paulraphael

That's possible too. At any rate, the usuba has proven an extremely frustrating choice for the majority of cooks, including experienced ones, who expect to be able to use it without a serious time investment. What kind of usuba do you have?

It's certainly possible that you're a prodigy. It's also possible that your usuba isn't sharpened to the bevel angles that are standard for this knife. I do know that my friends who have trained with Japanese chefs have pretty consistently reported weeks of practice before they could get reliable results without chipping.

No, an usuba is much, much harder to use than a yanagi or a deba (neither of which is easy to use). And a gyuto sharpened on one side only does not count as a single bevel knife. Part of the issue is that a yanagi only contacts the cutting board lightly and with drawing strokes. An usuba will frequently hit the board rapidly, which will chip the edge if technique is anything less than precise and delicate. The other part of the issue is the complete lack of curve. The blade must be brought to the board dead flat, every time, or a corner will catch and the blade will chip.

I'd leave the usuba out of the discussion, because it really has nothing in common with either of these knives. The usuba is a wonderfully specialized knife that does some things better than any other knife and other things not at all, and which is only useable by someone who has trained with it. It's easily the most challenging knife to use properly. The nakiri is just a western style Japanese knife with a stubby blade. I don't believe that you or anyone can cut garlic or parsely faster with a nakiri than someone who's well trained with a gyuto. A 270mm gyuto in well trained hands is ferociously fast and precise. I would challenge anyone in that contest, and I'm not even a pro. I would not make this challenge against a Chinese cleaver or an usuba. There are some things that the gyuto does better than these knives, but the person wielding the cleaver or usuba would switch knives for those tasks.

Cleavers are serious. I've never used one (as a chef's knife) but am often humbled by people who do. They have advantages over a gyuto, and also disadvantages, in roughly equal measures. Pit a master with a cleaver against a master with a gyuto and you'll see a good contest.

Some people like the compact size of a nakiri. It's a popular style among Japanese home cooks in very small kitchens. Think of it as the precursor to the santoku. It does nothing that you can't do with a gyuto, and it does nothing better. The reverse is not true.

Just a point of clarity for people new to knives ... sharpness is not a quality intrinsic to a knife. It's the product of the skills of the person sharpening it. The difference between one knife and another will be (among other things) how sharp and how thin an edge it will take, and how long it will hold that edge. No knife is very sharp out of the box. Some manufactures provide a better factory edge than others, but none comes close to what a knife is capable of. The factory edge is 100% irrelevant. It will be gone in a couple of weeks or a couple of hours, so who cares? High end knives often come barely sharpened. The makers know the user will have his or her own opinions on sharpening, and they don't want to waste their resources on this unimportant step.

Yeah, and ceramic knives aren't sharp to begin with. When new they are new they are sharper than a dull steel knife, but will never be, can never be, as sharp as a well sharpened steel knife. they hold an adquate edge longer than steel can, assuming you don't break the thing. This is a selling point for some people but in general I wouldn't want one and wouldn't recommend them.

A recommendation I just got: Tojiro Shiroko (white steel) gyuto: $50 And still good choices: Fujiwara Carbon 240mm and Fujiwara Stainless

I'll take another look at one. From my impressions they wouldn't really replace Tojiro or Togiharu, because those were both very high performance knives that just gave up a little bit in refinement and edge retention to their more expensive brethren. The Wasabis don't seem to be in the same league. Which isn't to say they're not good values. I think Forschners are also great values, but I wouldn't bring them up in a conversation about the best knife (except for their $5 paring knife, which is a favorite among some rockstar chefs because of its extreme thinness ...)

Kai is a huge company with many lines of knives, including ones like Shun and Wasabi which are designed and marketed for export for Western consumers. These knives are designed to have market appeal, and to survive in the hands of people who are untrained. The Shuns use good steel, but have a fat, performance-killing edge geometry, so they don't compare with the professional knives that they pretend to be. The Wasabi knives have similar geometry, and crappy steel. I'd agree that they're still good for the money, but I wouldn't put them in the top one thousand in a thread that's about the best brand of knife available in 2011.

