Chinese cleaver/knife

The Chinese “cleaver” is actually a knife in cleaver shape. It’s used for cutting, not hacking through bone (which would ruin it)—the Chinese equivalent of the chef’s knife.

I recently looked at a bunch of Chinese cleavers, eventually buying the Dexter/Russell S5198. I’m a big fan of Wüsthof cutlery, but their 7″ “heavy” Chinese cleaver didn’t move me—and at $80, it would have to. The Joyce Chen 7″ cleaver is more knife-like than most and (like the Dexter/Russell) got a 5-star review. But I decided I liked the more cleaver shape.

Now that I’ve used it, I like it a lot. It’s very handy: after chopping stuff, you can turn the cleaver flat and slide it under the chopped food like a spatula to make the transfer to the pan. The only drawback I’ve found so far is that the height of the blade does prevent me from, say, holding onion slices together as I cut them, so I can then cut the whole sliced onion at right angles to make the little cubes. But on the whole, I find I use it pretty much constantly.