The Best Japanese Kitchen Knife Sets You Can Buy in Perth in 2021
For the good workman, the tool is seldom an object. The same applies to a good chef or a good cook. Yet, ultimately, having a good tool goes a long way to getting the job right.
For professional chefs or passionate cooks, the perfect tool is often the knife and yielding a rubbish kitchen knife for delicate culinary tasks simply doesn’t cut it. The enthusiastic cook needs to have the perfect kitchen knife set for the many essential kitchen tasks be they filleting, carving, chopping, slicing, cutting or boning.
One of the culinary arts that you must therefore master is knowing the perfect knife to use for the various kitchen tasks. It’s good for efficiency and simplifies the food preparation process. A good kitchen knife for the job also makes cooking a delight.
There are lots of kitchen knife sets that you can purchase if you are a professional chef or enthusiastic cook in Perth. These range from the almost artsy and unique handcrafted Japanese kitchen knives to the Western chef’s knives and even unique Australian kitchen knives which are often permutations or hybrids of these two main categories which have been repurposed for the Australian market.
It is essential to have a good chef’s knife for your Perth kitchen. Apart from the efficiency factor, good quality knives will serve you for years to come. Besides having a diverse and beautiful collection of kitchen knives for your Perth kitchen instantly transforms your kitchen into an extraordinary place, a cut above the rest.
In this article, we look at some of the best kitchen knives that you can buy in Perth in 2021. There is a vast array to choose ranging from the Japanese kitchen knives in Perth to French and German knives in Perth. However, since Japanese kitchen knives have a powerful allure with many professional chefs, we will give a detailed look at some of the popular Japanese kitchen knives that you can purchase in Perth.
BEST JAPANESE KITCHEN KNIVES IN PERTH
What we love about the Japanese kitchen knives is their high degree of specialization. You can find a Japanese kitchen knife for pretty much every task imaginable in your Perth kitchen ranging from chopping to slicing, filleting to deboning.
They including the following: -
- Slicing sashimi: This task requires knives such as the Yanagiba, Kiritsuke, Yanagi, Kaisaki
- Cleaning fish: For this, you can use Japanese kitchen knives such as the Deba, Funayuki, Sakekiri and Ajisaki.
- Cutting or chopping vegetables: Various Japanese knives are used for vegetables including Nakiri, Kamausuba and Kawamuki.
- For cutting meat: The Japanese chef’s knife such as the Gyuto knife can be used for this purpose
- For slicing meat off the bones: You can use the Sujihiki
- For cutting and slicing off tendons: Requires the Sujihiki
- Boning knives: Boning knives include the Honesuki or the Garasuki for dressing your chickens
- Cutting bones: For this, you will need the Western-style Deba kitchen knife or the traditional single edge Japanese Deba kitchen knife
Most Popular Japanese Kitchen Knives in Perth
Not all the Japanese knives listed above are used widely across the world, particularly by non-Japanese chefs.
Here is a look at some of the most popular Japanese kitchen knife sets that you can purchase in Perth: -
- Gyuto Knife
- Nakiri Knife
- Bunka Knife
- Deba Knife
- Sujihiki Knife
- Kiritsuke Knife
- Santoku Knife
- Paring Knife
The Gyuto knife is a Japanese take on the classic Western Chef’s knife. This is a must-have multipurpose kitchen knife that can be used on a variety of tasks in your Perth kitchen. The Gyuto is versatile enough to be used with a variety of cutting techniques and on different types of foods including meats, vegetables, fishes and fruits.
The Gyuto is generally thinner and lighter than the typical Western Chef’s knife and has a balance point that’s titled more towards the knife’s tip.
Like their Western Chef’s knife counterparts, Gyuto knives have pointed tips. This quality, along with their light and wider build, makes for an agile and precise general-purpose kitchen knife that you can use in tight spaces or for making precision cuts on your food.
Use their relatively flat heels for rock chopping cutting motions. Gyuto might not be the biggest of Japanese kitchen knives but it is tall enough to be used for tap chopping, making use of the tip or the middle of the blade. You can also use this general-purpose kitchen knife for pull cutting or push cutting techniques.
In Japan, the Nakiri knife is used to quickly slice, chop or mince vegetables. It is a double bevel Japanese kitchen knife with a thin and tall blade. The Nakiri knife is popular outside Japan too. It is increasingly becoming a favorite with vegetarians.
In Perth, you can find Nakiri knives with a Western-style handle or the traditional Japanese handles that are typically lightweight and are known as “Wa” style Nakiri knives. The light weight of the handles tilts the balance point of the Nakiri knife towards the tip of the knife. The design also makes these vegetable knives nimbler and more precise.
