to always make sure you've soaked these

for at least half an hour before your using them.

This is gonna be at 70 degrees.

You're gonna go this way and then 30 degrees on this side.

Then you're gonna wanna wash off it off

and make sure it's really dry,

because that water on there will eventually rust.

And the last thing that you might use

is a little bit of oil,

and the oil will protect the knife from oxidizing,

rusting, or any of those things.

But these really are the tools

that will allow you to care for

and hopefully really welcome these knives

into your cooking family.

All right, let's get started.

This knife is a gyutou.

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When people ask me what knife you should get,

a gyutou eight inch chef's knife is the place to start.

It's the all-purpose knife.

So something that we do a lot at the restaurant

and we do a lot of at home is using onions.

So, cut the ends off and just a little bit off of the butt,

and we wanna peel the onion first,

so we're gonna cut this.

The knife has a nice bolster,

so it helps you peel the skin off of the onion.

You could use your hands,

but it's nice to use this bolster on the butt of the knife.

It's lighter, it's thinner.

This doesn't feel unsafe when I'm doing this.

I'm really guiding it and I'm putting my hand up

a little bit further on the knife,

so I can really control it.

You don't wanna use a knife that's too big

that feels a little too heavy,

and that's where this thinner knife

really make a big difference,

'cause it's much easier for you to slice the onion thinner

and at a faster pace.

[knife chopping]

Paper thin red onions.

We could do a dice of the onion

and see, you have this precise, nice red onion dice now.

And that's a gyutou.

This is a santoku, santoku means three virtues,

and the three virtues of this knife

is that it can cut fish, meat, and vegetables.

It is another one of our all-purpose knives.

It's for julienning, maybe doing some potatoes, and carrots.

Everyone has carrots in their kitchen.

You can really use this up and down motion

and really utilize the bolster that's a little bit taller,

and you're just doing a very up and down motion

instead of a rocking motion like you would do on the gyutou.

Another cut that's great to do with carrots

is called a rangiri, where you're essentially rolling.

Just one knife cut down, you roll, and you keep going,

so there are these three shapes twisted cuts.

If you're not super skilled on your knife skills,

this is a great knife to start using.

It's a little bit more compact

and it works really well at home,

'cause, obviously, your kitchen's a lot smaller

than the kitchen I have at work.

It's the perfect knife for a New York apartment.

If you've got the little, tiny cutting board

that's about this big, perfect just for that size.

And that's the santoku.

This is a kiritsuke, a knife that is traditionally only used

by the executive chef.

The ultimate example of Japanese knife making craftsmanship

and this comes from the tradition of samurai sword making.

So this is my kitchen sword.

So, today, we're gonna use this single-sided beveled knife

and we're gonna slice this tomato,

and it just cuts through like nothing

and it really falls off the beveled side of the knife,

and it's multipurpose,

so I can work on some vegetable cutting

and prep a piece of fish for you and a piece of meat.

That's the kiritsuke!

This is a bunka, it is also an all-purpose knife

and it's very delicate.

For instance, we're gonna cut some Japanese eggplant here.

It's so delicate and thin, and light,

I can really just slice through these things very quickly.

The bunka has got this slanted tip

and this is why sometimes you'll pick to use this knife

versus a nikiri.

So, as you can see, we've cut this eggplant in half

and we're just gonna use this, not go all the way through,

but we're just scoring,

putting the tip in maybe like a quarter inch,

a half an inch down and doing these cross hatch marks.

And this will allow the eggplant to cook faster

and you'll get this really beautiful design.

We also can do that with mushrooms,

like these king oyster mushrooms here.

It just slices through it so quickly

and then here you're gonna do the same scoring,

and you can put these in a hot pan, some oil,

maybe finish with a little butter,

you get this one side super golden-brown,

and think about it at a dinner party.

How cool would this be for you

to have a bunch of these on a platter?

People would be very impressed.

It's not too long, it's so light and maneuverable.

It's a really nice knife to be able to just slide right in

and that's the bunka.

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This is a petty knife.

Petty meaning petite in French.

Generally speaking they're five to six inches long

and it's really great for cutting smaller vegetables,

or herbs, or small fruits,

and any kind of detailed work that you wanna do.

For instance I'll show you here,

it's really awesome for peeling garlic.

So, if you notice here, again, you've got the blade

that goes all the way down to the heel,

so you can use the heel

to help you peel some of the skins off

and really use the heel here

to get between the skin and the garlic,

and we've got our nice piece of garlic.

So if we wanted to do some sliced garlic,

so let's say we're making some linguini and clams at home,

then you can slice your garlic

and then you're gonna mince it.

