Where can I learn to adjust to the “steering” in single bevel knives?

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Dan S.

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So now that I bought my awesome kiritsuke, I need a resource to learn how to compensate or adjust for the “steering” effect of the single bevel blade.

Can someone recommend good videos or other resources where I can learn this?

Thanks.

Dan
 

Thank you, that’s a very good video.

It only addresses certain situations, though. So, the cross section of his daikon is less than twice the size of his usuba blade up to the shinogi line. So his usuba technique works great there.

But the kiritsuke has a blade that is less tall, and in any event it seems that his technique won’t quite work for larger veggies.

So, any other videos or resources would be great as well.

Thanks, again.
 
If doesn’t work then use a proper tool liked vegetable cleaver or gyuto, single bevel not meant for cutting large veggies anyway
 
Yesterday at midnight my wife demanded ham, thin sliced.

After having spent several hours over the past few weekends with an usuba wiggling in my right hand and slowly diminishing daikons wobbling in my left, I can now see why katsuramuki is considered a fundamental skill. I was astonished at how I was able to pull paper-thin rounds off the end of the cylinder-of-ham using the same principles.

The steering is an asset, not a liability, in that use case, and in sashimi cuts like sogi-zukuri. But Western cuts, with conventional board contact, will not play to the strengths of the single bevel.

This book emphasizes technique: Japanese Kitchen Knives: Essential Techniques and Recipes: Nozaki, Hiromitsu, Klippensteen, Kate, Konishi, Yasuo: 9781568364902: Amazon.com: Books
 
Firstly congrats on the knife!

Usually these knives are used to slice sashimi, make neta for sushi, katsuramuki daikon, or other similar techniques. You see them most often in kaiseki but also will occasionally run in to them in the hands of an experience chef in other washoku styles too.

As mentioned in the other thread, This knife is basically designed to do the jobs of two knives that are highly specialized. Kiritsuke or Kiritsuke Yanagiba? Which is it?

Basically, it was developed for a very specific set of tasks in a very specific context. It's not the kind of knife that's going to do whatever you want it to. That's why most people on the forum steer new people away from single bevels and more towards double bevels. They're not really all that great for most home cooks.

If you want to get decent use out of your knife, I recommend learning basic Japanese cutting techniques and recipes.
 
Yesterday at midnight my wife demanded ham, thin sliced.

After having spent several hours over the past few weekends with an usuba wiggling in my right hand and slowly diminishing daikons wobbling in my left, I can now see why katsuramuki is considered a fundamental skill. I was astonished at how I was able to pull paper-thin rounds off the end of the cylinder-of-ham using the same principles.

The steering is an asset, not a liability, in that use case, and in sashimi cuts like sogi-zukuri. But Western cuts, with conventional board contact, will not play to the strengths of the single bevel.

This book emphasizes technique: Japanese Kitchen Knives: Essential Techniques and Recipes: Nozaki, Hiromitsu, Klippensteen, Kate, Konishi, Yasuo: 9781568364902: Amazon.com: Books
Very interesting. I may have to get that book. Thank you.
 
I was astonished at how I was able to pull paper-thin rounds off the end of the cylinder-of-ham using the same principles.

The steering is an asset, not a liability, in that use case
That’s really interesting. So how does the steering help for that specific purpose?
 
So it sounds like it’s not so much compensating for the steering but learning where the steering is useful.
 
It’s useful for katsuramuki, or cutting soft meats/fishes. For hard ingredients it will wedge badly
 
Katsuramuki is like planing a piece of wood… a sliver rises up off the workpiece… in a wood workshop you would discard the sliver as waste, but in the kitchen that sliver is the product! The single bevel helps keep the thickness of the sliver constant while the bulk moves under it. That’s steering-as-asset.

Steering-as-liability? If you’re rock-chopping with a single bevel, you’re doing it wrong.
 
Katsuramuki is like planing a piece of wood… a sliver rises up off the workpiece… in a wood workshop you would discard the sliver as waste, but in the kitchen that sliver is the product! The single bevel helps keep the thickness of the sliver constant while the bulk moves under it. That’s steering-as-asset.

Steering-as-liability? If you’re rock-chopping with a single bevel, you’re doing it wrong.
Right, so the bevel essentially guides the blade toward the surface, basically compelling the thinness through its rotation. It sort of helps the chef stay tight in close to the surface. That’s why the bevel is on the inside. Something like that?
 
Right, so the bevel essentially guides the blade toward the surface, basically compelling the thinness through its rotation. It sort of helps the chef stay tight in close to the surface. That’s why the bevel is on the inside. Something like that?
Very much so! Because of the concave bevel on the back, the knife has minimal contact with the food and the angle on the back is 0°, so that the knife doesn't steer when used like this. If you cut bigger produce, you can adjust the angle during the cutting so that it cuts straight, but then using a double bevel is probably the better choice. In any case, just make sure you will never use it like this lady and you should be fine. :mad: Oh, and be sure to inform yourself on single bevel sharpening before you do it. It's quite simple but fixing mistakes can be a huge pain. Enjoy the knife!
 
