Shun Classic Nakiri Knife 16.5cm

A CLASSIC JAPANESE VEGETABLE KNIFE

Nakiri is simply Japanese for “vegetable knife.” Once you get the Shun Classic Nakiri in your hands, you’ll soon see why both professional chefs and good cooks around the world choose this beautiful and extremely useful tool whenever they have quantities of fruits or vegetables to chop, slice, or dice. With its straight blade, edge, and spine, the nakiri isn’t rocked like a chef’s knife. Instead, use a simple push cut and enjoy the clean, swift work it makes of vegetables of all kinds. For daily salad preparation or chopping vegetables for stir-fry, it can’t be beat. Finely chopping onions is fast, easy, and with the Shun Classic Nakiri’s blunt end, safer, too.

The Shun Classic Nakiri is part of the Shun Classic line of tasteful and contemporary cutlery. The Shun Classic line features beautiful Damascus-clad blades and D-shaped ebony PakkaWood® handles. Yet behind these handcrafted knives’ beauty is function: razor-sharp blades offering top performance. Shun’s proprietary high-performance VG-MAX steel, which provides incredible edge retention, is clad with Damascus stainless steel, then ground and bead-blasted, revealing the flowing pattern of the layered steel. The result is a line of knives that are sharp, durable, and corrosion resistant, as well as beautiful to behold. The Shun Classic line also offers you the widest assortment of both traditional culinary blade shapes and cutting-edge designs, so you can always find the right knife for the task.

A traditional Japanese knife for working with vegetables
Hand-sharpened 16° double-bevel blade (32° comprehensive)
Steel: Proprietary VG-MAX cutting core, 34 layers each side (68 total) stainless Damascus cladding
Handle: D-shaped ebony PakkaWood®
Blade length: 6.5 in. (16.5 cm)
Handcrafted in Japan

The Shun Classic line (Shun’s largest and most popular line of knives) features “D-shaped” handles. If you look at the endcap of a Shun Classic, you’ll see that the handle isn’t perfectly round. Instead, it curves to the right and there is a gentle ridge on the right-hand side. End-on, the shape resembles a capital letter “D.” This D-shaped handle is one of the traditional Japanese handle styles. There, the handle contour is referred to as a “chestnut” shape. Generally, traditional Japanese handles are either round, chestnut shaped, or hexagonal and come straight off the spine of the blade without the hand contour that is often found in Western-style knives.

The rounded ridge in a D-shaped or chestnut handle is intended to fit comfortably into the curve of the fingers as they curl around the handle when using a chef’s pinch grip. When combined with the correct grip, this slight contour helps ensure a stable grip and precise control of the knife.