Advice needed: knife for root vegetables ..

[GorillaGrunt]

Shibata gyuto, Watanabe nakiri, Takamura Pro gyuto. There are definitely some knives I don’t like to use on carrots...

 

[XooMG]

I've gotten some negative attention regarding carrots, so I'm a little reluctant to contribute. Nevertheless, I've settled on choosing knives for the cuts, rather than for the ingredients.

If I'm breaking down very big carrots (diameter 6-10cm), I use a thin knife with the thinnest edge to make the big segments that can be further cut into sticks, cubes, medallions, whatever. For intermediate cuts, i.e. not very fine or thin, I think whatever knife I'm using for other stuff will work. The thinner the cut, the more I like low-stick grinds to avoid tearing.

If I want a single knife to do it all in one sitting, I pick a thinner compromise knife that isn't too sticky or wedgy at the end of the cut.

Whether it's nakiri or Chinese or gyuto doesn't really concern me much, as long as it moves smoothly.

 

[M1k3]

Takamura. Ginga. Ikazuchi. Or whatever is sharp.

 

[-toa-]

cool, thanks - that makes sense.

hadn't noticed R2 giving muted feedback. Some people feel muted feedback from san mai knives. I guess I do feel a slight difference in feedback with some monosteel knives but this is not a big issue for me.

R2 is not hard to sharpen but in my experience (with the HTs that I have sharpened) it does require a bit more deburring effort to get it screaming sharp than a carbon knife requires.

To me the difference was not apparent in the results that I was achieving as a novice sharpener. It was only when my sharpening skills improved that I noticed that it was much easier to get a really clean edge on relitavely simple carbon steels.

 

[-toa-]

I've gotten some negative attention regarding carrots, so I'm a little reluctant to contribute. Nevertheless, I've settled on choosing knives for the cuts, rather than for the ingredients.

If I'm breaking down very big carrots (diameter 6-10cm), I use a thin knife with the thinnest edge to make the big segments that can be further cut into sticks, cubes, medallions, whatever. For intermediate cuts, i.e. not very fine or thin, I think whatever knife I'm using for other stuff will work. The thinner the cut, the more I like low-stick grinds to avoid tearing.

If I want a single knife to do it all in one sitting, I pick a thinner compromise knife that isn't too sticky or wedgy at the end of the cut.

Whether it's nakiri or Chinese or gyuto doesn't really concern me much, as long as it moves smoothly.

Interesting, thanks for sharing!