It's small, it's light, it's handy, it's perfect.

Another thing it would be great for is for using shallots

for some fine detail work here.

If you wanna do thinly sliced shallots,

this is the perfect knife to do that.

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And there you have it, some nice brunoise shallot,

and this is your petty knife.

This is a paring knife.

The smallest of the knives that you'll find.

A beautifully handcrafted Japanese knife.

Hard Japanese steel, wood handle.

I use it most for cleaning small things

like these beautiful small radishes I got.

I really use a lot of it in my hand like this,

so we clean off the tails and clean off the tops.

You can use it for making sure

if there's like a little dirt here.

I don't actually like to peel any of my vegetables.

I try not to do that at all, I try to scrub them,

so you're really utilizing the whole vegetable

and there's no waste.

Another application

that I use a paring knife for a lot is mushrooms.

Like these beautiful chanterelles from Canada.

So here I'm just gonna cut the butt off

and then very delicately,

I'm gonna scrap a fine layer of the chanterelle off.

And that's really what paring knives are for

is for the very delicate work that you're gonna have.

And that's the paring knife!

This is a nakiri, a nakiri's a square vegetable cleaver.

It's great for cutting open squash, potatoes,

and things like that,

because these hammered dimples here are called tsuchime,

and the purpose of them is, not only is it very beautiful,

but when you're cutting these hard vegetables

it allows it to not get stuck on the side of the blade.

The balance of it is great for putting weight down

on these harder skinned vegetables.

We're gonna cut this squash open.

[knife chopping]

We've got this kabocha here.

You really need a knife with a little bit more weight to it

to get through the hard skin.

It's so easy here.

Do it with one hand, I can do it with hands like this.

It's great.

We've got this beautiful purple sweet potato.

Can just cut right through.

We wanna make some sweet potato fries.

Get the next one,

you see how the potato just falls right off that edge?

It's because we've got these dimples here.

We could do a few simple knife cuts.

[knife chopping]

And it's also great, this square blade, the larger surface

allows you to move things around a bit faster,

and that's the nakiri.

This is an usuba, which translates to thin slice.

It is a single-edged vegetable knife and it is really used

for high level Japanese decorative knife work.

For example, I'm gonna show you this cut

that we do for the cucumbers that you see in sushi rolls.

It's a great knife for it because of the single edge.

It's got the blade all the way to the heel,

so then you're controlling the knife

and turning it through the cucumber.

And you're just rolling

and doing thin slices of cucumber.

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Rolling until you get all the way down to the core.

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It can take a lifetime to master these knife cuts.

And then we've got to the core.

And we can then use it to finish the julienning.

And, again, there's no rocking.

It's just a straight down motion, up and down,

to get a nice even julienne here.

And these are your little thin strands of cucumbers

that you see in sushi rolls.

This is your usuba.

This is a deba, it is a single beveled Japanese knife

with a thicker spine used for fish butchery

and meat butchery, and it has a lot of weight to it,

so you can crack through some of the bones.

This is a nice one and a half pound branzino

and we're gonna use kitchen sheers

to cut through the fins here on the fish,

and next we're going to cut the head off.

So here the weight of the deba is really important.

You can literally just cut all the way through.

See ya, head.

So now we're gonna take the rest of this

and we're gonna take the filets off and it's super sharp,

so you're gonna be able to get through very smoothly.

Fish is very delicate and can tear very easily,

so it's very important to have a super sharp knife

and because it's single beveled,

it will slide right down

the backbone of the fish very easily.

So here we've hit the backbone.

What we do here

is we cut through the bones here in the belly

and then we'll take them off after.

Then we go all the way through,

so you've got one filet here,

and then we'll do the other side,

and just ride all the way down the fish

until you hit the backbone.

Then you just cut through the ribcage

and you've got your second filet here.

Now we're going to clean up the rest of the filet.

Here you've got the rib bones

that we've cut through with the deba,

so you're just gonna wanna take the edge of the knife

and get underneath these bones,

and it goes through the skin very easily as well.

And there you go.

This deba here is a six and a half inch deba.

They do come in different sizes.

I've used one that's 10 inches long.

It really depends on what type of fish you're butchering,

so obviously this branzino is on the smaller side

so we have one of the smaller debas.

And that's the deba!

This is a yanagi, yanagi translates to willow leaf.

It is a long, thin, single-edged knife.

You can use it for slicing sashimi, or crudos,

or any smoked salmons, or any smoked fish like that.

You can really see the lineage here

of the samurai sword making.

