My nakiri took over in my kitchen for quite awhile–became my de facto Chef Knife–until I got “educated” by my Japanese collaborator enough to get us both all purpose Chef’s knives: a Wusthof Classic Ikon for me–and a Shun Classic for him.
I saw the heavy duty Wusthof base as a near cleaver for bones, the middle for rock chopping, and the tapered tip for delicate slicing. The Classic Ikon was everything I could imagine a Chef’s knife to be. But I’d already been using the nakiri for at least a decade as an “everything” knife, and it’s light weight and sharpness kept it a “go to” over the Wusthof for veggies: push cutting with the nakiri made the rock chopping Wusthof feel even more heavy and clumsy than it was.
Your old French Chef’s knife may push cut vegetables as well as a nakiri, and your workouts at the gym may make the 100 gm weight difference negligible to you, but even my push cutting Japanese collaborator reverted to rock chopping with my Wusthof–when we weren’t sharpening and honing it.
My Seki Magoroku nakiri was pushed into retirement recently by a XinZuo Zhen small cleaver that was sharper and wider–even allowing me to chop as well as push cut.
My new Seki Magoroku deba had already been repurposed in Japan perfectly for the changed American butchering slot that has driven my Sir Lawrence into retirement–and an American manufacturer is even making and marketing one here:
But
I still resurrect Sir Lawrence to slice Kroger English muffins and decapitate a soft boiled egg.
Ray
