How do you cut a head of cabbage?

C

coxhaus

Joined
Nov 8, 2006
Messages
73
I was thinking of thin knives and then cabbage popped into my head and I thought I do not like thin blades when I cut cabbage. I always use my Henckels 11.5-inch heavy chef's knife. That way if I am mad, I can chop at the cabbage. Most of the time I just cut a cabbage head in half. Wedge the core out of each half then cut into shape. If I try to use a smaller thinner blade chef's knife it feels thin like I could bend and break the knife if I wanted to so I like the heavier knife feel. How do you guys deal with a head of cabbage? What do you use?

I can cut up a head of cabbage with a smaller knife but it is not near as fast to accomplish the same task as my heavy 11.5-inch chef's knife. Plus, the knife does not feel as good doing it with a thinner blade.

Like always I am no pro just an old guy that has a lot old German knives for many many years. Some of them are 50 years old that were my mom's growing up. I am 67 years ago.
 
Either my Wusthof chef's knife or my Yaxell gyuto. And pretty much the same as you - halve it and then core it.

For quite a while I had a Dexter Russell "Chinese vegetable cleaver" that in reality was much more like a nakiri. I did some edge thinning and spine rounding on it and it worked really well on cabbages, broccoli, etc. It is actually really functional knife. I gave it to my niece a while back.
 
Last edited:
I really do not like cleavers. I have my mom's Henckels somewhere around here. It is not big enough to cut cleanly through a large head of cabbage in 1 chop. It would take a fairly big cleaver. The cleavers do a lot of damage to the cutting boards when I played around with my mom's.
 
I use my 10" Victorinox chef's knife. I cut it in half, then in quarters. From there, I can turn each quarter, and with one slice on each quarter, cut the core out. (cut the corners off)

Then, I lay down the quarters and slice them. Next, turn the cutting board 90° and cut them again.
 
coxhaus said:
I really do not like cleavers. I have my mom's Henckels somewhere around here. It is not big enough to cut cleanly through a large head of cabbage in 1 chop. It would take a fairly big cleaver. The cleavers do a lot of damage to the cutting boards when I played around with my mom's.
Click to expand...

It is a cleaver really in name only and like I said, much more the size/shape of a nakiri. Don't remember exactly but around 2".
 
Last edited:
Found a pic...

JaU6emn.jpg
 
8" Wusthof chef.
Not too thin, just sharp, don't want a lot of flex.
Cabbage core side up, slice straight through the core then cut once more into quarters.
Then it's easy to just slice the core off of the quarters.

Cut the quarters in half then pop into food processor and pulse to desired consistancy.
Add slaw dressing....
Excuse my extra rambling, made coleslaw yesterday...for like the ten thousandth time lol.:rolleyes:
 
A thin chinese cleaver is nothing like a heavy bone cleaver other than rectangular shape.

I hate cabbage so problem solved for me. ;)
 
coxhaus said:
I always use my Henckels 11.5-inch heavy chef's knife. That way if I am mad, I can chop at the cabbage. Most of the time I just cut a cabbage head in half.
Click to expand...

Here I am trying to visualize coxhaus swinging wildly his big long blade in the kitchen. I pity anyone or anything unfortunate enough to be caught in its path. Please don't take out your anger and frustration on a poor cabbage with a kitchen knife. Usually, it doesn't end well for the knife and/or the butcher block.

As for anything that requires chopping/cleaving of a big hardy vegetable, I just use an old German cleaver.
 
-Kiku- said:
Here I am trying to visualize coxhaus swinging wildly his big long blade in the kitchen. I pity anyone or anything unfortunate enough to be caught in its path. Please don't take out your anger and frustration on a poor cabbage with a kitchen knife. Usually, it doesn't end well for the knife and/or the butcher block.

As for anything that requires chopping/cleaving of a big hardy vegetable, I just use an old German cleaver.
Click to expand...

Don't try this at home. HAHA.

You must have a really big cleaver to chop a large head of cabbage well. I played with a medium size cleaver. It did not chop a cabbage very well and it did a job on my cutting board. I decided I would rather have a large chef's knife than a cleaver.
 
I've recently made a chef's knife from 1/16" 1084 and noticed that it's very "sticky" in a head of cabbage.

My henkels chef's knife is the same.
Once the full height of the blade is in the head, it gets significantly more difficult to cut.

Is cabbage just the right density/moisture to be difficult to cut? Is there anything that can be done with the geometry if a knife to make it better?
 
I've cut a lot of cabbage. Everything I have used also sticks. I think it may be because cabbage is so dense & it is not as moist as say....an onion. My favorite thing we currently have is a Japanese tall vegetable cleaver type thing. It is wicked sharp & has a very thin edge. My mom gave it to me because it was so sharp & she kept cutting herself with it. I have only sharpend it 1x in 20 yrs.
 
dfarm said:
I've recently made a chef's knife from 1/16" 1084 and noticed that it's very "sticky" in a head of cabbage.

My henkels chef's knife is the same.
Once the full height of the blade is in the head, it gets significantly more difficult to cut.

Is cabbage just the right density/moisture to be difficult to cut? Is there anything that can be done with the geometry if a knife to make it better?
Click to expand...

This is why I say I don't like thin knives in cabbage. I like my thicker Henckels 290mm chef knife. I add force and it goes right through. With a thin knife I feel like if I was to accidently add a side force the knife would break, snap, so I like a bigger chef knife.
 
So it's not that the thicker knife cuts better, you just feel better about pushing harder on it?
 
I feel safer with a heavier chef knife. I feel like I could break a thin knife. Same thing with spaghetti squash, large Texas size watermelons. My wife never would cut these things until I showed her to use the big chef knife.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top