These knives are really not so delicate as all that. A few things I'd do with a Wusthof or whatever that I don't do with my Masamoto:
1. When crushing garlic cloves to get them out of the shell, I press on the flat of the knife instead of whacking.
2. I do not shear through most chicken bones, e.g. cut off the nubs at the ends of drumsticks. Ribcages are fine so long as you don't wedge the knife in and wiggle it back and forth -- just shear right down and it's fine. Cartilage is no problem. In short, I don't use it for most bone-in butchering, but I'd only do that using a Wusthof with poultry: for any other kind of meat I'd use a different knife anyway.
In general, if there's something you think maybe you shouldn't do with this knife, it's not something you really ought to do with any chef's knife, though you can probably get away with it with a heavier, thicker-bladed knife. You should have something else around to do really heavy labor, the stuff that doesn't come up often. If you've got a big Wusthof or something around, use that. If you've got a Chinese cleaver, use that. And so on. What you want is a big, heavy, durable thing to use brutally. If bone-in butchering is something you do a lot, you might want a proper French-style boning knife (desosseur) or something like that. But 99% of what those knives can do, a Japanese-style chef's knife (gyuto) can do too.  |