what knives do chinese chefs use

As a daughter of immigrants from Hong Kong, I spent every night of my childhood cooking and eating traditional Chinese dinners with my family. Our nightly food-prep routine—smashing knobs of ginger, slicing slivers of beef for stir fry, chopping veggies—doubled as nonnegotiable bonding time. Quickly, what started as a chore grew into a precious part of our days.

From those decades’ worth of meals, one knife, shuffled from hand to hand, emerged as everyone’s preferred cooking tool: the Chinese cleaver. Also known as a Chinese chef’s knife, the cleaver is a staple of the cuisine, rivaled in utility only by the wok and chopsticks. We reach for it for every task from crushing aromatics to filleting fish—it’s the ultimate do-it-all tool.

My own cleaver is a brandless model that my father picked up in a small shop in New York City’s Chinatown 40 years ago (somewhat similar to this one). I’ve found it tough to track down my cleaver’s exact origins, but it’s still in great shape, which shows that when treated with care, these tools can become family heirlooms. If you’re seeking to invest in a cleaver of your own, you can probably find a good one at a restaurant-supply store or Chinese grocer (if you have one in your area), as long as you know what to look for. Or, for a sure bet, you could try one of the following expert-recommended options that are ubiquitous in Chinese kitchens:

Chinese Chef’s Knife, also called 菜刀 or Cai Dao (pronounced like “tsai dao”. You can think that the Chinese Chef’s knife is a combination of a bench scraper and the “normal” Chef’s knife.

What is a Chinese cleaver?

A typical Chinese cleaver has a large, rectangular blade bound by a wooden handle. It differs from a Western-style chef’s knife in a number of ways. For one, it lacks a pointed tip and instead has a squared-off blade with a broad surface area. A Chinese cleaver is also significantly heavier. Mine weighs a little over 10 ounces (by comparison, Wirecutter’s top pick for a Western chef’s knife weighs 6.6 ounces). Whereas the weight of a Western chef’s knife is distributed evenly between the blade and the handle, a Chinese cleaver’s weight is concentrated in the blade, making it front-heavy. To the uninitiated, the shape and heft can be intimidating—my father once accidentally dropped our cleaver on the kitchen floor, and it was the tile, not the knife, that fractured into pieces. But with practice, I learned that gravity is on my side, as the force and momentum can help produce clean cuts with less effort.

Generally, these knives are classified into two types. First, meat cleavers, or gudao (“bone knife” in Mandarin), tend to weigh more, have thicker blades, and are meant for hacking through hard bones. The other type is a vegetable cleaver, often called a caidao (“vegetable knife”), a slicer, or a Chinese chef’s knife. A caidao, like the Shi Ba Zi Zuo model that Sin recommends, has a thinner blade and is intended for more delicate work. There’s also a third style that’s a bit less common, but I find it to be the most useful. Often referred to as a chopper, it’s a hybrid of the other two, with a blade that is thickest at the heel and thinnest at the front end. Choppers, like the Dexter Russell and the Chan Chi Kee, combine the utility of a gudao and a caidao to be the most versatile option in the kitchen.

How to use your cleaver

The Chinese cleaver represents a force of both strength and precision; the same tool that can carve up a chicken can serve to gently score the outermost skin of a mushroom cap. A chopper-style cleaver like mine is especially versatile, as it’s suited to both large, aggressive movements like cleaving and fine, precise ones like mincing and slicing.

Take the way my dad uses the chopper to make a steamed-fish dish that’s a favorite in our household. With a whole fish in one hand and the cleaver in the other, first he scrapes the belly of the blade down the length of the fish to descale it. Then he lays the fish on a cutting board and uses the heel of the knife to chop off the tail. Finally, since scallion rings would overpower the dish’s subtle flavors, he wields the front end of the blade to slice hair-thin ribbons for a wispy garnish. (Once you’re a proud cleaver owner, there’s a universe of Chinese knife methods to explore.)

A cleaver doesn’t replace all knives—for example, it can’t saw through a loaf of bread as well as a serrated knife can. But if you’re looking for an all-in-one tool, a Chinese cleaver comes pretty close. In the gallery below, you can see just a few examples of the many (and sometimes unexpected) ways you can use one.

What is a Chinese Chef Knife?

FAQ

What kind of knife do Chinese chefs use?

Which of the following knives is popular in Chinese cuisine?

Why do Chinese chefs use cleavers?

How thick is a Chinese chef knife?

What kind of knife do Chinese people use?

You’ll find a lot of use out of this type of knife. Vegetable cleavers or Chinese chef’s knives are the most commonly used knives in a Chinese kitchen, dating back to the Ming Dynasty.

What is a Chinese chef knife?

In Chinese, it’s called a cai dao (菜刀), which literally means “vegetable knife” if you split up the characters. (Also known as a “cai dao” in Mandarin.) A Chinese chef knife is incredibly versatile, like a Swiss army knife without all of its extensions. Cutting: You can do everything from julienning vegetables to jointing chickens.

What is a chef’s knife used for?

Commonly, the chef’s knife is used for trimming fat off of meat, chopping meat and vegetables, fileting fish, julienning vegetables for spring rolls, slicing ginger, crushing and mincing garlic, and dicing up herbs like chives and scallions. I find that my cuts are cleaner and more even when I’m working with a Chinese cleaver.

How many types of knives are there in a Chinese Kitchen?

There are two major types of knives you might find in a Chinese kitchen: On the blade, there are 3 sections. Each has a different purpose. Even though it’s sometimes called a Chinese cleaver, this type of knife is much thinner than other cleavers that are designed to hack through bones or thick meats.