What Are Meat Cleavers Used For?

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Updated August 2026 · 8 min read · UK Japanese-steel knife specialists

That distinction is the whole reason this guide exists. Search for a cleaver and you will be shown three quite different knives that happen to share a silhouette, and the reviews underneath them are full of people who bought the wrong one. Here is what each is actually for, why some of them have a hole in the blade, and which one is worth your money.

What is a meat cleaver?

A meat cleaver is a butcher's tool. The blade is short front-to-back but very tall, usually rectangular, and thick along the spine. It is not sharpened to a fine edge in the way a chef's knife is, because a fine edge would fold the first time it met a rib. Instead it works like a controlled axe: you lift it, let the mass fall, and the wedge splits whatever is underneath.

That is the honest definition, and it is narrower than most people expect. A true bone-chopping cleaver is heavy, blunt-ish and specialised. Most of the knives sold as "cleavers" in a domestic kitchen shop are not that knife at all.

Meat cleaver vs Chinese cleaver vs nakiri

Three knives, one silhouette, three completely different jobs. The Chinese cleaver, or chukabocho, is not a bone chopper. It is a tall, thin, keen-edged vegetable knife that happens to be shaped like a cleaver because the height is useful for scooping. The nakiri is the lighter Japanese-style version of the same idea. Neither has the mass or the spine thickness to survive bone.

	Butcher's meat cleaver	Chinese cleaver (chukabocho)	Nakiri
Typical weight	Heavy, roughly 700 g to 1.4 kg	Middleweight, roughly 250 g to 450 g	Light, roughly 150 g to 250 g
Spine thickness	5 mm or more	Around 2 mm to 4 mm	Around 2 mm
Edge	Thick and obtuse on purpose, so it survives impact	Thin and keen, ground at a shallow angle	Thin, keen and dead straight
What it is for	Splitting bone, joints and cartilage; breaking down large cuts	All vegetable prep, boneless meat, scooping, crushing garlic	Fine, uniform vegetable cuts with a straight push
Through bone?	Yes, that is the entire point	No	No

Every cleaver-style knife we sell is the vegetable kind. If you want the full story on the lighter end of that family, our spotlight on the nakiri goes deeper, and if you are trying to work out which blade shape suits your prep, the best knife for cutting vegetables compares them side by side. For genuine butchery, the Japanese butcher knife guide is the better read.

Why do cleavers have a hole?

The hole in a cleaver blade is there so the knife can be hung up. A cleaver is too tall for a knife block and too big and sharp to rattle around in a drawer, so the hole lets you hook it on a rail, a peg or a butcher's hook. It also takes a little weight out of the top of the blade, where you least want it.

In a working butchery that is not a nicety. A cleaver left flat on a bench gets knocked, and an edge that meets a steel bench or another blade will dull or dent. Hanging it keeps the edge in free air and keeps a very heavy, very sharp object off a surface where someone might put a hand. Our guide to knife storage covers the domestic version of the same problem.

One thing the hole does not do is stop food sticking to the blade. That is the job of the small dimples, or grantons, you see along the side of a santoku. The hole is too far from the cutting edge to make any difference to a slice of potato. And not every cleaver has one, so its presence or absence tells you nothing about how good the knife is.

What a cleaver is genuinely good for

A true Western butcher's cleaver is thick and heavy, and that is what makes it good at sectioning meat from the bone and splitting large cuts down to size. The thin vegetable cleavers most home cooks actually buy, including ours, are a different tool entirely, and this is where most of the confusion comes from.

Used for what it is actually built for, a vegetable cleaver is one of the most satisfying knives in a kitchen:

• Dense, awkward produce. Butternut squash, swede, celeriac, half a cabbage, a whole pineapple. The blade height means you can put your other hand flat on the spine and push down through the whole thing in one committed cut.
• Volume prep. A tall, flat edge meets the board along its entire length, so a straight downward push gives you clean, even slices with no rocking and no sawing.
• Scooping. This is the one people fall in love with. Turn the blade on its side and the 10 cm face works as a bench scraper, carrying a whole board of chopped onion to the pan in one go.
• Crushing. Lay the flat of the blade over a garlic clove or a stick of lemongrass and lean on it. Faster than any press, and one fewer thing to wash.

If you genuinely need to chop through bone at home, splitting a rack of ribs or halving a duck, you want a heavy Western butcher's cleaver, and we do not sell one. What we sell is the vegetable kind, and honestly that is the one most home cooks reach for far more often.

There is a second reason not to swing a Japanese-steel blade at bone. VG10 is hardened to around 60 HRC, which is what lets it take and hold a very keen edge, but hard steel is less forgiving of impact than the softer European steel in a butcher's cleaver. It resists bending, so under a heavy shock it chips instead. Every one of our cleaver-style knives says the same thing on its own product page: not for bones or frozen food.

How to use a cleaver safely

A cleaver feels strange for the first ten minutes because it is so much taller than a normal knife, and then it feels obvious. Five things make the difference.

