by Tim Hayward
To confuse matters completely there is a type of takohiki called a sakimaru takohiki which has a straight edge but a gently rounded tip.
HANKOTSU/HONESUKI
BLADE LENGTH: 150MM
OVERALL LENGTH: 265MM
WEIGHT: 156G
MANUFACTURED BY: KIKUICHI
MATERIALS: MACHINE-FORGED 2N CARBON STEEL, DYED PAKKA WOOD
USE: BONING HANGING MEAT
THE HANKOTSU is the traditional boning knife you’ll see in the hands of a Japanese butcher. It is short, thick at the spine and very strong. It can be comfortably held in a ‘dagger’ grip and used on hanging carcasses where the weight of the meat is used to advantage by the cutter. The sharp tip is excellent at wiggling into complex joints and popping them apart and the first three-quarters of the blade is kept sharp for cutting muscle and removing silverskin. The final quarter of the blade is kept blunt to protect the fingers if they slip past the bolster.
For more general butchery work a Japanese chef will choose a honesuki which has a noticeable heel to the blade and some knuckle clearance. A honesuki maru, like the one opposite, has a gently curved blade but there are also honesuki kaku with a more angular shape. These are ideal for butchering small poultry or rabbits. For larger animal carcasses there is a heavier version of the honesuki called a garesuki.
Though it’s quite specialised in its use, the hankotsu has gained favour with Western chefs for its sleek shape and its weight – more substantial than many Japanese blades. It is increasingly common to see them fully sharpened for more general kitchen work.
GYUTO
BLADE LENGTH: 210MM
OVERALL LENGTH: 350MM
WEIGHT: 345G
MANUFACTURED BY: SAN-ETSU
MATERIALS: AWASE-FORGED ZDP-189 STEEL
USES: ALL-PURPOSE
GYUTO TRANSLATES AS ‘COW BLADE’ and is a comparatively recent arrival in the Japanese chef ’s roll. Shapes and lengths vary but this is basically the Japanese knifemaker’s interpretation of the Western chef ’s knife. It’s double bevelled, deep bellied and narrows to a point but is substantially thinner and lighter than our blade. This example is what the owner describes as ‘a very Western gyuto’ with a yo-style rivetted handle and made from ZDP-189 – a specialist high-speed tool steel. The delicate swirling in the Damascus pattern is created by randomly pockmarking the surface with a punch during forging.
This is a truly high-end knife made with Rolls-Royce craftsmanship and Formula One materials. It’s also a very good example of how Japanese craftsmanship has adapted to serve wealthy collectors and discerning cooks worldwide. The high-tech steel is amazingly tough, which means that it takes a lot of work to get a good edge on it, but once it’s there, it will remain terrifically sharp for a long time. One day, when I’m rich, I’d like one of these. And a vault to keep it in. And a full-time knife-sharpener on my staff...
SANTOKU
BLADE LENGTH: 180MM
OVERALL LENGTH: 300MM
WEIGHT: 302G
MANUFACTURED BY: SAKURA
MATERIALS: AWASE-FORGED R2 101 LAYER DAMASCUS STEEL, EBONY
USES: ALL-PURPOSE
THE SANTOKU is now the knife most commonly used in Japanese home kitchens and has spread all over the world as an ideal general-purpose kitchen knife. In the trainee chef’s kit there is often a santoku included alongside the chef ’s knife.
The name is usually translated as ‘three virtues’ or ‘strengths’ but nobody can quite agree whether this refers to the ingredients it can be used on – fish/meat/veg – the cutting styles that it can be used for – mince/slice/chop – or the fact that it can serve many of the functions of the three traditional knives, the yanagiba, the deba and the usuba.
