Serious Eats / Grace Kelly The Competition
This helps prevent rusting and discoloring, though it’s not the end of the world if your blade does get speckled. As Daniel Gritzer, Serious Eats’ senior culinary director, noted, “Stainless tends to be a softer form of steel, which means it often won't hold an edge as well as carbon steel.” If you’re worried about your carbon steel knife looking splotchy, we recommend investing in some Tsubaki oil (it’ll only set you back $15 bucks), and rubbing in a drop on each side of the blade after washing and thoroughly drying.
However, the beauty of carbon steel is that it stays sharper longer and is easier to sharpen ( we’ve discussed this before here). Carbon steel, on the other hand, is prone to rusty splotches. The gift that stainless steel give is aesthetics it doesn’t rust or get dark spots after washing. Both materials have their merits and require maintenance-though, one could argue that stainless steel knives need more heavy-duty care since they dull faster. Two of our favorite Chinese cleavers (CCK and Kagayaki) are made of carbon steel, while the Tojiro is high-carbon stainless steel. Instead, we preferred shorter handles, like the 3.25-inch handle on the CCK cleaver. It dug into our forearm when we chopped with it and brought the entire knife’s length to 14.25 inches long-quite massive. The same thing went for handles: While we loved the sharp, balanced blade on the Kohetsu cleaver, the handle was a whopping 5.5 inches long-the longest of the lineup.
#CLEAVER CHOPPER KNIFE PROFESSIONAL#
Bigger blades, like the 8.75-inch Togiharu, felt akin to wielding a machete unless you’re a professional chef used to a 10-inch chef’s knife, wide, long blades can be challenging to use. Both were very nimble and felt nicely controlled and balanced even when we were mincing garlic, which requires a steady hand. This included the CCK cleaver, which had an 8.25-inch blade, and the Tojiro, with a blade that was 6.8 inches long. While our pick for a larger cleaver from Kagayaki has a long blade (it’s 8.6 inches in length), in general, we preferred cleavers with blades that were 8.25 inches and under. While there are a good amount of stainless steel Chinese cleavers on the market (stainless steel often features around 18% added chromium, which “hardens and toughens steel and increases its resistance to corrosion,” per the United States Geological Survey), carbon steel is the traditional metal of choice, so we tested cleavers made with both.Ĭhinese cleavers with really long handles, like the one pictured, were difficult to hold and dug into our wrists when cutting. We tested 10 popular Chinese cleavers to find knives that were balanced, sharp, and versatile. They’re also often quite affordable, with many fantastic options under $100. They are supremely versatile knives, quickly dispatching all manner of vegetables, roots, and proteins, while also serving as a sort of bench scraper for transferring your chopped bits and bobs (just don’t actually use them to scrape your countertop, please!). Unlike Western-style chef’s knives, which feature a tapered, curving blade meant for a rocking chop motion, Chinese cleavers have a light, rectangular blade that excels at a more up-down chop maneuver, and often sport unfussy, barrel-shaped wooden handles.
We also liked the bigger option from Kagayaki, if you’re used to wielding a larger blade.Ĭhinese cleavers, a.k.a cai dao (meaning “vegetable knife”), have long been the preferred all-purpose cutter in much of Asia.
Both cleaved through hardy turnips, neatly minced garlic, and cleanly sliced delicate chives. However, two stood out: the compact option from Tojiro, and the balance and versatile one from CCK. Finding a well-balanced, sharp, and versatile Chinese cleaver was surprisingly difficult many we tested were too big, too heavy, and not nearly nimble enough.
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