切り方 – 8 Must know Japanese Cooking Cuts
If you like to cook the learning to use a knife is essential. If you want to learn to cook Japanese food or are just learning Japanese you will definitely want to learn how to say the different types of cuts. Below are 8 must-know cutting methods for Japanese cooking.
INDEX
薄切り
薄切り means thin cut in Japanese. It is a very thin, 2mm cut or so.
輪切り
Next, 輪切り means round slices. This is pretty straightforward. Things like tomatoes, daikon and so on which you can cut into a round shape would be called 輪切り.
https://japaneseuniverse.com/2024/02/18/pac-man-in-japaneseconcepts-behind-development-to-global-icon/半月切り
Another fun cut is the half-moon or 半月切り. In order to do this cut, you would basically cut into circles or the 輪切り cut and then cut that in half. That will leave you with a nice half-moon shape.
みじん切り
Onions, garlic or whatever. One popular way to cut is by mincing things. In Japanese you would use the word みじん切り which is basically the same as mincing.
せん切り
Next, we have a hard-to-do cut that will require a sharp blade. せん切り is where you cut or shred things such as cabbage into this strings.
短冊切り
短冊 are colorful strips of paper on which someone writes their wishes or desires on during the Japanese holiday, Tanabata. Since this type of cut looks similar to these strips of paper it is called 短冊切り.
くし形切り
くし形切り means comb-shaped cut. This shape looks similar to the 半月切り. The difference though is that it is a cut at an angle so it gets thinner as you go closer to the center and thicker as you go to the edge. If you have ever cut an apple into quarters that would be the same shape as くし形切り.
ザク切り
The word ザク切り comes from the sound, ザクザク for cutting things like vegetables in one chop in succession.
This type of cutting pretty much means chopping things up in fairly large chunks.
Resources
- 野菜の切り方 – Kikkoman (Japanese)
- 薄切り – CookPad(Japanese)
- 半月切り – Kurashiru (Japanese)
- みじん切り – Housefoods (Japanese)
