Glestain Gyuto Chef’s Knife Review: The Dimples Do Work

A number of years in the past, a blurb in a meals journal caught my eye. In it, a chef really helpful a unique-looking Japanese chef’s knife with large dimples on just one aspect of the blade, designed to maintain meals from sticking to it. Knives with little dimples are widespread, however these have been monumental, and it made me surprise if the producer was on to one thing. That knife turned out to be as fascinating because it regarded. Whereas it seems to be specialised tools, it may assist any degree of dwelling cook dinner. Whether or not you might be searching for your first good chef’s knife or your endlessly blade, this Japanese gyuto suits the invoice.

You could have seen dimples (aka hollows or “kullens”) on different knives and questioned whether or not they stored meals from sticking to them, however on Glestain’s blades they’re supersized, and so they work. The Glestain’s dimples—two rows of them on the gyuto, no less—are excessive, like a neat double row of thumbprints on just one aspect of the blade. Lefties like me order theirs with the dimples on the left aspect and righties get them on the proper. Lefties can use the right-handed model (and vice versa) and nonetheless like it; all they’d lose is the non-stick impact of the dimples. I used to be excited to place it to an extended-use take a look at.

Laborious and Sturdy

A gyuto is a kind of chef’s knife that has a form in between the curvy stomach of a German chef’s knife and the near-flat reducing fringe of the French fashion. There are two variations of Glestain’s gyutos, Skilled and Dwelling. I examined each and located them each to be pro-level tools. The key variations are that the Skilled has each a bigger tang (the metallic half that passes by way of the deal with) and a metallic plate on the butt of the knife. That makes it notably heavier–it feels a bit like a tank. Most dwelling cooks and line cooks will desire the Dwelling model for on a regular basis use.

Each variations function a tough metal blade—59 on the Rockwell hardness scale—in a mixture that features chromium, carbon, molybdenum, and vanadium. That mixture creates a tough, skinny, and sturdy blade that resists rust and holds a imply edge. (For extra knife nerdery, try Chad Ward’s wonderful reference, An Edge in the Kitchen.) The Glestains are Japanese-made Western-style knives, high-end Japanese blades with a handles like you’d discover on a standard French or German knives. It’s fairly comfy and evenly balanced and can preserve you content as you plow by way of piles of produce.

Actually, although, we’re right here for these dimples. It is a “regular” knife, so there is not any particular flick of the wrist to make the most of them. It simply took a minute to grasp what to anticipate and the way successfully they functioned.

The dimples are fairly deep and far wider than on different knives. I personal an outdated Mundial-brand slicer, and the Glestain’s dimples are a lot deeper and simply 3 times as extensive. The actual magic occurs when what you are reducing is wider than the dimples.

I bought chopping, actually fortunately so. Dimples or not, it is an attractive knife to work with. Dicing onions felt like I used to be doing it with a supremely good blade, not a magic one. For these used to the curvy stomach of a German-style chef’s knife, the flatter arc of the gyuto takes some getting used to. I cooked Moroccan rooster stew from Vishwesh Bhatt’s cookbook, I Am From Right here, a favorite from 2022. It featured chopped dried figs, which didn’t stick an excessive amount of. I liked the crunch-crunch-crunch feeling of chopping toasted pecans.

Pulling out the brand new Ottolenghi Test Kitchen: Extra Good Things cookbook, I made a daikon model of its kohlrabi tonnato recipe. The daikon was about two inches throughout. I began out by making quarter-inch-thick slices with each the Glestain and my santoku, a extra vegetable-focused Japanese knife. The slices lay down neatly subsequent to the Glestain, however after I switched to the santoku, they caught to it as they might to nearly some other knife. I had related outcomes after I quartered and sliced the daikon.