Media How to use every Japanese knife

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How she handles the honesuki is quite interesting (17:24 min). She says she used to work in a yakitori restaurant: you can tell she has broken down chickens before.. Seeing I've just ordered a Misono Swedish honesuki this is good inspiration, so thanks.
 
Watched it yesterday. For someone who doesn't know much about what knife to start with I don't think it was a bad intro. l do think that bunkas and santokus could've been collapsed. Maybe mention K-tip gyutos briefly when talking about kiritsukes given they are a lot more common to see on the US market than actual kiritsukes.
 
9890EF41-23D0-4DA4-B7B7-B3122E1EC436.jpeg

single bevel skills 👀

And y'all thought I was joking about my 90/10 angle sharpening technique. I told ya, its chef approved
 
nwshull said:
l do think that bunkas and santokus could've been collapsed. Maybe mention K-tip gyutos briefly when talking about kiritsukes given they are a lot more common to see on the US market than actual kiritsukes.
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Santoku's, bunka's, and k-tip gyuto's (which are merely bunka's by another name) could've been collapsed into the same segment, as they are merely are variants of the same knife. In Japan, "santoku-bocho" and "bunka-bocho" are considered the same thing; it's the anglos who seem to use one name for "less pointy" and one name for "more pointy".
 
The chef in the video clearly spent some real life time actually using her knives and discovering optimum purposes for them. It’s for the best to let your work dictate your knife purchases instead of the other way around. She even gave bunka a purpose! Color me impressed!

I suppose many here will find cause to “well askshully” her into an early grave as she made quite a few errors but that’s basically 99.9% of knifetube folks, just gotta find a way to let that sh1t go.

Not a Doi, Kato or Koppa insight, just a young chef living in the moment.
 
It's not a video for experts. But, for someone new to Japanese knives, it provides useful information, IMO. And while she might not be a wizard with a blade, she's competent, and the information she provides is accurate, as far as I know.
 
Michi said:
It's not a video for experts. But, for someone new to Japanese knives, it provides useful information, IMO. And while she might not be a wizard with a blade, she's competent, and the information she provides is accurate, as far as I know.
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That’s odd I noticed the opposite.
I thought she demonstrated the purposes and functionality of the knives splendidly. The information on the other hand was riddled with samurai sword references that just can’t be correct.
Again, I don’t really care about the inaccuracies.
 
labor of love said:
The information on the other hand was riddled with samurai sword references that just can’t be correct.
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I picked up on that when I watched the video. I'm definitely not an expert on the history, so I'd appreciate more knowledgeable people chiming in here.

From what I've read, at some point (around the late 19th century?), samurai lost their special status and, with it, a lot of sword makers were short of customers. Some of those turned into knife smiths. As far as I know, Honiyaki knives have their origin in samurai sword-making techniques. To that extent at least, the reference to samurai swords would be correct?
 
I got the impression she was not going full kitchen speed for demonstration purposes.
 
one thing I noticed is that some of the minor things got fixed by the end of the video.

public speaking doesnt come easy to most people, at least she was willing to get in front of the camera (an extra layer of stress) and give it a pretty good go. I think that it's the sort of thing that happens if youre not super practiced at it. Ive been watching Masterchef Professionals and watching seasoned, talented pros forget how to make hollandaise sauces because that's just what pressure does to you.

so overall, pretty good job I thought. doesnt matter if it's perfect because the audience doesnt know much at all and if they care they can find out.
 
Thanks for this.

I liked the no-nonsense presentation style, the down to earth self-assuredness and the calm approach of the presenter.

I’m guessing a substantial part of the content was prepared by the editorial team - how else would you explain the 70/30 ‘angles’ while holding the knife at exactly the same angle. Doesn’t much matter to most viewers.
 
Nice I ran into this same video a couple months ago when I was trying to indoctrinate recruit my brother into the world of j knives. It's always interesting to see how pro chefs who are not knife nuts approach their tools. You can tell that her main focus is on the food. She's learned a lot about how to use knives but it's more incidental to her practice. Her knowledge is very practical. It's all about what works for her. This is probably a great balance to strike if you're more about cooking and less about obsessing over the minutia of japanese cutlery.

I think it's a fun video and her like her style. I looked up her restaurant too . . . kimika in NYC.

Japanese-Italian fusion, not my thing necessarily but I know it's been a trend in Japan for the last several years so apparently it's hit the states as well. Regardless, it obviously takes a lot of creativity and initiative to do what she does, and she seems quite passionate about her craft, even while she's down to earth.

I like her and I enjoyed the video 👍
 
labor of love said:
The information on the other hand was riddled with samurai sword references that just can’t be correct.
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Byphy said:
I think that automatically made folks think she wasn’t qualified to show how to use knives
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I think it happens too often that someone doing a topic presentation gets pressured (or feels like they're under pressure) to throw in "Impressive Information Bits" to make it "Not Boring". A lot of the time those bits are wrong anyway, but even if they're right they're often just distractions.

For people who want to know about knives, the presentation is interesting anyway without any silly stuff about swords; for people who don't want to know about knives, the whole thing should be boring and they should want to turn it off.
 
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