If you already own a gyuto and you're wondering whether a sujihiki is worth the money, the short answer is: not yet, probably. A sujihiki is a slicer. A gyuto is the knife for everything. The sujihiki does one job better than the gyuto does it, and the gyuto does forty jobs the sujihiki can't do at all. So the question isn't really which one, it's whether that one job happens in your kitchen often enough to justify a second long knife.

I've had both on the rack for years, and I'll try to be honest about when the sujihiki earns its hook and when it just looks nice hanging there.

What a gyuto is, in one breath

The gyuto is the Japanese chef's knife. Double bevel, 210 or 240mm for most people, with a blade tall enough to clear your knuckles, a gentle belly, and a usable tip. It push cuts, it rocks a little, it chops, it slices, it does the tip work on a shallot. If you only own one Japanese knife this is the one, and that's not a controversial opinion anywhere.

What a sujihiki is

筋引, which translates roughly as "sinew puller." The sujihiki is a gyuto that's been stretched and starved. Same double-bevel grind, same sort of steel, but 240 to 300mm long and only 35 to 40mm tall at the heel, where a gyuto of the same length would be 48 to 52. The profile is flatter, with less belly, and the whole thing is thinner behind the edge.

Every one of those changes is there for one reason: drawing the blade through something in a single long stroke. A roast. A side of salmon. A brisket point. A block of tuna, if you don't own a yanagiba. The length means you don't have to saw. The narrowness means less steel dragging through the meat, so less friction, so cleaner slices. The thinness is the same idea.

And the narrowness is also the catch. A 38mm-tall blade gives you almost no knuckle clearance on a board, so for chopping an onion or going through a pile of carrots, it's awkward. Not impossible. Awkward enough that you'll reach for the gyuto every time.

Where the sujihiki actually wins

Three places, in my kitchen.

Carving cooked meat. A roast chicken, a leg of lamb, a pork loin. The gyuto does it, but a 240 gyuto has a lot of belly and you end up doing short strokes with the front half of the blade. A 270 sujihiki goes through the whole roast in one pull and the slices come off clean and even. On a holiday bird the difference is visible on the platter.

Portioning raw fish. Salmon fillets into portions, a tuna loin into sashimi blocks, trimming the skin off a fillet. The thin narrow blade follows the skin without digging in, and the length means you can take a whole fillet in one pass. I use a 270 sujihiki for every bit of fish work at home and I've honestly never wanted a yanagiba.

Trimming. Silverskin off a tenderloin, fat cap off a brisket, the membrane off ribs. The sujihiki's thin tip gets under the membrane and the length lets you draw it off in a long stroke rather than picking at it.

That's it, really. If those three things happen in your kitchen weekly, a sujihiki will get used weekly. If they happen at Thanksgiving and one other time, it's a once-a-year knife.

Where the gyuto wins, which is everywhere else

Vegetables, full stop. The gyuto's height and belly make it the better knife for every onion, carrot, cabbage, and herb you'll ever cut. The tip does garlic and shallots. The flat section does the push cuts. The sujihiki can do all of this but it feels like using a filleting knife to chop an onion, because that's more or less what you're doing.

Anything with bones nearby. Neither knife should go through bone, but the gyuto's heel is strong enough to separate a chicken thigh at the joint. A sujihiki's thin edge is not, and I've seen people chip one doing exactly that.

Everyday speed. The gyuto is already in your hand. That's the honest reason it wins most of the time.

What slicing with each one actually feels like

Take a rested roast beef, say a two-kilo topside. With the 240 gyuto I set the heel at the far edge and draw the knife back toward me, and about two thirds of the way through the slice the belly of the blade lifts off the meat and I have to push forward again to finish. Two strokes, sometimes three, and the slice has a faint ridge where the strokes met. Perfectly fine for a Tuesday. Not what you want on a platter.

Same roast with the 270 sujihiki, and the whole slice comes off in one pull. The blade doesn't lift because there's no belly to lift. The slice is even from end to end, and because the blade is so narrow there's less meat clinging to it, so the next slice starts clean. It takes about a third of the time and the platter looks like someone who knew what they were doing cut it. That's the entire argument for the knife, and it's a good one if you plate roasts.

Now take an onion. The sujihiki goes through it fine, but my knuckles are brushing the board on every cut because the blade's only 38mm tall, and the flat profile means I'm lifting the whole knife for each stroke instead of rocking through. It's slower, and after the second onion it's annoying. The gyuto's extra height and belly are exactly what the job wants. Which is the entire argument for not pretending the sujihiki is an all-rounder.