Well, there you go. Last I looked you could get their entry level 240mm gyuto for $60 something. I would still generally look to a knife that's made for professional use rather than a brand like Kai, wich is export only, made for the Western consumer market. If you check out the knife discussions at foodieforums.com you'll get more up to date information than what I have. Mean time the Fujiwara carbon steel knives remain a good value, direct from Japan http://japanesechefsknife.com/FKHSeries.html Unfortunately a lot of the bargains from a couple of years ago are now priced over $100.

I don't care about seeing through the metal. What's to see? Professional ovens almost never have windows. I just want something that doesn't need to be babied. Stan, you don't think thin aluminum would warp? Self-clean happens around 900°F. Aluminum has a pretty high rate of thermal expansion and melts a bit over 1200F.

A few years ago Tojiro was the bang-for-the-buck champion, no doubt. At least compared with everything else available in the U.S.. Word got out, though, and the price went up. I think it's more than just the exchange rate. The Tojiros are now thinner than they used to be, and are more nicely finished. And they have a reputation. So other brands, like Togiharu, have become the value champions. This seems like an ongoing cycle. In another year everyone will be talking about some brand we haven't heard of yet.

Years ago I shattered the inner glass on the my oven door. I never fixed it because the oven works fine, and I know I'd probably just break the replacement glass the next time I make bread or dribble something. But it probably effects the oven's efficiency. I'm considering replacing the glass with a piece of sheet metal. Something fashioned from an aluminum full sheet pan would probably be easiest. Would aluminum survive the oven's self clean cycle, or would it warp terribly? What about stainless steel?

The reason you got such a colossal range of answers is that you didn't define "best." It's kind of like asking "what's the best wine?" or "what's the best house?" Best in terms of pure performance? If you are willing to spend several months praciticing Japanese cutting techniques and hand sharpening, then you may actually be interested in a very thin, high performance Japanese knife. If you're looking for a durable workhorse than can take an accepable edge and keep going with minimal maintenance, then you'll be well served by a Forschner or Wusthoff or Messermeister (the knives that get used in most mid-range restaurant kitchens). If your answer falls somewhere in between, then there are hundreds of knives, mostly Japanese, that fall somewhere in between. If you find yourself leaning toward the high performance end of things, I'd suggest starting slowly ... get an inexpensive one, like one of the very thin-bladed, budget carbon steel gyutos, and use it for learning. You won't freak out every time you chip the blade or make a sharpening mistake. And when you're ready to upgrade, you'll have a better idea of what you want.

It's not a question of need, but of efficiency, quality of cuts, and edge longevity. If you have a chance to use a good knife that's sharpened at 2K vs 10k you can feel the difference and decide for yourself it's worth it. One reason for polishing is that with very low bevel angles, coarsely sharpened edges will have exremely long, thin "teeth," which are unsupported and which crumple easily. This isn't a big issue with a 15° or higher bevel angle, but when the edge starts getting thin it makes a difference. Scalpels aren't good analogues for kitchen knives. For one thing, surgeons replace their blades after just a few inches of cutting. For another, they get a lot of their performance just from their sub-milimeter thickness. A well sharpened knife will actually have a sharper edge than a scalpel (at least than those generic blades) but it will never cut as well because it has to be several milimeters thick behind the edge.

At those prices you can bet it's a grinding service. Those are great for house knives and beaters but you really don't want to send a high end knife to a service like that. It will be ruined.