• Get the board right first. You need something solid that will not slide. A damp cloth or a sheet of kitchen paper under a wooden board stops it walking. You do not need a butcher's block, but you do want end-grain or edge-grain wood rather than glass, stone or hard plastic, which will blunt the edge fast. Our chopping board guide covers the options.
• Hold it like a handshake. Wrap your whole hand around the handle rather than pinching it. If you want more control on a delicate cut, put your index finger flat along the spine.
• Push, do not hack. With a vegetable cleaver almost everything is a single downward push, sometimes with your free hand pressing on the spine for the last of a squash. The chopping-block swing belongs to the heavy butcher's version.
• Keep your guiding hand curled. Knuckles forward, fingertips tucked back, the flat of the blade resting against your knuckles. The tall blade actually makes this easier than a normal knife does.
• Let go of it properly. Never try to catch a falling cleaver, and never leave one lying flat on a crowded worktop. Hang it, sheathe it, or put it straight back on the rack.

Our cleaver-style knives

All three are vegetable cleavers, all three are hand-wash-only, and none of them should meet a bone. Prices and ratings below were checked on 21 August 2026.

Knife	Price	Steel	Rating	Best for
Haruta 7.7" Nakiri Cleaver – best overall	£89.99	VG10 Damascus, 67 layers	4.88 (112)	Dense produce, one confident veg blade
Nakiri / Chukabocho Cleaver – best value	£69.99	High-carbon steel	4.7 (105)	The classic cleaver shape for least money
Aiko Black Damascus 7.5" Cleaver	£89.99	VG10 core, 67 layers	4.94 (120)	Looks, and matching a wider range

Still weighing it up? Browse all single knives or the full chef knife range.

How to look after a cleaver

A cleaver is a big lump of steel that spends its life meeting wet vegetables, so care is mostly about water and impact.

• Rinse and dry straight after use. Not at the end of the evening. The high-carbon blade in particular will spot if you leave it wet on the drainer.
• Never the dishwasher. Heat, salt and detergent will dull the edge, stain the steel and swell a wooden handle. This is the single fastest way to ruin a good knife.
• Hone regularly, sharpen occasionally. A few passes on a hone or a fine stone between uses keeps the edge true. When it stops biting a tomato skin, take it back on a whetstone – our 400/1000 and 3000/8000 combination set is £59.99 and rated 4.87 from 119 reviews. Browse all sharpening stones.
• Store it hanging or sheathed. A rack, a magnetic strip or the scabbard it came with. Loose in a drawer is bad for the edge and worse for your fingers.
• Keep it off bone, frozen food and hard boards. Glass, stone and steel surfaces will damage a keen edge in a single cut.

Our full Japanese knife care guide goes through all of this in detail. Looked after properly, a good cleaver is a fifteen-to-twenty-year knife.

Frequently asked questions

What is a meat cleaver used for?

A true meat cleaver is a butcher's tool, used to chop through bone, joints and cartilage, split poultry and break large cuts down to size. Its weight does the work. The Chinese cleaver and the nakiri look similar but are thin vegetable knives, used for squash, cabbage, volume prep, scooping food off the board and crushing garlic.

Why do cleavers have a hole?

The hole is there so the cleaver can be hung from a hook, a rail or a peg. A cleaver is too tall for a knife block and too big and sharp to keep loose in a drawer, so hanging it is the safest way to store it and it keeps the edge from knocking against other metal. The hole also takes a little weight out of the top of the blade. It does not stop food sticking, which is what the dimples on a santoku are for.

What is the difference between a butcher knife and a cleaver?

A butcher knife has a long, curved, relatively thin blade made for slicing, trimming and separating muscle, working around bones rather than through them. A cleaver has a short, tall, rectangular blade, and in the Western butchery form it is thick and heavy enough to chop straight through bone. One steers around the skeleton, the other goes through it.

Can you cut through bone with a Chinese cleaver or nakiri?

No. Despite the shape, a Chinese cleaver (chukabocho) and a nakiri are thin vegetable knives with a keen, shallow edge, and hitting bone with one will chip it. Hard Japanese steel such as VG10, at roughly 60 HRC, chips more readily under impact than the softer European steel used in a butcher's cleaver. For bone, use a heavy Western bone cleaver or kitchen shears.

What size cleaver should I buy?

For home cooking, a blade around 7 to 8 inches long and at least 3 inches tall suits most people. That is enough height to keep your knuckles clear of the board and to scoop chopped food up on the flat of the blade, and enough length for big vegetables, without being unwieldy on a normal domestic chopping board.

The short version

If someone says "meat cleaver" they usually mean a heavy butcher's tool for going through bone. If they are holding a tall rectangular knife in a domestic kitchen, it is almost certainly a Chinese cleaver or a nakiri, and it is a vegetable knife. Both are excellent. They are just not interchangeable, and treating the second like the first is how people chip good blades.

For most home cooks the vegetable cleaver is the more useful buy by a wide margin, because dense produce and volume prep come up far more often than splitting a carcass. Pick a blade around 7 to 8 inches, keep it dry, keep it off bone, and it will still be cutting in twenty years.

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