Henckels 7″ Santoku

I was at Target with Connor today and upgraded my main chopping knife. Got a 7″ Henckels Santoku hollow edge. (It was $39 as a set with a 3″ sushi-style paring knife.)

Apparently Henckels makes no fewer than six different grades of this knife. Mine, the Forged Synergy, is the lowest quality. The higher end ones are almost $200 per blade. But even at the low end it’s a beauty. The blade runs through and over the handle, as a solid piece of steel. It’s also dishwasher safe, which I appreciate because I’m cruel to my knives.

Cutting with it is a dream. I can cut through the skin side of a ripe tomato without even holding the tomato. I was making a basil chiffonade, and all I had to do was drag the point of the knife across the basil using only the weight of the knife and it made perfect slices of basil. The hollow edge makes the knife thinner along the blade, allowing for narrower slices and for less “grabbing” when cutting through dense stuff. Slicing through a large onion was noticeably smoother with the slimmer blade.

It’s a poor workman who blames his tools. But it’s also a poor workman who has poor tools.

(BTW, I didn’t go into Target to buy a knife. It was an impulse, a consolation prize. I really wanted to score a food mill, because I’m making a creamy tomato soup for dinner. A food mill would be ideal for mashing everything up nicely while also pulling out the seeds and skins. But I must have been dreaming to think Target would have such a patrician device. I was also there to get Connor a new booster seat, and I scored him a beaut. It has comfy pads, an ergonomic headrest, suede paneling, and twin reading lamps, one over each shoulder. I kid you not. He doesn’t know about the reading lamps yet, but one day when he least expects it I’ll pop some batteries in there and rock his mini-world. I didn’t plan to get the super-deluxe, but the other dad who had arrived just before us in the booster isle grabbed the last one of the model I had my eye on — basically the same seat, minus the suede and the reading lamps. Connor wins, unknown kid loses.)