Curious to know which of the two knives (I suppose some wouldn't call a cleaver a "knife" but for the sake of argument...) which do you prefer to use 95% of the time? At home and/or at work. Love to hear from chefs and ex-chefs.
Hi Dave,This is like asking if I'd rather have a car or a truck. I don't want to take a F-250 to the theater and I don't want to drive a Beamer to deer camp.
Two very different tools. Cleavers seem far less popular than Gyutos but I can't ever recall not having a cleaver in my kit.
Either way Gyuto 95+% of the time for me.
Dave
I agree totally. I'll find out only by spending time using a cleaver (of which there are many varieties as you know...size, eight, some designed for chopping and others slicing). I've done all my cooking to date with a western style chef's knife.It took awhile to develop sufficient knife skills with a chef's knife so that I could do what I wanted to do as quickly and efficiently as I desired.
I tried a Chinese knife for a few weeks, didn't reach that degree of proficiency, speed, and/or comfort, and have no real interest in using one again. My feeling was that the wider blade of the Chinese knife was heavy and clumsy, didn't do western style portioning very well, and didn't help me do anything else better either. To some extent my negative reaction was a product of not spending enough time with it; but on the other hand, why bother?
Neither style is inherently better than the other. I doubt you'll find which kind of knife suits you better by analyzing them without giving each a fair trial.
BDL