Name: 菜切り包丁 (なきり) Nakiri bōchō
Type: Western Style
Best for: Vegetables
Sizing: 120-240mm
What is a Nakiri knife?
The Nakiri knife – written in Japanese as 菜切り包丁 (なきり) and pronounced Nakiri bōchō. It is a Western-style Japanese kitchen knife, typically measuring 120-240mm in length. We recommend around 165mm as the most suitable size for most people. This knife is best used for vegetables.
The Nakiri knife is a Western-style Japanese vegetable knife with a thin and broad rectangular blade, a straight cutting edge, and a flat, blunt tip. It is specifically designed to excel at quickly and efficiently chopping, slicing, dicing, and mincing vegetables and fruits, and is popular throughout Japan as a staple for home cooks and vegetarians.
The Nakiri knife is often referred to as the double bevel version of the Usuba, which is a specialized single bevel Japanese vegetable knife recommended for culinary professionals. The Nakiri is very similar in profile with its straight edge, and works best when using an up-and-down chopping motion as the whole blade can come into full contact with the board to ensure clean slices of vegetables each time. Compared to the Usuba, the Nakiri’s double bevel edge provides balance to the cutting motion and makes it easier to achieve clean straight slices.
What does Nakiri mean?
Literally translated, ‘Nakiri bōchō’ in Japanese means ‘knife for cutting greens’ or ‘leaf-cutter’, which highlights the Nakiri’s designed purpose: to excel at quickly and efficiently chopping vegetables.
The Nakiri is commonly found in Japanese households and is a staple favorite of vegetarian cooks. Its long, flat edge allows you to cleanly cut broad vegetables in one downward motion all the way to the chopping board, while its thin blade ensures that the skin of the vegetable remains intact, producing fresher cuts of vegetables with crisp edges.
What is a Nakiri knife best for?
The Nakiri knife is best for chopping, slicing, dicing, and mincing vegetables and fruits quickly and efficiently. The Nakiri’s broad rectangular blade with its straight, flat edge works best when using an up-and-down chopping motion as the whole blade can cut all the way to the cutting board, ensuring clean slices of vegetables each time rather than an ‘accordion’ of half-connected slices.
The significant height of the blade from the spine to the edge gives plenty of knuckle clearance, and the Nakiri may also be turned upside down to use the spine of the blade to scrape ingredients across the chopping board without damaging the blade.
The Nakiri has no trouble chopping even harder root vegetables, as the long and tall blade allows you to swiftly cut down on the vegetable, producing a clean chop. It is also excellent at shredding cabbages or other large leafy greens. The flat edge is also suitable for easily performing the rotary peeling technique, known as katsuramuki in Japanese cuisine.
Nakiri knife characteristics
The Nakiri knife has a long, thin, and rectangular-shaped blade with a straight edge, and is available in various sizes between 120mm to 240mm. The most popular size choices are 165mm and 180mm.
The typically tall blade of the Nakiri provides comfortable knuckle clearance. It is also worth noting that the Nakiri’s tall, flat rectangular blade gives it a unique advantage, as the length of the blade will remain the same even after repeated sharpening. For other Japanese knives such as the Santoku or the Gyuto, their curved blade edges will become shorter over time as the blade is sharpened.
The Nakiri knife has a thin and tall rectangular blade, a straight cutting edge, and a flat, blunt tip.
The straight blade edge is suitable for cutting all the way down to the cutting board without the need for a rocking motion nor a pull or push-cut, as there is no ‘belly’ on a Nakiri blade. Rather, the straight edge works best when used in a vertical up-and-down motion.
The long and tall blade allows you to swiftly glide through the vegetable in a single downward stroke, producing a clean chop on even harder vegetables such as root vegetables or thick squashes. The thinness of the blade also ensures that delicate vegetables can be cleanly cut without ripping the skin, and helps to achieve crisp edges on each slice.
Although the Nakiri’s shape often leads it to be mistaken for a small Chukabocho (Chinese cleaver), it should be warned that the Nakiri is too thin and lightweight for heavier work and should avoid cutting bones or very hard materials, like frozen food.
The Nakiri blade is double bevel, meaning that the blade is ground on both sides to achieve a balanced and acute cut.
This also means that the Nakiri can be used by both right-handed and left-handed users, unlike a single bevel knife which would require a separate knife for left-handed cooks, often at a higher premium cost.
What are common variants of Nakiri knives?
The Nakiri is often referred to as the double bevel variation of another type of traditional Japanese vegetable knife, the Usuba.
The Usuba is the single bevel alternative to the Nakiri, and features a similar profile as it was similarly developed for cutting vegetables. The Usuba has a thicker and heavier blade than the Nakiri, and is mostly used in a professional setting by sushi chefs and the like.
Here you can read more about the Usuba.