So, in the spirit of “steering,“ I took my first shot at katsuramuki. This is gonna take tons of practice to get right, but it’s a real hoot.

6128DBBF-68BF-4C77-A95C-B5697B1D01C7.jpeg
 
So, in the spirit of “steering,“ I took my first shot at katsuramuki. This is gonna take tons of practice to get right, but it’s a real hoot.

View attachment 202203
Now this is the proper response to the initial adversity that crops up after receiving a new knife. Well played sir 👍.
 
Something like that?
Yes! Another way to look at it:

Katsuramuki is the exact opposite of Western cutting.

Instead of multiple slices coming off to the right, we have a single slice coming off to the left.

Instead of cutting against the board, there is no board; we cut in hand.

Instead of holding the food in place and pushing vertically with the knife, we hold the knife in place and push horizontally with the food.

Backwards, speaks Yoda.

By definition, produce separates behind the edge of the knife. At one extreme, if the degree of separation is zero, the potato is sliced but the slices adhere. If the separation is over-eager, we call it “wedging”. If the separation is desirable, we call it “food release” lol.

With katsuramuki, the food release takes the form of a tangent separating off a circle. The tip of the bevel touches the top of the daikon. The separated sheet rides along the ura. The tangent angle is exactly the bevel angle of your single-bevel knife.

When planing a ham, the same notion holds, except we conceive of the flat top of the ham as the arc of a radish of infinite radius; but we yaw the piece in the same way. The knife rides the ham at the same bevel angle as a whetstone.

In the Western paradigm, an usuba “naturally” rotates “into” the food. Given rectilinear product, the resulting curve is undesirable: “steering”. Western cooking, and Western psychology, is full of rectilinearity: past is left, future is right, up is good, down is bad, and the cuts are all about brunoise, dice, cube.

In the Daikon paradigm, there is no spoon, I mean, there is no steering! Given round product, a knife counterrotating against the curve produces a rectilinear plane “out of” the food. Perhaps the closest analog is the chiffonade, but with daikon, the roll is already latent in the vegetable, an invisible Archimedean spiral waiting to be revealed.

The kiritsuke doing katsuramuki is thus dual in every way to the chef’s knife chopping.



Here I started holding the knife at too low an angle, and pushing too hard down into the meat. Later, a higher angle kept the slices from breaking.
 
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You know, this concept seems perfect for hand slicing lox/nova at a Jewish deli.

I’m going to get my hands on a whole smoked Nova Scotia salmon and hand slice my own lox with my kiritsuke. It should be perfect.
 
Hmmm, I guess I’ve been doing katsuramuki on oranges my whole life without knowing it.

Anybody else peel the rind off oranges in a single spiral, then chop the orange in half to eat? Maybe for my next custom I need a single-bevel paring knife!
 
Hmmm, I guess I’ve been doing katsuramuki on oranges my whole life without knowing it.

Anybody else peel the rind off oranges in a single spiral, then chop the orange in half to eat? Maybe for my next custom I need a single-bevel paring knife!
Great way to zest an orange.

In fact, next time I make Chile-Lime Shrimp, I may try to use my kiritizuke to remove the zest from the limes.
 
Pretty nice job for a first try at katsuramuki! And congrats on the beautiful knife -- I totally get why it called to you. I'm also glad to see that you're willing to try out new cutting techniques with your new single bevel. That's the only way to really come to appreciate these knives. You can't force single bevels into normal western cutting styles, but if you're open to learning how to use them for the purposes they were designed for, there is so much territory to explore.
That book on Japanese cutting styles is excellent, and you can adapt almost all of the yanagiba and usuba techniques to your kiritsuke. It's much harder to adapt a kirtsuke to normal gyuto or chef knife duties, as you've discovered. The problems is, as you've noticed, the blade height of your kiritsuke. It is much shorter than the usuba in the video above, because it's a cross between a usuba and a yanagi. It's a slicer that can also do some Japanese veg techniques, but isn't as good as a usuba for some techniques because the blade is shorter and therefore thicker. The thickish blade stock and grind work against you when cutting taller foods or anything dense. That's the compromise.
At any rate, it's great to see you trying new things instead of trying to shoehorn them into your existing skill set. To the extent that steering can be compensated for, it's in softer foods. You just kind of fight the angle by rotating your wrist (and therefore the edge) ever so slightly as you make your push/pull cut. But really, that's when it's time to reach for a gyuto or something.
 
Hmmm, I guess I’ve been doing katsuramuki on oranges my whole life without knowing it.

Anybody else peel the rind off oranges in a single spiral, then chop the orange in half to eat?

So something like this?



Maybe for my next custom I need a single-bevel paring knife!
No need to go custom for a stainless mukimono unless you want to. Here's one available "off the shelf":
https://japanesechefsknife.com/coll...o-3-kama-usuba180mm-7inch?variant=29589554627
 
You know, this concept seems perfect for hand slicing lox/nova at a Jewish deli.

I’m going to get my hands on a whole smoked Nova Scotia salmon and hand slice my own lox with my kiritsuke. It should be perfect.



 
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