Japanese Kitchen Knives: Essential Techniques and Recipes Review

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(More customer reviews)For any culinary chef, the tools you have with you to prepare certain meals are quite important. For many chef's, the knives used are critical in preparing certain meals. In Japan, the Japanese kitchen knives are extremely critical as many dishes include paper-thin dishes.
It's one thing to watch this on television via "The Iron Chef" or watching your sushi chef prepare it at the restaurant. But for many people who enjoy cooking, many people who enjoy cooking know that knives are important and for the last decade or more, the sales of Japanese kitchen knives have been increasing but the question is, do a lot of people know how to utilize them?
With "Japanese Kitchen Knives: Essential Techniques", chef Hiromitsu Nozaki (with Kate Klippensteen) shows you how to create a variety of dishes but also learning how to get started, proper knife anatomy and knife control. Also, gaining knowledge of the three main knives being used.
Hiromitsu Nozaki was the executive chef of Tokuyama and Waketokuyama in Tokyo during the 80's and catered to the Japanese athletes for the 2004 Olympics in Athens. He has published and authored over 40 cookbooks in Japan and together with Kate Klippensteen (who wrote "Cool Tools: Cooking Utensils from the Japanese Kitchen"), both do a great service for upcoming chefs, people who are passionate about Japanese food (especially on how vegetables, fish and meat are cut thinly) and those who have been wanting to invest in Japanese knives.
The book is broken down to three major chapters which are THE USUBA, THE DEBA and THE YANAGIBA.
The Usuba deals with learning how to use rotary peeling, needle cuts, whittling, tea-whisk cut, serpent belly cut and decorative vegetable carving.
The Deba deals with how divide the head from sea bream with turnips, three-piece filleting, straight filleting, butterfyling, etc.
The Yanagiba deals with skinning, slicing (sogizukuri, hirazukuri, uzuzukuri), spiral cuts, double cuts and more.
Each chapter shows step by step of how to prepare a variety of dishes and courtesy of photographer Yasuo Konishi, you get step-by-step photos along with the instruction on how to prepare certain dishes. Also, the finished project which are beautiful, full color, vibrant photos of the dish.
Chefs-in-training will also enjoy the various instructions of how Hiromitsu Nozaki cuts fish for filleting and various other ways that they can incorporate into their repertoire.
And the book does not end there. The book then goes into the range of Japanese knives available and what they are used for. From unagi knives to soba knives, the book goes into detail of knives used on location and most importantly, the sharpening of the knives and the use of the water stone. How to sharpen a knife, how to handle and clean a knife and repairing a damaged blade.
And when you are done, there is also a guide of where to purchase Japanese knives.
As a person who is not a chef, but had a grandfather who was one and also being a person who enjoys cooking and passionate of watching others cook, I've always been enamored by the knife sets that chef's used. As a hairdresser has their shears, a digital designer has their software and hardware, a chef has their set of knives that they depend on for preparing dishes.
For those who are passionate about Japanese food, one can be enamored by the beauty of the needle-cut vegetables, the thinly cut daikon or the thinly sliced fish, it takes a lot of skill to learn this but with a good knife set and the skills taught by Hiromitsu Nozaki, this book is well-designed, the pictures are just vibrant and the step-by-step instructions and recipes are straightforward and easy to understand.
What I enjoyed about "Japanese Kitchen Knives: Essential Techniques and Recipes" is the fact that the Hiromitsu Nozaki and Kate Klippensteen wants to communicate and help the reader as much as possible. Instead of ending it with a primer on Japanese knives and how to cut vegetables and fish, he also goes into further detail on the various knives in Japan but how to clean and maintain them. A lot of this information, one would learn by being an apprentice but now, one can learn from one of the best Japanese chefs through his book. It is important to note that for those who are wanting a more in-depth book on Japanese knives, the many versions out there and the makers and history of knife makers and not the recipes or how to use Japanese knives on vegetables, seafood, etc., that this book may not be for you. The book touches on various knives but its main focus is on how its used in the food process and step-by-step cutting of the food and the techniques.
Informative, educational and overall a magnificent book. "Japanese Kitchen Knives: Essential Techniques" is highly recommended!