It is long and thin, so you're using the knife

and the length of the blade to do very long cuts,

so you're, again, not tearing the fish at all,

and it slides very nicely off the single beveled edge.

So here, we're gonna clean up this salmon,

this wild king salmon that we have here a bit,

and then we're gonna do a few slices of sashimi.

You can also use a yanagi to help skin the fish

and really utilize these long tears it has,

and it's really these long strokes

that you're doing with the yanagi.

So, here we have the belly

that we're gonna make a few sashimi slices from.

It still has the skin on it,

so we're gonna take the skin off using the yanagi.

This yanagi is 10.5 inches

and they do comes in different sizes.

So, again, with the larger fish

and the more skilled you are,

the longer a yanagi you'll be able to handle.

And we wanna use this very sharp single-edged knife,

so we're not gonna tear the fish,

and it's really just smoothly gliding through

the salmon belly.

It's also very important

to wipe off your knife in between slices,

because then it will decrease any friction that you'll have

when your slicing.

And it keeps everything neat.

So here we're just gonna slice this piece off.

These long slicing motions is what is important here

for the sashimi.

And you really use the whole blade.

Starting from the bottom, moving all the way to the top,

and it's almost just gliding with it.

It's one nice solid stroke.

Almost like using a sword.

This is a yanagi.

This is a kakimuki.

Kaki is oyster in Japanese

and this is the Japanese oyster knife.

A Japanese oyster knife has a much sharper point

than the Western-style oyster knives

and it's very sleek and very simple functionality.

It's got a wood handle and it fits perfectly in your hand.

And, honestly, very little curvature.

It's pretty much this very sharp piece of metal

and this very simplistic piece of wood.

The handle's a little bit thicker than the Western

and French style oyster knives, as well,

and it really gives you a little bit more leverage

and ability to control the knife a bit more.

So you see this very, very sharp knife here?

We're gonna use this point

and try and get that into the hinge of the oyster.

Get that popping sound,

it means you've been able to get the oyster open,

and then you wanna take the knife,

and you can use the sharp part to cut the muscle,

and then you've got your oyster.

You can also use this flat part here to help scrape

and detach the bottom muscle of the oyster from the shell,

and use it to flip the oyster over,

and then you have your perfect summertime

oyster on the half shell.

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And that's your kakimuki.

This is a sujihiki.

Sujihiki translates to pulling the muscle.

So this is a Japanese meat slicer.

The angle that sujihiki is generally sharpened to

is a bit steeper, so you get really thin cuts with this.

It is designed after European style,

but it is thinner and it made out of a harder steel,

so it retains its edge even longer.

An edge is super important when you're slicing cooked meat

because you don't wanna tear the delicious steak

that you're about to eat.

We have here a dry-aged rib eye.

We're gonna slice off the gristle,

which is the fattier, more marbled part of the rib eye,

and then we have the other side,

and this the eye of the rib eye.

So this is the part where we need the knife

to be super sharp so it's like you can slice the meat

almost paper thin.

Again, like any fish, these long slices

and it's just one long motion,

which is why the length of the sujihiki is important.

You're not rocking back and forth.

So you're just doing one straight motion.

Almost like a sword going through the beef.

The knife really has to fit well in your hand,

'cause you're really using very little motions.

Just one long turn.

Generally speaking,

when you're using your slicer for the first time

you probably want a shorter one,

'cause you don't want a blade that's too long

that you can't control it.

I love the super sharp edge,

'cause as you can see, it's really just slicing through

these beautiful clean cuts of the steak.

There's no tears and we're already had

a really good solid crust from the sear,

and the length of the blade is long,

so it's easy to pick up the other pieces

and move it to a plate,

and there is your beautifully sliced rib eye.

You can use a sujihiki also for fish.

I actually really like using a sujihiki to cut scallions,

because, right here,

the height of the sujihiki's a little shorter

and I can get really paper thin slices of scallions.

And that's the sujihiki!

This is a honesuki.

A honesuki is a Japanese boning knife.

It is different from a European style boning knife

in that it is got a triangle here and a tip in the front,

and it's got very little flex.

Honesuki is the knife of choice

when you break down a chicken.

So, here, I'll show you how to use the honesuki.

We're gonna take the tail off first.

It is sharp enough that you can

just cut right through the bone

and then we'll take the wings off,

and it cuts right through the joints.

And the weight of the handle

helps you have more leverage pushing down.

Just cuts right through.

The tip, you can get into smaller places

or it can help you puncture the skin

without tearing the meat.

Also, the angle of this blade

and the weight of the handle

really allows you to push this direction.

So you're pushing the weight against you,

working the knife in a different direction

you don't see very often.