As it’s a double-ground knife and a Western-influenced shape, the santoku is sometimes regarded as a sub-type of the gyuto but the story is, I think, more complex. The santoku blade shape is a lot less curved along the bottom than a chef ’s knife, in many ways reflecting the usuba and the cai dao in use. I believe its rising worldwide popularity has more to do with changing diets and cooking methods. We don’t regard French-inspired, meat-heavy cuisine as necessarily the be-all and end-all of cooking any more and are starting to look towards other cultures and to adding more vegetables into our diets. Perhaps it’s not surprising then that the time-honoured chef ’s knife is being supplanted everywhere by a newer, lighter pattern, inspired by more diverse cuisine and biased towards vegetable work.
PETTY KNIVES
BLADE LENGTH: 120MM
OVERALL LENGTH: 228MM
WEIGHT: 63G
MANUFACTURED BY: TADAFUSA
MATERIALS: SANMAI HAMMER-FORGED AOGAMI #2 STEEL, AFRICAN ROSEWOOD
USES: GENERAL USE ON VEGETABLES, POULTRY AND BONELESS MEAT
BLADE LENGTH: 150MM
OVERALL LENGTH: 267MM
WEIGHT: 81G
MANUFACTURED BY: TAKAMURA
MATERIALS: SG-2 (R2) POWDERED STEEL, PAKKA WOOD
USES: AS ABOVE
‘PETTY’, FROM THE FRENCH ‘PETIT’, has become a bit of a catch-all term for a small, double-ground utility knife. Most Japanese manufacturers now make a petty knife, ranging from 110 millimetres to 150 millimetres in length and shaped like a slender version of the classic French-pattern chef ’s knife.
The petty knife is thin, light, has a little flex and is useful for everything from peeling and paring vegetables to chopping herbs. Though the blade has a pronounced heel, the whole knife is way too small to wrap your hand around in a ‘hammer’ grip, so the blade is usually pinched just ahead of the bolster.
To overcome this lack of knuckle clearance, some manufacturers have come up with ‘offset’ petty knives, with a crank in the blade that lifts the handle clearer of the cutting board. However, they are objects of such abiding ugliness that they have no place in a well-chosen roll.
Light and manoeuvrable, the smaller petty knives work well for hand-held cutting away from the chopping board.
SUSHIKIRI
BLADE LENGTH: 200MM
OVERALL LENGTH: 360MM
WEIGHT: 372G
MANUFACTURED BY: SAKAI TAKAYUKI
MATERIALS: TRUE-FORGED SHIROGAMI STEEL, HO (MAGNOLIA WOOD), THERMOPLASTIC
USES: ALL-PURPOSE SUSHI SLICER
SOME TYPES OF SUSHI are made in long bars and cut, just before serving, into single smaller portions. Cutting through the fish ingredients should be done in a single stroke and any nori seaweed should remain dry and brittle, so it’s tough to cut with anything but the very sharpest blade. The main rice body has a sticky texture that quickly builds up on the blade, which requires constant wiping with a wet cloth. The job can be done well with a standard yanagiba but the sushikiri has evolved for the sole purpose of cutting bars or rolls of sushi for the most elegant presentation.
The blade is single ground and light in weight. A complex, multi-layered blade is unnecessary for the singular task and there’s no need for the thick spine of the yanagiba; the sushikiri is thinner, a little like an usuba. Most importantly, the blade is long and deep, meaning that the single cut can be made both backwards and downwards.
UNAGISAKI & MEUCHI
BLADE LENGTH: 160MM
OVERALL LENGTH: 272MM
WEIGHT: 298G
MANUFACTURED BY: SAN-ETSU
MATERIALS: AWASE-FORGED SHIROGAMI STEEL, HO (MAGNOLIA WOOD), BUFFALO HORN
USES: SKINNING, BONING, GUTTING AND PORTIONING EEL
EELS, OR ‘UNAGI’, have long been popular in Japanese cooking. They are bought alive and must be killed and g
utted before cooking.
In many seafood restaurants and fishmongers this is done in front of the customer, as proof of freshness. The eel is dispatched by a swift, shallow cut at the neck, then the head is fixed to the chopping board with the meuchi. The fishmonger will then stretch out the body and, using the tip of the blade, split right down the spine of the eel in a single cut, skilfully avoiding damage to the viscera which are then scraped out of the opened and flattened eel with the flat main part of the blade. The spine is removed with a single pass and the eel is ready to cook.
