Review: It’s A Santoku Knife … It’s A Shear … It’s A Sheartoku!
Posted on 8 November 2007 under Kitchen Gear, Knives, Reviews: Products
It’s not too often I see any new kind of kitchen gadget that’s actually useful. But I’d spotted this little beastie in a store the other day and instantly became curious. Made by KitchenAid, manufacturer of the venerable stand mixers, this device is called a Sheartoku. Quite simply, it’s a 4.5″ santoku knife with an additional non-sharpened section. Apart, the santoku can be used just like any other. But hooked together with its rotating appendage (which is fairly thick and cannot be sharpened at all), it becomes quite a nice pair of kitchen shears.
This morning after picking one up, I took it over to Chef Tad Cousino of the Frog Leg Inn for his opinion.
Chef Tad can sharpen a kitchen knife exceedingly well. He uses a sharpening steel for the main sharpening then finishes the edge with a diamond sharpener. He was rather impressed with the santoku section of the Sheartoku, giving it, on a scale of one to five, a “Doode, this is flippin’ sweet!” The santoku held an edge quite well, staying sharp even after cutting the bottoms off a few fresh dumpling squash.
The santoku only has the dimples/divots/whatchacallits on the right side. The left side of the blade is flat so it works correctly as a shear. If you’re left-handed, this might be a problem when using just the santoku … but we’re not sure as none of us are left-handed.
Connected with the rest of the device to create shears, the action is snug. The pivot is pressure-fitted into the other side. It also has a bit of a ball on it. Because of this, there’s smooth blade-on-”blade” action all the way down as the shear is closing.
Our one concern is whether or not the metal continues all through the handles. We really can’t tell. If not, the plastic might separate from the metal under pressure. But we did put a lot of pressure on the handle when cutting the bottoms off those squash and nothing moved.
I left the Sheartoku at the restaurant for others to use, so we’ll see what happens over the long haul. It’s looks good so far though.
For $9.99 at Meijer and Target, the Sheartoku should probably find its way into the Christmas stockings of quite a few cooks this season. They’ll get shear enjoyment out of it.
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