There are various kinds of general-purpose Japanese kitchen knives that are sold in Perth such as the Santoku, Gyotu and the Bunka kitchen knife.
Bunka knives were once as popular as the Santoku knives but they have faded away in the recent years. However, there are still professional chefs around the world who still prefer to wield these wide blades to cut vegetables.
Bunka knives are better known for their reverse tanto angled tip which is suitable for cutting meats and fish. This angled blade tip is what differentiates Bunka knives from Santoku knives. Bunka knives with the lighter weight handles are nimbler and more precise.
The Sujihiki knife is simply the long and graceful Japanese slicer. The shape, a long and narrow blade with a double edge, is easily recognizable. You can use the Sujihiki knife to slice both meats and vegetables. The clean cuts that you can achieve with these blades helps preserve the integrity of the ingredients.
You would normally use Sujihiki knives on the raw ingredients but they also come in handy when carving or fabricating large roasts as well as other meats and fishes. You can also use this narrow slicer when you need to thinly slice various other types of ingredients like smoked salmon or cucumbers.
Use the Sujihiki if you want to delicately trim away the fat and the sinew from your meats. You can also use them for the delicate slicing of boneless fish or meat. Some chefs even use them to skin or fillet their fish. The shape, with a long and narrow blade and sharp edges, enables you to smoothly slice your fish or meat in one drawing motion from the heel to the tip of this slicing knife.
Many professional chefs treat the Sujihiki as the Western-style alternative to the traditional Yanagi Japanese kitchen knife.
The Kiristsuke is a multipurpose Japanese kitchen knife. There are single bevel and double bevel Kiritsuke kitchen knives. These are uber-versatile general-purpose Japanese kitchen knives for your Perth kitchen that you can use both as an Usuba (vegetable knife) or as a Yanagi (fish slicer).
The Kiritsuke knife has a characteristic sword shape and their edges are straighter than those of the Yanagi knives. They are also longer than the Usuba knife which lends itself easily to smooth fish slicing techniques.
The Kiritsuke knives have a unique design and require some skill to wield successfully. This is particularly the case with single bevel Kiritsuke kitchen knives. Western chefs will find the double bevel Kiritsukes easier to wield.
Due to the difficulty in handling the traditional Kiritsuke knife, they are mainly used by the executive chefs who have taken time to master these difficult knives. In fact, wielding the Kiritsuke knife is usually something of a status symbol, particularly in the Japanese culinary world.
Santoku Knife
The name ‘Santoku’ in Japanese means ‘three virtues’ which alludes to these multi-purpose kitchen knife’s use in handling meat, fish and vegetables. The Santoku blades have a high profile that easily lends itself to home use and allow you to maintain your knuckles well clear of the cutting board.
Santoku knives have become something of an overnight sensation in Perth and most Western kitchens over the past two decades. It makes for a great chef’s kitchen and is a reliable workhorse in any kitchen, including home kitchens and professional kitchens.
Using a Santoku knife in your Perth kitchen can be an absolute pleasure, irrespective of the tasks. This ‘three virtues’ knife will, of course, handle all your cutting, slicing and chopping tasks in the kitchen. They can also handle a vast array of ingredients. Santoku knives are not only lightweight and well-balanced but they can be extremely sharp and easy and comfortable to hold and wield.
You can use them for a diverse array of tasks ranging from filleting a whole fish to cutting carrots or easily breaking down your chickens. The Santoku is a great knife to have in your collection and it is effortless to use.
The Deba kitchen knife is traditionally used for cleaning and filleting whole fish. This is more so for the Japanese Deba knives which are known as Hon-deba or “true deba”.
The heavy Deba knives can also be used to break down and dress poultry along with other meats that have small bones.
Deba knives are characterized by their significant weight which makes them ideal for these kinds of tasks. The design also features a sturdy heel section for cutting or chopping through the bones. These come in handy for use in processing small and medium-sized fish and poultry.
In Japan or Japanese kitchens, the Deba knife is mostly used for cutting fish heads into two.
With the correct technique, the Deba knife can also be used to split up the claws and legs of crabs.
In spite of this being a heavy-duty Japanese kitchen knife, it is still not suited for use in chopping up large bones. The blade should also be used in a perpendicular position to the main axis so you should take care not to use it sideways to prevent it from cracking and chipping. Home cooks can use the small-sized Deba that have a length of about 180mm. The larger sized Deba knives can run to lengths of up to 330mm and are more suited for professionals.