There is almost no set of circumstances in which a Western cook is going to need an unagisaki – indeed, it would take years to develop the skills for such a performance even if one needed to – but it’s interesting to notice how the simple fish-filleting deba has been adapted in this particular case to create such a very specialised tool.
JAPANESE KNIFE DICTIONARY
BA/HA Blade
KIRI Cutter/cut
HOCHO/BOCHO Kitchen knife
SHOKUNIN Craftsman/artisan
SHOBU Single grind
RYOUBA Double grind
HONBA TSUKE Custom sharpening on a new knife
KOBA Defined edge
KAKU Square (squared off)
ATSU Thick or heavy
KO Small
MIROSHI Filleting
KATSURAMUKI Rotary cutting
SAKI Tearing/breaking
BIKI/HIKI Pull
KASUMI Fog, enfold, wrap
AWASE Joined
YANAGI Willow
JIGANE Soft steel
HAGANE Hard steel
SAN MAI Steel lamination
SUMINAGASHI Art of paper marbling
E Handle
EJIRI Handle end
KAKUMAKI Collar/ferrule
AGO Heel
MUNE or SE Spine
TSURA or HIRA Flat
KIREHA ‘Blade path’ or large bevel
SHINOGI Line between tsura and kireha
HASAKI Edge
KISSAKI Tip end, point
MACHI Notch where blade meets tang (sometimes visible)
MUNE MACHI Upper neck notch
HA MACHI Lower neck notch
HAMON Line of temper
HADA Grain pattern
WA Japan or Japanese-style
YO Western-style
TARA Cod
SAKE Salmon
UNAGI Eel
TAKO Octopus
FUGU Blowfish
BUTA Pig/pork
SUJI Tendon
MEN Noodle
ON BUTCHER’S KNIVES
TECHNIQUES OF BUTCHERY don’t just vary internationally. Even across the UK, different cutting plans developed in different regional meat markets. The arcane vocabulary of chumps, chucks, featherblades and fillets historically had subtly different meanings across the country. What has unified British butchery, though, is the joint and the bandsaw. As a nation we favour roasting as the best way of cooking meat and joints; large, almost ceremonial chunks of meat on the bone, have always been the most popular choice over the counter.
The butcher’s bandsaw looks and operates just like the woodworker’s and enables the butcher to treat a carcass much as a carpenter treats a log. The exterior is neatly dressed and then the meat is sawn into chunks. A classic ‘shoulder of lamb’ – that fixture of the Sunday dining table – is a neat square package that looks good on the plate but contains at least a dozen muscles, all of different textures, plus bone, gristle and connective tissue, simply chopped into shape. This sounds like a bad thing, but our national cuisine has evolved around the ‘joint’, and our much envied skill at roasting means that these more heterogenous cuts can be cooked so that the very best of flavour and texture is achieved.
But in other butchery traditions a more sympathetic process has evolved. That of separating the carcass, where possible, into individual muscles or muscle groups by following the ‘seams’ where the muscles join. Remarkably little kit is required. A short, curved butcher’s knife does the initial cutting but the butcher uses the back of it as much as the front, using the blunt edge to scrape where meat adheres to the bone. More unusual is the chainmail glove, not so much, as is often imagined, to protect the opposite hand from the blade but more to provide a sure grip on the meat when pulling muscles free. Seam butchery requires a different set of skills – and often involves relearning for a traditionally trained British butcher – however it can be extremely lucrative. The fore end of a lamb, for example, which might previously have yielded a couple of shoulders, a neck and some mince can be carefully teased out into a dozen or more cuts of varying sizes and textures, simple to cook, economical to buy and delicious to eat. These cuts are often best cooked in the pan rather than the oven and/or stewed in liquids and sauces.
