What's Your Knife of Choice for Hard Winter Squash?

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I'm using a serrated bread knife from a knife set I bought before I learned about good knives...It's thick and doesn't feel like it will snap if I torque it wrong like my J knives. :)
 
A Mac bread knife works brilliantly on melons and hard squash. The serrations are just right for biting through the woody exterior, and it's the thinnest long knife in my kit by a good margin. Practically no wedging.

I think I've used mine more for this than for bread (my girlfriend's Forschner bread knife cuts most of our hearth breads, since it's cheaper, and since all these knives are hard to sharpen). I think of the Mac as our melon sword.
 
A 10" Vic Rosewood with a thinned edge and lots of distill taper added to the tip starting 3.5" back. Works on large butternut and swede just fine, does easy horizontal cuts through onion also.
 
The answers reflect what I'd have predicted ... some people do it like chopping wood (heavy, tough blade) and others do it more like surgery (very thin blade that's less prone to wedging). I've come to prefer the latter approach, because I find it easier and somewhat safer. I usually avoid cutting techniques that require significant force. But sometimes your thinnest knife will wedge no matter what, and then you find yourself applying a lot of force to a fragile blade. So you kind of have to feel your way through it with the knives you have on hand.

The Mac bread knife that I mentioned upthread has an easier time than my other knives with most hard squash (I think I've used it on acorn, winter squash, butternut, and sugar pumpkin at one time or another). My gyuto is not an option for this kind of thing. Other choices are my 210 german chef's knife, Kikuichi suji, and very thin, flexible forschner fillet knife. That last one is too short and doesn't have enough oomph to get into the hard shell. The suji is actually much fatter and more wedge-prone than the bread knife. The german knife is my choice in rare cases where even the bread knife gets stuck. At that point it's basically a hack job, with an emphasis on keeping body parts out of the line of fire.
 
I used a cheap Henkel vegetable cleaver which I resharpened to a Japanese angle. It worked very well and has only been surpassed by a large Toyama Nikiri 210. The Toyama Nakiri is much thinner than the Toyama 240 Gyuto and works well on butternut squash. It's difficult to get away from sticktion with less convexity. What I like about the large Nakiri is the control. I was semi drunk and I still peeled and prep'ed a butternut squash with confidence.
 
daveb said:
I'm not to proud to use lectric when it's called for.
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I'm not too wide to use an electric knife for pumpkins/hard squash as we're talking about converting vegetable into food here. Daveb and I agree utility is a virtue. I also use an electric knife for carving a whole turkey breast. Best tool for the job.. Besides a really good one is only ~$12USD:thumbsup:
 
Welcome back Goat!

Big squash yes. Smoked brisket yes. Turkey? Turkey? That's sacrilegious. And a good one says "Cuisinart" on it.

Thought about you just the other day. Couldn't find a golfer....:whistling:


P_20161022_145346.jpg
 
Thanks for all the responses on this--it's very helpful!

Disappointed that no-one uses an axe on the chopping block though. It think it would have been a complete set of answers then!
 
The frustrating thing is, I always find dressing even a Hokkaido to peeled bits perfectly takes easily 15 minutes (including peeling, scraping, washing, dealing with the garbage...) , especially if you want to avoid leaving soft flesh or thin/uneven protrusions on pieces in (which tend to create mush when the rest is cooked on point).... how the heck do the pros do it fast enough to serve dishes involving it profitably (unless its the over ubiquitous pumkin soups where it doesn't matter how the cuts look)?
 
Just Hokkaido but Xerxes Knifes, nothing else! No matter what grind, they take it.

[video=youtube;iGxjt_W64d0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGxjt_W64d0[/video]

Greets Sebastian.
 
0:35 ... wow ... are you attempting to drawslice an unpeeled.... and halfway succeeding, even...
 
Seeing some of the squad you guys are dealing with, I'm thinking that part of my problem is that I keep winding up with volleyball sized squash! Even a 10" knife is barely large enough.
 
Yeah that is machete territory! Even my Toyama Nakiri 210 workhorse weight nakiri would struggle!
 
Since I do not have my Scorpion Forge gyuto anymore(waiting for a bigger replacement) to make a cutting video with. It cut exactly the same as the one in the video below. I used it a lot on butternut squash that I had to prepare at work.


https://youtu.be/O8K2_R2GYXc
 
I got to try some of Xoomg's knives on some sweet potatoes and giant carrots. He has a cleaver that will cut through a gnarly carrot with just its own weight. No additional force required. It was possibly the best knife I've used for really hard veggies. The other knife I tried of his that I really liked on hard veggies was a Wakui. I'm still tempted to track down one of those.

Yesterday I tried something different--roasted a whole pumpkin after just poking a few vent holes in it. Easiest squash I've ever done. The skin peeled off easily and the seeds scooped right out. Might try that with a butternut squash next.
 
Lucretia said:
I got to try some of Xoomg's knives on some sweet potatoes and giant carrots. He has a cleaver that will cut through a gnarly carrot with just its own weight. No additional force required. It was possibly the best knife I've used for really hard veggies. The other knife I tried of his that I really liked on hard veggies was a Wakui. I'm still tempted to track down one of those.

Yesterday I tried something different--roasted a whole pumpkin after just poking a few vent holes in it. Easiest squash I've ever done. The skin peeled off easily and the seeds scooped right out. Might try that with a butternut squash next.
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I think that's the Cleaver from his video he recently posted .... that ans the Dalman really looked like they had no problem with the squash (Acorn?) at all...!
 
alterwisser said:
I think that's the Cleaver from his video he recently posted .... that ans the Dalman really looked like they had no problem with the squash (Acorn?) at all...!
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We just call them pumpkins here; I have no expertise with squash varieties.

The cleaver in my video is a mini cleaver by the same company, but the one Lucretia tested was a larger 19.5cm blade that I used for comparison testing with an early prototype tester from Robin.
[video=youtube;mcGhtzB972g]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcGhtzB972g[/video]

Afterwards I did a destructive chip test and gifted the knife to a knifemaker, which is how Lucretia got to try it.
 
V1P said:
Since I do not have my Scorpion Forge gyuto anymore(waiting for a bigger replacement) to make a cutting video with. It cut exactly the same as the one in the video below. I used it a lot on butternut squash that I had to prepare at work.
https://youtu.be/O8K2_R2GYXc
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Thanks for sharing. It was my knife in that video, and it was pretty good, though also not fantastic for my application. Hopefully it'll find a customer more appreciative and reasonable than I am.
 
XooMG said:
Thanks for sharing. It was my knife in that video, and it was pretty good, though also not fantastic for my application. Hopefully it'll find a customer more appreciative and reasonable than I am.
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Say, what knife was in the video. Was it a Dalman or Heiji or something else? It looks pretty damn good.
 
The pumpkin/squash (what the heck is the difference?) we call 'flespompoen' in dutch. Translates literally as bottlepumpkin.
 
I find the knife I reach for most with squash is someone else's... really tho I just grab a crappy beater house knife to hack it up and then maybe switch to one of my thin guytos if I'm doing nice dice or what have you.
 
Used to be a Sakai Yusuke white steel 240 gyuto (std thin) or 210 SS (thick), but on the next one I might try the Toyama 210 Nakiri.
 
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