Thursday, December 4, 2008

Slicer Study (For You Knife Nuts Out There)

I've been running tuna carpaccio lately so I decided to do a little comparison of knives, blades and blade types when it came to slicing raw tuna. For carpaccio I'm looking for large thin slices about an 1/8 inch so I cut from a whole loin. The idea is to cut "sheets" of tuna. You can see in the title picture how they're used.

I sharpened each knife just prior to the test.



Watanabe 270 Damascus Sujihiki
The blade has a satin finish so it tends to be a bit "sticky". This is also a case where size does matter. I ran out of knife. If this was a 330 it would have done the job nicely. Light comfortable knife to use. Not one of my favorites.

Nenohi Highest Kasumi 270 Kiritsuke
Again I could have used a little more blade, length that is, the wider the blade the more the protein sticks to it and this blade is WIDE. Although it performs wonderfully on smaller "loins".

Mizuno Tanrenjo 390 Special Blue DX Honyaki Yanagi
No shortage of blade here. Length or width. It cuts smoothly and thinly but gets a little grabby and some tuna separates with the back stroke. Other wise it cuts like butter.

Masamoto 360 White steel Hon Kasumi Yanagi
I say it over and over, "my Masamoto kicks ass". It's my favorite slicer. It gets sharp as hell and as you can see here it doesn't grab the protein. It performed the best over all in this test.