And we're pushing through the skin.

And then now we're gonna use the tip

to get through that hip joint and that oyster,

and then you can just pull the rest of the chicken off.

And we do the same on the other side using the tip,

pointing it down, pulling this away,

and using the weight of the knife

and the heavier handle to really use it against gravity.

You can use the tip here to get in between the joint

to cut the cartilage.

And you've got your legs.

Using the tip again,

we're gonna take the drumsticks joint here

and on this side as well,

and really pinpointing where that joint is

and getting the blade right in between it.

Gizzard!

[bell dinging]

So now I'm gonna continue to use this heel of the knife,

again, European style bone knives

would not have this triangular shape

or even a heel that you can do this with.

So we really use this edge to get through some joints

on specific parts of this chicken as we de-bone this thing.

This is a pretty cool technique that I learned

when I was learning how to make yakitori

and a very different style

of what we call airline chicken breast.

But I'm gonna use this heel

and go all the way up this way.

It's very uncommon to cut things away from you,

you normally cut things towards you,

but this technique I learned from a yakitori master.

So we're gonna go all the way up.

[lighthearted music]

You're gonna use the tip

to cut this little piece of silver skin, and pull this off,

and you've got your airline chicken breast here.

Here, what we have left

is America's favorite part of the chicken,

the chicken tender.

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Just think about it, one order of chicken tenders,

how many chickens does it take

to make one order of chicken tenders?

Again, we're gonna use the heel of the honesuki,

gonna trim this little piece of fat off,

and go all the way up the ribcage.

Flip this over.

Use the tip here to separate it from the shoulder

and we can just pull this off,

and you've got your second airline chicken breast.

And then we're gonna use the tip

to get underneath the chicken tender

to release it from the ribcage

and pull that through.

There's your other tender.

So, right now we can make an order of two tenders.

[country music]

You can take the shoulder blade off here,

which actually is probably one of my favorite skewers,

and you just have to break this joint.

[joint popping]

You've got your shoulder.

So it's like a nice moist piece of white meat.

We've got chicken tenders, we've got your breasts,

you've got your legs and your thighs.

Here you can separate, again,

just using the weight of the knife

and just getting through the joints,

so you've got your drumstick here.

You've got your chicken thigh here.

And there's your chicken.

And that's the honesuki.

This is a hankotsu, this is really made for taking meat

that's on the bone,

whether it's the whole animal or the primal cuts.

So if you have hanging meats,

you're really carving the parts of the animal

that you want out.

What's really unique about this knife is that, again,

there's no flex to it at all and the shape.

If you look at it here, there's no heel on this knife at all

which is great for cleaning, let's say,

membrane off the meat so it doesn't get snagged on the heel.

But this is really the only Japanese knife

that doesn't have a heel.

We're not gonna do a whole pig today,

but we've got a whole bone-in pork shoulder

and I'm gonna show you how to use the hankotsu

to break down this pork.

So here we are going through

some of the natural muscles of the pork.

We're really using the tip to help us guide

and break through the different muscles within the shoulder.

With the lack of a heel, I'm not getting caught on anything.

I can get really close to the muscles

that I'm trying to identify and next to the bone.

So here I'm carving around

this big bone of the pork shoulder

and really allowing the tip to be the guide

for where I'm gonna pull the knife to.

Right, it's thicker and heavier,

so you're not afraid of chipping the tip

or ruining the tip, let's say, like on a petty knife

where it's a little bit softer

and a bit more delicate.

But you're able to really get close to the meat

and really carve out where you need to go.

And then it's a real extension of your hand

and it's thin and small,

so you can maneuver it different angles, as well.

So you can follow the curvature of the bones.

And then here, I just need to carve out this area,

so I've really gonna use the tip to draw

and cut out this little last piece of bone.

You can really get underneath the bone here.

There's no resistance at all.

You're just using the knife

to guide you to where the natural break of the bone is.

And then the tip just separates the pieces of muscle

and cartilage from the bone.

So we've got this piece over here.

[upbeat music]

So we've got the bone out.

It's also really thin, so again,

like here we have this little piece of skin left,

if we wanted to take that off.

And like I was saying to you before,

it's very good for cleaning meat, so at times,

like let's say you get a steak

and sometimes there's just a little bit more fat,

you can use this tip to just go right underneath

and cut it off,

so you don't have to do some kind of weird angling

or anything like that.

This knife is designed to be breaking down whole pigs

and hanging meats, so we could use this one knife

to break down an entire pig.

And that's the hankotsu.

And that's how you use every style of Japanese knife!

We may not have used every style of Japanese knife,

but you get the idea.

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