I don't think I made my point clearly. Knives with softer steels can be sharpened to whatever level of polish you like, but there's no advantage in going past a medium coarseness (2K or so) because the fnish won't last more than a few minutes of cutting. The toothier kind of edge you get at 1K or 2K has proven serviceable and durable on softer knives, and is easy to maintain with a steel. Even when such an edge dulls, it's capable or cutting because the toothiness of the edge stays agressive and works like serrations. When a polished edge dulls it just loses its ability to cut. So polished edges work best on higher end knife stieels that have greater edge stability. I hadn't said anything about geometry, but of course that's an issue also. Softer steels need to be sharpened with fatter bevel angles or they'll crumple. Standard for German knives is around 22° on a side, although if you're willing to be careful you can go a couple of degrees lower than this. On Japanese stlye knives, depending on the steel and the skills of the person using the knife, you can go from 15° all the way down to 7° or so, and also sharpen with radical assymetry. A knife sharpened like this will cut like a straight razor, but will require the cook to adopt Japanese cutting techniques. It's all a question of which tradeoffs you're willing to make.

I'm not saying that 0.5 microns isn't fine enough—it's plenty. The issue that you don't get any benefit at all when you jump straight to that from a 2000 grit belt. You're getting a 2000 grit finish. And sure, this is "good enough," for most purposes, and as good as makes sense on softer knives. My whole point is that if you're dealing with higher end knives, this approach isn't going to get you near their potential. I don't think it makes sense to spend a lot of money on high end knife if you're not going to sharpen it beyond what you can do with a more pedestrian knife.

6 Micron is slightly finer than a 2000 grit waterstone. It's a medium grit, suitable as a final grit for a European knife. To get the best performance from a harder knife, you need to go at least to 4000 grit; preferably 8000 or higher. The jump from 6 microns to 0.5 microns is much too large. You're not accomplishing anything with that, except maybe reducing any lingering burr or wire edge. The risk with leather isn't rounded bevels but a rounded edge.

An issue with leather is that it's compressible, so it becomes challenging to produce a flat bevel without any rounding of the edge. I suspect that someone with middling sharpening skills (like me) can do about as well with leather as with a finishing stone, but that a skilled sharpener will do better on stones. The sharpest knives I've ever used were produced without any stropping, by friends who are very skilled. The bigger issue: what succession of belts do you use to lead up to the leather strop belt? Do sander belts come in fine grits (like above 4000)? A 0.5 micron abrassive is useful as a polish after an 8000 to 10000 grit stone or paper. It can't remove the deeper scratches of anything coarser. I'd ask Dave Martell at Japanese Knive Sharpening. He's got reasons for using the belt sander for softer knives and for reparis, and stones for the higher end knives. If he could get the best results on a belt sander, he'd have no reason not to.

If you know what you're doing, a belt sander is great for major repairs and for sharpening stouter, softer European knives. I wouldn't recommend them for the thinner or harder Japanese knives. You're not going to get the kind of edge that's possible on waterstones. Any properly formed edge will shave your forearm. The difference between an edge made at 600 grit vs. 8000 grit will mostly show itself in the quality of cuts in the most delicate foods (fish, herbs, fruits that brown, etc...).

Awesome! Thanks. His website also has a lot of the technique information in a nicely distilled format.

It depends. Some motors are rated for peak power, others for continuous power. A motor rated for 1hp peak will overheat and burn out if it's asked to produce that power more than briefly. Consumer appliances are typically rated with peak power numbers, but in the case of KA, even that's just deception; they're using peak power consumption, which does not correlate in any definite way with power output. Hobart doesn't mess around. The 3/4 horsepower mixer is rated at 9.5 amps current draw at 120 volts. This translates to 1140 watts, which according to Kitchenaid style dishonesty, would equal 1.5 horsepower. Hobart's much lower horsepower rating is due to the inefficiencies inherent in any motor and mechanical device. I don't know if it's typical to see the output power that's 50% of input power, but based on what I've read about motors it seems reasonable. And if it isn't obvious from the pictures and capacity ratings, that 3/4hp Hobart has room in its bowl for three or four Williams Sonoma Kitchenaid mixers, and could whip them into a nice fluffy mousse in about a minute. Also to be clear: I'm not knocking the KA mixers. I have a pro 600 that has served me well for many years. I'm just annoyed by the company's deceptive marketing practices, and think they need to be spanked.