Chinese Cleaver 101: How to Chop, Slice, and Dice | Hunger Pangs 

Some time back a friend took me to a shop in Seattle where a man hand-made Chinese cleavers. Same knife. Three weights. Wish I could remember the name because I want one of each.

That's awesome, just ordered the Takeda NAS large cleaver!

do you remember the name or brand

@@xpkalipuryt8130 China Grill

@@xpkalipuryt8130 It was in the ground floor of the CBS BlackRock building, on 6th Ave between MOMA and the NY Hilton on the north side on 53rd St and the 21 Club on 52nd St, just a few blocks norrth of Radio City Music Hall and Rockefeller Center. Dining room shaped like a figure 8 with the open kitchen in the middle flanked by two elaborate cocktail bars. We did two seatings a night, rarely less than 500 covers total and a banging patio service right on 6th Ave. 5:30 on weeknights it was ten deep at the bars, mingled with the CBS notables and Wall Street schnooks ogling the models and actresses left and right. Crazy place to start my culinary career - our sister restaurant was Asia de Cuba

except it's not a Chinese cleaver and it's doing a terrible job because of it

LOL

Do you have a link for the clever you use - thx

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Yep it looks like it, in my experience with some friends they'd often have a thinner blade. Which means less force is used to cut through things.

They are using and recommending the Shun Classic Meat Cleaver 6", To short at 6", too thick for vegetables, too expensive at $200. Fortunately this meat cleaver has been discontinued so none of ATKs viewer will be unfortunate enough to buy it. In all their previous videos they use a Japanese Misono UX10 chefs knife instead of this hachet. I wonder why?

@@engineerncook6138 likely considering the way the video is shot it's aimed at armature cooks looking to enhance their skillset, but mainly focusing on basic techniques with using a cleaver. I assume the choice of cleaver must have been used because they may have prior research as to what the average amateur cook has at home.

fwiw the shun vegetable cleaver is a terrible representation of a Chinese cleaver or cai dao, too. it's way too heavy, slow, and thick.

Absolutely not

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Chefs knife is much more useful. Rocking motion to cut veggies with minimal effort and a tip to cut around bones... I just don't see how a cleaver could be better for any application except hacking through bones when butchering meat.

A cai dao, or slicing knife, is not a cleaver. This video had so much nonsense it almost makes me cry. TL:DR, a cai dao is a thin, razor edge, enabling easy slicing that no western chef knife can match, because of the difference in mass behind the edge. It can be used as a bench scraper too, making good movement easier. The tip of western chef knife you instead replicate here with the heel of the edge, ending you better control. If you want more, there's another great channel on RU-vid called Made by Lau where he gives you a tutorial on knife skills and maintenance and he's a retired restaurant chef who still uses his knife at home, and is a dirty dollar knife now (was about 15 when he bought it IIRC) further cementing that you don't have to spend a car payment to get a good knife. Or watch any Martin Yan cutting demo to see what this knife can do in the hands of a master. Yan Can Cook was entirely film using a Messermeister Cai Dao.

@@kiltedcripple I don’t doubt this knife has some superior qualities, they just weren’t represented here. I suppose the ginger trick is something. If I had that knife I’d still use my microplane. I have a blunt nosed knife and I prefer a sharp tip rather than heel. Personal preference. Also western knives have evolved so that you can choose bevel angles, spine thickness and overall weight. They aren’t all 20th century French anymore.

