Media America's Test Kitchen's Look at the Gyuto

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franzb69

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[video=youtube;e9I_OOPpqqc]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9I_OOPpqqc[/video]

anyone seen this before? haven't seen the latest season yet so I've only seen this through youtube.

=D

what do you guys think?
 
I remember reading the review for this in cook's illustrated; the Akifusa was eliminated from the top choices solely because of it's flat french profile. I guess they just preferred curvier knives.
 
While I think their testing is pretty good, at times, the criteria they favor seems pretty subjective, almost guaranteeing that one product will win out over the others. All Clad is a perfect example. Somehow it always ends up at the top of the pile.
 
I'm afraid to watch it for fear of the frustration and confusion it will cause.
 
This was how I found out about jKnives...I bought the Masamoto based on this recommendations and have been goig further down the rabbit hole since :)
 
$24.95 for a knife; $136 for a serious investment. She has no idea... I think President Knyfenerd should be representing us.
 
Cook's Illustrated is one of the better sources of cooking and cooking products out there. However, their "testing" and "tasting" panels are quite homogenous and their preferences are fortunately stated. In this case, she notes that they like knives with belly. As long as consumers understand these preferences, it's okay.

My annoyance is that she states European and American knives have belly, which is not true. French knives as well as vintage American knives such Forgecrafts and Lamsons Goodnow have a flatter profiles. Because they pose as authoritative, this type of error is unforgivable.
 
$24.95 for a knife; $136 for a serious investment. She has no idea... I think President Knyfenerd should be representing us.

I had no idea either until coming here. When I worked in a restaurant, the best knives where the chef's who had Globals. Everyone else had restaurant supplied knives. I had the next best knife with a Forschner (which walked!).

Even at William Sonoma and Sur La Table, $100-$150 were the serious knives. Only recently are there more expensive knives (Kramers). Oh the power of marketing and distribution.
 
I like that Eamon's "Qualities of a Good Chef's Knife" is one of the suggested videos at the end of the America's Test Kitchen video, and that's about it!
 
Well one amusing thing is about 6 or 7 years ago when they reviewed knives then in the Cooks Illustrated magazine, after the usual praise of Forschner etc. they had a little box that said "what does $450 buy you" - about, I kid you not a small unknown custom knife maker named Kramer based in Seattle, explaining how they were just the best. I wish I taken their advice and bought a few of them :- )

as each one would probably be worth upwards of 8k now

As a home cook I love their recipes, I haven't found their equipment reviews anywhere near as useful....
 
As a home cook I love their recipes, I haven't found their equipment reviews anywhere near as useful....

+1

I frequently watch the show on Saturday mornings, and have tried a number of recipes that have worked out well, but equipment tests....
 
I, too, have used a lot of ATK's recipes, and some are actually quite good. For the most part they're geared towards home cooks with limited skills, but they've been expanding their repertoire over the past couple of years, as they've just about exhausted everything that could be possibly sold to Mr. and Mrs. Middle America.

Their equipment reviews, on the other hand, are atrocious. For the most part, they've got a competent, skilled, likeable crew. But this lady, Lisa McManus, is about as useful as a bag of rocks. How, where and why they ever picked her up is just beyond me. It's bad enough that they dumb everything down and start singling out products due their own biases even before they begin testing. Their knife "reviews" are the worst of the bunch. It's all trickle down from the head honcho - Chris Kimball - as he has no interest in knives at all.

I recently heard he went to the same school as Alton Brown of "I Can't Cook So I'll Make Cook Books and Videos." All he can do is roll out pie dough, and even at that he's a complete klutz.
 
These guys can take the simplest, most delicious, traditional recipes, and "improve them"...that is to say... complicate it to the point that the extra steps in preparation, additional dirty utensils and cooking time, that it isn't worth the effort...with absolutely no assurance that theirs will taste any better than the original recipe, IMHO. I don't even bother watching it any more. Not to mention that the mere sight of Chris Kimball sets my teeth on edge. ;-)
 
He has a little empire that generates a lot of money for him-many millions per year I have read. They constantly recycle recipes in every possible form you can imagine and many you can't and having met Mr. Kimball once I can echo that he will set you teeth on edge. They are also known to be very difficult to deal with if you inadvertently get into one of their "negative" checkoff situations by subscribing to one of their book series. They charge separately for the magazine and for online access to back issues. So all in all not a nice company.

Still, and somewhat ironically, I find as a home cook their recipes are almost always very good and so they and Mark Bittman are my standard sources but cooks illustrated magazine is way ahead of cooks country or american test kitchen of their three magazines......
 
Many, many years ago I made a decision to subscribe to a cooking magazine....and chose CI over Saveur. I regret that that as much as the decision to marry my first wife.
I agree with the point that it's geared to the home cook and in that respect it's pretty good, goofy test criteria not withstanding.
I have made some purchases based on the results of their test results; a top rated blender which I think sucks, and a set of Gourmet Standard cookware for the price of one piece of All Clad which was an amazing bargain.
Their sales division is also pretty ruthless. I kept getting bills for stuff that they had allegedly sent to me in NJ even though I was already living here. Took forever to straighten that out.
 
Their sales division is also pretty ruthless. I kept getting bills for stuff that they had allegedly sent to me in NJ even though I was already living here. Took forever to straighten that out.

And even tho' they say after every show that their recipes are free on line, when you look up one of their recipes on line, they block the recipe and try to force you to pop for 25 bucks, or so, to become a member. Alternatively, you can sign up for a free two week subscription, which I've done numerous times, which works for THAT recipe. Then when you go back a couple days later....they hit you with the same BS, apparently forgetting all about your free two week subscription. So annoying I've given up altogether. If I want the recipe badly enough (which is rare) I go to another online post where some dumbass has paid his 25 subscription bucks and has helpfully cut and pasted the recipe, from their site, just for me I guess. ;-)
 
"There is an entirely NEW chef's knife on the market called the gyuto..."

really?!!!???

REALLY????!!!!!
 
She is talking about how the heavier German knives won the butter squash test over the Japanese knives.. like there are no heavy gyutos..
 
I'm sure they could have pulled a hot hostess from somewhere to do this video. Just saying.
 
My Tojiro Western Deba (why do they call it a deba, it's not a deba??) has zero problems with squash or anything else dense - even most small bones - for that matter, and while I don't use it for most slicing tasks obviously, it actually can do those as well in a pinch.

Before I got my Western Deba I used a 30 year old, quite weirdly loveable, very limited release at the time I think, Wusthof knife that I would describe as 1/2 cleaver and 1/2 chef knife that also does the job on hard squash. I really should post a picture of the spine on that baby as it really has to be seen to be believed - the front half is an ordinary german profile and usual thickness chef knife and the back half is cleaver thick with a not so gradual transition between the two of course
 
I still get CI, though the hit rate of good articles/recipes has gone down a lot. I've never had any use for the show or the other magazines. Their deconstruction/rebuilding of old standbys is sometimes interesting as an intellectual exercise, but nearly always useless as a real recipe.

CI is a gateway drug for those who want to understand why a particular recipe works the way it does. Once you're through the door, there are better sources.
 
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