Oroshigane & Oroshiki

Oroshigane, a steel grater with very fine spikes, is useful for grating wasabi, ginger, and daikon radish. But graters called oroshiki, which are made of porcelain, are better than the metal type because they do not impart any metallic flavor to the food. They are also safer for your hands; you need not worry about scraping and injuring your skin, as can easily happen with sharp steel spikes.

There are two kinds of porcelain graters, one with larger spikes set widely apart on the grating surface and another with smaller, more closely spaced spikes. The former is good for coarsely grating daikon, lotus root, and mountain yam. The latter, for producing finer results, is good for grating shoga ginger, wasabi, and garlic. Western graters cannot perform these precision jobs satisfactorily, which is why so many students have asked me how to produce a teaspoon of grated ginger or ginger juice.