Cutting, Chopping, Slicing

For a Chinese cook, cleavers are indispensable. This preference doesn’t come just from sentiment or habit but from the demands of the cuisine itself. Since Chinese cooking involves far more hacking, chopping, mincing, and scraping than Western cooking, it would require an enormous number of different types of knives had the cleaver not been invented. Larger and heavier than regular cutting knives, Chinese cleavers provide both weight (crucial to rough cutting) and dexterity (essential to fine cutting). Once you are familiar with them, you will find they are indeed splendid, irreplaceable tools. But before you use a cleaver, you need something to chop or cut on.