A Udon kiri or Soba kiri (そば切 or 蕎麦切り包丁) is a specialized knife

Knife

A knife is a cutting tool with an exposed cutting edge or blade, hand-held or otherwise, with or without a handle. Knives were used at least two-and-a-half million years ago, as evidenced by the Oldowan tools...

 used in the Japanese kitchen to make soba

Soba

is the Japanese name for buckwheat. It is synonymous with a type of thin noodle made from buckwheat flour, and in Japan can refer to any thin noodle . Soba noodles are served either chilled with a dipping sauce, or in hot broth as a noodle soup...

 and udon

Udon

is a type of thick wheat-flour noodle of Japanese cuisine.Udon is usually served hot as noodle soup in its simplest form as kake udon, in a mildly flavoured broth called kakejiru which is made of dashi, soy sauce , and mirin. It is usually topped with thinly chopped scallions...

 noodles. The knife is also sometimes called Menkiri bocho (麺切り包丁). To make soba or udon the dough is flattened and folded, and then cut with the menkiri bocho to produce long rectangular noodles. For this purpose the menkiri bocho has a straight and long cutting edge to cut the noodles straight to the board. The knife is usually heavy to aid in the cutting of the noodles, usually with a slight forward motion.

See also Japanese kitchen knives

Japanese kitchen knives

There are a number of different types of Japanese kitchen knives. The most commonly used types in the Japanese kitchen are the deba bocho , the santoku hocho , the nakiri bocho and usuba hocho , and the tako hiki and yanagi ba .-Types of Japanese kitchen knives:There are...

 and the list of Japanese cooking utensils.