Review: Misen Chef’s Knife | Wired

Among all the Tools and gadgets that can fill a kitchen, the knives are undoubtedly the most personal and indispensable. Admire one in the collection of a chef and prepare for an unsolicited ear of his story, but don’t expect an offer for you to try it. My collection is modest but I am proud of it. Among these, my favorites are a Wüsthof Classic Cook’s Knife and mine Tadafusa Santoku. The Wüsthof skillfully does everything, from grinding a shallot to cutting a chicken and the corner of the more acute blade of the Santoku cuts the vegetables like a scalpel.

A new chef knife from Menen He promises the best of both knives, making statements on gigantic killers on innovative geometry, in high -grade steel, a Santoku -style blade corner and free sharpening for life. More impressive, it boasts what calls the “honest price” of $ 65, a number that is less than half of the price of high -end knives that calls its competition.

Intrigued, I called one to test. Misen started as a kickstarter but is sending its knives this autumn. Days later, I had the knife of my chef, my Santoku and the chef Misen knife aligned with each other on my cutting board. The most surprising feature of the Misen was the side view, which resembled both knives, which combined the most flat fusion of the Santoku and both the handle that sweep it upwards on the tip of the chef’s knife, a sort of westernized version known as a Gyuto.

I bought a bag full of food to cut and declared the game in progress. The differences between the three knives were immediately evident. While the Misen looks more like a traditional chef knife, it does not really behave like one. The Wüsthof has a great “belly”, a German style that encourages a rocking cutting movement with the tip of the knife planted on the scoreboard, the rear part moves up and down, while everything slips back and forth at each blow. The Santoku style is based more to maintain its flavor blade parallel to the cutting board, sliding forward with each movement downwards.

For me, the Misen often felt more comfortable in the use of a Santoku -style blow. It was particularly evident when I was working through something high like a cabbage wedge or cut a pile of herbs. Try a stroke that allows the Wüsthof to feed that type of work with the Misen and will look like a flat thud every time the length of the blade affects the cutting board. Having said that, I felt confident that the best blow for everything I cut with the Misen would become evident with use, and I would have improved over time.

Prep work

In my yield of the three knives with a food bag, the Misen has never become my favorite weapon. The first thing I worked was cutting the bacon into dice from a quarter -inch for a potato and leek soup. Cut the thick slices in long strips was fine, but when I went to the transversal cut, things became … risky. The Wüsthof cut cleanly, creating beautiful and orderly corners and edges. Misen needed a clumsy blow to get the same result, otherwise the cubes slightly crushed. He had similar difficulties with the final strokes that cut a chilli pepper in Brunoise’s little cubes.

Like the Wüsthof, the Misen used its weight to easily cut through a rust potato and just like the Wüsthof, the slices attached themselves on the side of the knife with the strength of the suction cup, a common problem that my Santoku sits thanks to the leaf on the side of its blade. All three knives have set fire between leeks and chives. The Wüsthof and the Misen both performed admirably by cutting a chicken into pieces, including the ignition through the sternum, something I would not have done with my Santoku.

On the other hand, Santoku is my knife to be done for most vegetables, unless it is something really firm in which I need to lean, but here I noticed something peculiar. Misen has published its corner of the blade at 15 degrees similar to Santoku, unlike the wider corner of the knives of most of the chef, but just like my Wüsthof, the Misen has never felt like my Santoku similar to that of the scalpel.

Slice control

Despite these doubts, that attractive price loomed big and called a Lameths pair to decode what was happening.

“Most people will evaluate their advantage in the first 10 minutes of use,” said Daniel O’Malley of Epicurean Edge In Kirkland, Washington, who explained that a diligent knife sharpener can put a fairly sharp edge on most knives, but the poorest blades will not keep that edge for a long time. “Really, what we should worry is how they feel about 12 months later.”

On the phone, I led O’Malley to the Misen website, in which the company speaks of what makes its knife special and how the knives say they confront their highest competition. He went silent for a while.