The length question

People assume a 270 sujihiki is a big knife and a 240 gyuto is a reasonable one. In the hand it's the other way round. The sujihiki is so narrow and light that a 270 feels like a long petty, while a 240 gyuto has real presence. So don't let the number scare you. For a sujihiki, 240 is the minimum worth owning, 270 is right for most home boards, and 300 is for people who regularly slice a whole brisket or a big side of salmon.

For a gyuto, the how to use a gyuto page goes through the length question. 210 for a small board or a smaller hand, 240 if you've got the room.

Can a long gyuto replace a sujihiki?

Partly. A 270 gyuto slices a roast nearly as well as a 270 sujihiki. It has more belly, so you'll feel the slice curve a little, and it's taller, so there's more drag through a dense roast. But for a cook who does a lot of big roasts and also wants an all-purpose knife, a 270 gyuto is a reasonable one-knife compromise. It's what a lot of restaurant cooks run.

Can a sujihiki replace a gyuto? No. Not for a week. You'll hate it by the second onion.

Steel and grind, briefly

Both come in every steel going, and the steel guide covers the choices. One thing specific to the sujihiki: because it's doing long draw cuts on soft food, it benefits from being very thin and very polished, so a hard steel finished on a fine stone suits it. A 6000-grit edge on a sujihiki is noticeably better for sashimi than a 1000-grit one. On a gyuto, which spends its life hitting a board, a slightly toothier edge off a 3000 holds up better and most cooks won't feel the difference.

Sujihikis in VG-10 or AUS-10 are the sensible middle. SG2 ones are lovely and chip if you look at them wrong. Carbon ones are the traditional choice and rust if you forget them for an hour, which, on a knife you use once a week, you will.

A few I'd actually point you at

Not a shopping list, just the ones that come up when someone asks.

Misono UX10 sujihiki, 240 or 270. The classic Western-handled Japanese slicer, Swedish stainless, thin, polished, not cheap. If you want one knife that'll last thirty years this is the usual answer.

Tojiro DP sujihiki, 270. VG-10, Western handle, a third of the price of the Misono, and for slicing a roast twice a year it's more than enough.

Any Sakai-made wa-handled sujihiki in Ginsan or VG-10. These are the ones that feel like a stretched gyuto in the best way, and the wa handle keeps them very light. Expect to pay a bit more and to buy a saya for it.

For the gyuto side, the best gyuto under $150 page is where I'd start, and I'll say, with the obvious bias, that our own Classic 8" is an AUS-8 gyuto built for exactly the cook who doesn't want to think about steel.

Looking after a sujihiki

Same as any Japanese knife, with one wrinkle: it spends most of its life in a drawer. A knife you use daily gets washed and dried daily and never has time to rust. A knife you use on Sundays can sit damp in a block for a week after one careless wash. So the sujihiki is the knife on my rack that gets the camellia oil wipe, and it lives in a saya rather than loose, because 270mm of thin edge in a drawer is a disaster waiting for a hand. If yours is carbon steel, double all of that.

Questions that come up

Is a sujihiki the same as a carving knife? Close enough. A Western carving knife is usually thicker and softer, often with a granton edge, and sometimes shorter. The sujihiki is the Japanese version: thinner, harder, longer, no scallops. If you've got a decent Western carving knife already, the sujihiki is an upgrade, not a different tool.

Sujihiki or yanagiba for fish? Sujihiki for a home cook, nearly always. The yanagiba is single bevel and its own project. I wrote about that pairing separately and the answer didn't change.

Can I sharpen a sujihiki the same way? Yes. It's a double bevel, same angle, same stones. The only difference is the length makes it a bit fiddlier to keep the angle consistent all the way to the tip. Go slow on the first few.

Wa handle or yo handle? For a sujihiki I lean wa, because the knife is already light and the wa handle keeps the balance forward where you want it for slicing. For a gyuto it's taste. The handles page covers that.

What I'd tell a friend

Buy the gyuto first. Use it for a year. If you find yourself carving roasts with the front third of it and wishing it were longer, or portioning fish and wishing it were thinner, that's the sujihiki tapping you on the shoulder. Get a 270. If that feeling never comes, you didn't need one, and you've saved yourself the hook space.

Mine gets used most Sundays and every December. The gyuto gets used every day. Both are the right knife. They're just the right knife for different amounts of your week.

Andrew Kuzmin · Editor-in-Chief, Okami Blades