How do you cut an apple?

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demosthenes

demosthenes

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In my head, an apple would be easiest cut by a thin, small knife. With that in mind I picked up an Ashi Hamono 150mm petty - impossibly thin - thinking that it would be my apple killer. However this knife wedged almost immediately! The convexity of the knife was substantial enough I had to use a lot of force to cut all the way through the apple.

This broke my mental model, and after some experimentation I found that my Bjorn Birgersson 250mm gyuto was the most effortless cutter of apples - super tall heel height and a fairly flat grind. I'm curious what others here turn to to cut tall, very dense produce like apples.

What is your favorite knife to cut apples?

Here is a shot of my apple-slayer:
PXL_20210220_223352239.jpg

PXL_20210220_223532266.jpg
 


I use a minimum of 3 different cleavers, otherwise, what’s the point?

But in all seriousness, apples are one of the main ways I test knife geometry, so I keep all my knives thin enough to cut through a pretty large apple without wedging or major cracking/splitting.
 
Ashi Ginga is great, but 150mm is too short. I use the 210 petty. Basically any laser over 180mm should be good. I tend to use a Shibata 180 Bunka -- I cut a lot of apples.
 
Apples and onions are what I typically use as examples to test wedging in dense items. For this kind of product, the geometry farther up the blade comes more into play. To give you my sorta objective answer, I've found that the measurement at ~20mm behind the edge is a decent correlation with wedging through apples/onions and the like. 1.6mm thickness or less at 20mm behind the edge tends to do well. 1.8mm I find some minor brrrappp, and 2.0mm I often experience cracking hard stuff. Of course the rest of the grind also plays a part too, but this particular measurement has the highest correlation out of the various data points I take for each of my knives.
 
I eat an apple just about every day as an evening snack. My Harner parer works great. If I had to slice 100 of them, I’d probably use something bigger, maybe my Shihan because of food release.
 
Nakiri works perfectly for this task. We make a lot of apple crisp in the fall.
 
When I need small bits I first put it straight on the board and essentially 4 sides off the center so I don't have to deal with the core. Then it's drawcuts until the final chop. With drawcuts it doesn't seem to matter a whole lot what you use, although lasery knives go slightly better. So I often tend to do this with my Takamura R2 210, simply because it's the most convenient - largely because whenever I do apples 9 times out of 10 it's for salads and it also involves citrus.
 
Just used my 180 Yoshikane last night and was pleasantly surprised how easily it cut through the apple. When I make apple pie I’ve only used a 240 Yoshikane but I may need to change my approach.
 
IMO one of the (few) advantages of shorter knives is that it's easier to do drawcuts. Hence why lately I actually often reach for a 210 for apples.
 
I'm using the Markin petty for apples lately, it's thin and razor sharp to the point it almost falls through an apple.
 
Used to watch "iron chef" (the original from japan of course) a lot when I got into knives.
Great knives and techniques to be seen.

As I´m not as cool as "iron chef" Sakai who (I believe) uses a 210mm Nenohi sujihiki here to peel an apple,
I grab a simple "sheep foot´s" paring knife for cutting the apple to put on granola or the thin tip of a Carter santoku to draw-cut slices for a pie.
 
jaydee said:
Used to watch "iron chef" a lot when I got into knives.
Great knives and techniques to be seen.

As I´m not as cool as "iron chef" Sakai who (I believe) uses a 210mm Nenohi sujihiki here to peel an apple,
I grab a simple "sheep foot´s" paring knife for cutting the apple to put on granola or the thin tip of a Carter santoku to draw-cut slices for a pie.
Click to expand...

I swear there is a video of him doing the same cut with a 270-300mm Suji

Edit: Found it. Starts at 9:50
 
Good find. That is the "original". I believe in that other show they asked him to do his magic again.

I enjoyed this episode too: Lots of knife action and Michiba´s opponent has a huge yanagiba & mioroshi deba.
Check out at 14:00 how he cleans and spins his yanagiba before putting it on the board (don´t do this at home!)
Maybe start at 13:00. Sorry for the OT. (now this is how a thread can turn from "how to cut apples" into "how to grill tuna eyeballs" ;-)

 
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Here are two clips of me cutting a fuji apple into ~1cm slices with my two favorite knives for apples: Tagai 210mm gyuto and Takeda 240mm gyuto. I have other knives that will make the initial cut around the core of the apple easier, but these knives have the food release that make the overall slicing process nicer for me. I also like using my Tsubaya Kikuchiyo Yohei 240mm gyuto on apples, and I can post a video of that the next time I cut up an apple.

Here are the videos (please excuse my left-handedness, poor cutting skills, big belly, etc.):

Tagai:


Takeda:
 
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