Japanese Kitchen Knives: Essential Techniques and Recipes [Hardcover]

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!

I'm a chef in French and Italian cuisine with 20+ years experience, and still there's a lot to learn from this book to perfect my culinary knife skills. Someone who expected a book focusing on collecting Japanese knives might be disappointed, but for those people like me, who've been wanting such an educational book for decades, reading this book will be pure pleasure from beginning to end.

Many of the fancy cuts and delicate arrangements in Japanese cooking require a certain set of tools. One can imitate them with Western cooking equipment, but never really perfect them. Central to these techniques are the three single-beveled Japanese knives; the yanagiba, the deba and the usuba.

"Japanese Kitchen Knives: Essential Techniques and Recipes" is an introductory book to these three essential knives and their use. Written by celebrated chef Nozaki Hiromutsu (who has many cooking books available in his native Japanese) and Kate Klippensteen (Cool Tools: Cooking Utensils from the Japanese Kitchen), the book is about one-third knife history and information, one-third knife skills course, and one-third cook book with recipes.

I enjoyed all of the different elements of "Japanese Kitchen Knives." I have read about some of the knife techniques, such as the sanmai oroshi three-piece filleting technique in that Japanese cooking bible Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art, but it was much easier to follow here with the photographs and step-by-step guide. In fact all of the photographs, by Konishi Yasuo, are lovely to look at and contribute greatly to the quality of the book. Some of the other techniques, like the kazari-girl forms for cutting decorative vegetables, I was especially happy to see. I have been imitating the cuts for some time now, but never perfectly and never with the correct technique.

The recipes in "Japanese Kitchen Knives" are up to the usual great standard one can expect from Kodansha. Some of them are quite unusual, such as "Braised Tai Head with Turnips." Instead of just throwing away a fish head it is nice to use it for a delicious recipe. The "Vinegared Mackerel" I have eaten several times at Japanese restaurants, but never made for myself, so I was also happy to see that recipe.

The last few chapters of the book covers some of the more specialty Japanese knives, such as the massive soba chopper soba-giri and the unagi-bocho use for preparing eels. There is also a chapter on the maintenance of your knives and some advice on buying them which I found very helpful.

Sadly, to get a decent set of even those three most basic knives is expensive so for the time being I can only look dreamily at this book. But "Japanese Kitchen Knives" is a great guide on what I need, what to buy, and how to use the tools when I get them!

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