How To Use A Nakiri Knife

Knife Skills

How to Use a Nakiri Pocketknife

If you enjoy using a good kitchen knife, a Nakiri should be a office of your arsenal.

Go chopping!

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What is a Nakiri Knife?

A Nakiri is a Japanese vegetable pocketknife. It has a broad, symmetrical, straight blade and a blunt olfactory organ. The shape of this blade lets you know how to apply it – rather than rocking forward and back as you would with a curved chef'southward knife, a Nakiri is intended to be used in a straight up and downward motion or a slicing frontwards and backward while using an upward and down motion. Past chopping up and down, you can chop through tender vegetables quickly and efficiently. If you're slicing dorsum and forth, the straight border makes more contact with the cutting board, giving you a cleaner cut in the stop. The wide bract allows y'all to pick up the chopped food to transfer information technology to a bowl or a pan.

What to cut with a Nakiri Knife

At present y'all know the motion you are using with a Nakiri, you'll begin to empathize what foods are best cut with it. This is not a meat cleaver. This knife is for all your vegetables and fruit. Here's a non-exclusive listing:

cucumber
zucchini and other summertime squash
cabbages – green, red, Napa, Savoy
potatoes of all kinds
mushrooms
peppers
tomatoes
apples, pears, oranges, lemons, limes
melons of all kinds
pineapple

Grooved Nakiri Knife

Since the Nakiri is intended for vegetables, and since vegetables tend to have a high wet and sometimes starch content, when it came time to blueprint a Nakiri knife for the Blue Jean Chef® line, I decided to add a grooved blade. This grooved bract allows a petty air to go between the knife and the food beingness cut and that air helps forbid the food from sticking to the blade. There is less friction and consequently, less sticking. That allows you to be fifty-fifty more than efficient as y'all're doing all your prep work in the kitchen – never having to knock food off your knife blade.

How to Sharpen a Nakiri Pocketknife

A Nakiri knife has a straight, double-beveled edge. That means that you can sharpen this knife just as y'all would all your other knives. You can use a drag through sharpener or an electric sharpener to sharpen the knives and you can run the knife blade along a steel to strop the edge. You can also send your Nakiri knife off to a professional knife sharpener once a twelvemonth or so if that makes you more comfortable.

How to Use a Nakiri Knife

For a meliorate idea of how to use a Nakiri pocketknife, bank check out the video below.

Quick Notes:

A Nakiri is a Japanese vegetable knife.
Information technology has a straight, symmetrical bract with a blunt nose.
Employ an up and down motion with the Nakiri, or piece forward and back, merely no rocking.
The Nakiri excels at cutting all kinds of vegetables.
The BJC® grooved Nakiri knife is grooved to assistance prevent foods from sticking to the blade.
Sharpen the Nakiri pocketknife the same way y'all sharpen all your knives.

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