@@reddottx I'm an admitted knife need so this kind of stuff gets me very talkative... I'm going to try to keep it reasonable, but don't sue me. Despite the "one knife to do everything" nonsense in Chinese knives, they're using several knives too, they just tend to look like what we call a cleaver. That said, I have 3 myself, from a very thick actual bone cleaver to a cai dao, and I'm not by any stretch a gifted knife user, but in my home cook skills, there are definitely things I reach for the cai dao for over every other knife in my collection. To start here, my thick guy is heavy and solid, you cut chop through small bones quite easily, which you see chef's all over Asia do with poultry or thin pork bones. Still not a viable option on thick bones, that's a job for a band saw, not a knife. My oldest cleaver, inherited from a relative, is an old CCK cleaver, and is a mid thickness, about 5mm, and functions essentially like the cleaver they use in this video. It's heavier than my butcher knife or Henckles 8 inch chef knife. My Mercer is my first real cai dao, and it's stupid thin, a hair under 2mm at the spine, and because it's a full flat grind, the thing cuts like a laser. It's also very light, barely heavier than my Henckles paring knife. I can make deli thin slices of meat like nothing. Thin cuts, like for julienned vegetables, are incredibly easy, and the ease of "slice and move" makes the work flow faster. I bought a brisket slicer years ago, 10 inch long, you've seen them in every doner kebab or gyro restaurant in the world, and it's a damned nice knife, but it can't produce the cuts my cai dao can, it's a much shorter blade, and with a thicker spine, this adds up to meat pulling away from the cuts and not that translucent thin deli cut. As far as hell cuts for precision, clearly, there are various styles of cutting grip, and variable skill levels with a knife reading this, so I will say, for me, getting used to heel cuts for precision over tip cuts was a shift in skills, but I like it better. I feel more in control, and thus safer. That said, there almost nothing I do that requires heel cuts with that cleaver, nor tip cuts with my chef knife. Like, if I'm boning out meat, I cut into it and remove it with the edge of my knife. The only thing I really use heel cuts for is taking the top out of large squash. I need the length of the blade for batoning through the mass. But as an example, if I'm taking the top off a pepper to stuff it, I just use the front corner of my cai dao exactly as I'd use the tip of a chef or pairing knife, you just draw to start the cut instead of stab. The upside is, that flat end yields FAR fewer accidents for chefs-in-training than a tipped knife. Taught both my kids on my older cleaver, will teach my nieces on that knife too. For new knife skills, the added height of the blade and blunt tip is just after to teach that "food claw" holding technique. I have not, and will never, surrender my chef's knife, but honestly, once I got proficient with my cai dao and q couple other knives, I just rarely grab for it. Not saying it's for everyone, it's just way easier for me, and this video, sadly, really makes a better case against buying one than for them, and that's a shame. I usually like this specific channel, and ATK as a whole, but this video is not accurate or demonstrative of the abilities of this style of knife. Made with Lau, Chinese Cooking Demystified, Wang Gang, are all RU-vidrs providing info on the knife, what is does well, what it struggles with, and/or show it in use, and there's a fantastic Korean channel, Aaron and Claire, that showcases that you can, if you prefer, do "Asian" style cuisine/cuts with a Western style chef knife, a cai dao isn't necessary. Just a matter of preference.

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this is why recommending one model is not good...should always list 2

You could read the product review online one of their sites, but if you're not a paying member it'll be behind a pay wall. It's also a few years old now and as the winning Shun cleaver only has limited availability (or has possibly been discontinued), there is a note on the review from this past January saying a retest is forthcoming. Hopefully, that retest will be opened up to include a distinct review of actual Chinese cleavers in addition to meat cleavers. If you can't wait, there is a video clip from a couple of years ago (uploaded May 2020) that is based on the existing review and it names a Best Buy.

It's a common Chinese technique, too.

Smile - "hollow ground", I think - although some knives seem divinely inspired!

Yes the chefs knife needs a rocking motion whereas Asian knives just need a diagonal up-to-down cut

It is a MEAT cleaver and a bad choice for slicing up vegetables and boneless meat. Read some of the other comments for details and don't buy a MEAT cleaver for delicately slicing vegetables.

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The "holes" you see in the Global Meat Cleaver handle are just dimples to improve the grip. Global knives and cleavers are NSF approved and clean up easily. But don't buy it for vegetables, both cleavers ATK is currently recommending for slicing and dicing vegetable are inexplicably heavy MEAT cleavers.

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A transformations from my investment of $4000 to a $12,400 in just 2 weeks , So excited here 😊.

@Billiot

*He's active on Tel'gram☝️*