The British butcher’s kit, therefore, usually comprises ‘steak’ and boning knives, with a steel to keep an edge, plus the saw and the cleaver. Other traditions have tools of various patterns that combine the functions of a heavy knife with a light cleaver.
For generations, local butchers were the experts on sharp knives. Many would have a grinding and sharpening wheel on the premises and early books on cookery or household management suggest taking the domestic kitchen knives to the butcher regularly to have them sharpened. Knife practice in the trade though has changed radically with the arrival of the ‘diamond steel’.
Where a traditional steel serves only to correct and dress an edge that’s been ground on to a knife, the modern ‘steel’, coated with a fine dusting of abrasive (usually diamond dust) will actually remove metal from the blade.* A diamond steel will quickly put a decent edge on any blade with almost no skill needed, however diamond steeling also eats away the blade at a frightening rate. Though traditional sharpening is still practised by many butchers and taught in apprenticeships, most butchers now use diamond steels and cheaper, mass-produced working knives†, which can be replaced regularly.
* See description.
† The single piece, moulded plastic handle, lacking microscopic cracks or joins where bacteria might lurk, are also greatly preferred by safety regulators.
STEAK KNIFE/SCIMITAR
BLADE LENGTH: 260MM
OVERALL LENGTH: 390MM
MANUFACTURED BY: FORSCHNER/VICTORINOX
MATERIALS: STAINLESS STEEL, ROSEWOOD
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: USA
USE: CUTTING CLEAN AND REGULAR SLICES ACROSS BONED MEAT
THE STEAK KNIFE, OR SCIMITAR, is the stereotype of the butcher’s knife. It is long in the blade, for cutting across large muscle groups, and, like the yanagiba, for creating a fine surface on steaks with fewer pull/push strokes. The blade is massive enough to be wielded as a chopper through small or soft bones and broadens towards the tip, shifting the centre of gravity further from the handle and allowing it to be swung like a hammer. The shape of the tip also fits naturally to a second hand for pushing down evenly through tougher bones or joints.
The name ‘scimitar’ derives from a curved pattern of sword that pops up throughout Asia and the Middle East and refers to the curve on the cutting edge, which also enables it to be used in a rocking/chopping action to mince.
The steak knife is an interesting example of a knife that has evolved to serve many different purposes. As a single, general tool of the working butcher, particularly in the shop environment, it’s ideal – always at hand and turnable to most tasks. Like the chef ’s knife, the steak knife usually comes in 8-inch and 10-inch blade lengths.
(The example in the photograph began life in a butcher’s shop but for the
past 30 years has been cutting Chelsea buns at my bakery in Cambridge.)
FEUILLE DE BOUCHER
BLADE LENGTH: 270MM
OVERALL LENGTH: 410MM
WEIGHT: 902G
MANUFACTURED BY: BARGOIN/FISCHER
MATERIALS: STAINLESS STEEL, ABS THERMOPLASTIC
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: FRANCE
USE: GENERAL-PURPOSE BUTCHERY INCLUDING BREAKING CARCASSES EITHER HANGING OR AT THE BENCH, CUTTING MEAT AND SMALL BONES, DICING MEAT
THE FEUILLE DE BOUCHER is the French-pattern butcher’s knife and cleaver. Though it looks much like our traditional British cleaver in shape, it is actually lighter, sharper and designed to be used in a very different way.
A British or US butcher will use the cleaver on either hanging meat or at the block, cutting with a scimitar to reveal the bone or joint and then swapping to a heavy cleaver with a wide-angle wedge-shaped blade to chop through. The feuille de boucher combines the functions of the large knife and the light cleaver; able to go through small joints but also usable to slice steaks or to mince, using the curved tip as a rocking pivot.
The blade of the feuille de boucher goes through the handle with a pointed tang, like a Chinese cai dao, so to strengthen the joint, for chopping purposes, there are sometimes two extra metal ‘cheek pieces’ added. With no rivets or exposed joints, the round handle is easier to keep properly clean than the British pattern.