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Sales of Japanese kitchen knives are booming in the U.S. But how many people have the skills to use these superbly-crafted tools to full advantage?Now, internationally renowned chef Hiromitsu Nozaki shares his expertise and insights in a book that will help anyone who owns a Japanese knife to maximize its performance.In Japanese Kitchen Knives, Nozaki teaches the reader how to use usuba, deba and yanagiba, the three main traditional Japanese knives. He explains many essential techniques, such as the importance of understanding blade angle and point of force, and illustrates these lessons by working with ingredients familiar to western readers, like carrots and rainbow trout. Color photos and Nozaki's commentary further clarify the process, and the pictures are taken from the chef's perspective for easier understanding (most other books take photos from the reverse perspective). Each technique is accompanied by recipes that require its use, and all recipes are very simple, using easy-to-acquire ingredients. Other sections include a look at artisanal Japanese knife-making and information on sharpening, storing and identifying the variety of Japanese knives. Specialty knives are shown on location, from the unique unagi eel knife in an unagi specialty restaurant to the colossal tuna filleting knife in Tsukiji fish market.

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An Edge in the Kitchen: The Ultimate Guide to Kitchen Knives -- How to Buy Them, Keep Them Razor Sharp, and Use Them Like a Pro Review

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(More customer reviews)Chad Ward - An Edge in the Kitchen
I own two books on kitchen knives and knife skills, this one and Weinstein's Mastering Knife Skills. Chad Ward's book is the best of the two by its breadth and wealth of information and is objectively a very good book.
Physically, the book is a medium sized hard cover, well edited. There is a number of good B&W pictures through the book to illustrate specific points, and there's a central section of 48 pages of glossy color pictures depicting specific knife techniques (battonets vs. julienne, onion, tomatoes, cutting a chicken, butterflying a piece of meat, skinning salmon, carving a turkey, steeling a knife, several sharpening methods, etc).
The book is organized as follows:
1 - Choosing the right kitchen knife:
This section is about 90 pages, so it's a sizeable part of the book. The author goes through the various knife types, costs, etc. Generally, Chad advocates staying away from knife block & sets, and explains that a home cook can do most everything with 3 knives: 8" to 10" chef, paring, and a serrated (or scalloped) bread knife. So his recommendation is to get the best of those. What is really helpful is that the author gives specific recommendations for all budgets - below $100, $200, or "the sky's the limit". Too many books just say "get what feels best". Chad goes beyond this to give a range of specific endorsements. This part also includes 10+ pages on cutting boards and how to take care of them.
2 - Kitchen knife skills:
This section is about 30 pages but also has most of the color pictures in the center section. This is where the key knife skill concepts are explained, how to hold the blade and the item to be cut, etc. This is similar to other knife skill books, but with one major improvements which is a few recipes to practice the skills. Those recipes are really welcome, and because they are basic recipes that can be used as base for a number of varied dishes, they are great recipes to include in this book.
3 - Knife sharpening:
This section is about 70 pages and covers the theory & science of knife sharpening as well as specific reviews and advices for several methods. Chad reviews the sharpening of Western as well as Japanese style knives, and several sharpeing systems (e.g., Spyderco, EdgePro, etc).
At the end of the book are several pages of resources to buy knives, boards, sharpeners, etc.
In short, I think this is a complete book that covers the key concepts of knife skills, but also addresses knife selection and care. If you buy only one kitchen knives & skill book, I would recommend it.

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Why are most of us so woefully uninformed about our kitchen knives? We are intimidated by our knives when they are sharp, annoyed by them when they are dull, and quietly ashamed that we don't know how to use them with any competence. For a species that has been using knives for nearly as long as we have been walking upright, that's a serious problem. An Edge in the Kitchen is the solution, an intelligent and delightful debunking of the mysteries of kitchen knives once and for all. If you can stack blocks, you can cut restaurant-quality diced vegetables. If you can fold a paper airplane, you can sharpen your knives better than many professionals.

Veteran cook Chad Ward provides an in-depth guide to the most important tool in the kitchen, including how to choose the best kitchen knives in your price range, practical tutorials on knife skills, a step-by-step section on sharpening, and more--all illustrated with beautiful photographs throughout. Along the way you will discover what a cow sword is, and why you might want one; why chefs are abandoning their heavy knives in droves; and why the Pinch and the Claw, strange as they may sound, are in fact the best way to make precision vegetable cuts with speed and style.

An Edge in the Kitchen is the one and only guide to the most important tool in the kitchen.

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