Intended use: What’s the most important job for your knife? Will you be slicing meat? Chopping root vegetables? Will you ever split an acorn squash? A knife you use for eight hours every day might have different features than something you only use for half an hour every week. We came up with these core questions that you need to ask yourself to make a good knife choice: Dave Martell runs the kitchen knife forums, and they get a lot of requests for knife recommendations from new members. We talked to two kitchen knife experts to narrow down a list of the most important characteristics in a knife.
At price brackets above $100, those are the refinements you should be looking for, more a matter of taste than qualities we can list on a chart. We can steer you through the important specs and pitfalls of mass-manufactured knives, but it’s very difficult to tell you what your favorite balance, edge profile and handle shape are going to be. But if you’re going to shell out more than $100 for a knife, you should really feel it in-hand for yourself. Knife nerds of all stripes will probably protest that we aren’t even testing $100 or $200 knives (not to mention the hallowed Kramer designs or other $300+ options you’ll find at fine retailers).
A $40 knife should already cut well if you keep it sharp, so we looked specifically for better, harder steel that will hold a razor-sharp edge longer than ordinary knives do.
Benchmark knives quality kitchen upgrade#
Upgrade knives: We opened up the purse strings a little bit to see what you get for slightly more than a mid-tier knife. The ideal knife in this category is also a great starter blade for someone who wants to up their fine-cooking game but has no intention of learning about steel types or mirror-polished edges. Mid-tier knives: These are knives you can give to a friend as a wedding gift without blowing a $50 budget, but also without being embarrassed by cheap-looking molded handles. We included plastic-handle knives from Victorinox and Wüsthof because they’re so well-regarded by other reviewers, but we also included a much cheaper knife from Mercer to get a fair comparison of what’s possible on a shoestring budget.
Benchmark knives quality kitchen professional#
Utility knives like this one from Kiwi brand are often the real workhorses in professional kitchens, but we wanted to show options more refined than that. We settled on three groups, each with slightly different goals and priorities:īudget knives: These finalists are a set of rough-and-ready blades with molded handles that were as cheap as $13. We analyzed the stats and reviews of 39 models and narrowed that group down to 12 finalists. Then, to take a step back from the hype, we talked to some more wizened experts for their takes on what a cook really needs in a knife.Īfter consulting with Dave Martell (long-time kitchen knife sharpener, knife maker and owner of the Kitchen Knife Forums) and Chef David Hendricksen, national culinary director for the Art Institutes Culinary School, we put together a list of criteria and began comparing retail offerings. We also made a deep dive into online discussion among the chefs at Cheftalk and the never-ending knife discussions on reddit and the Kitchen Knife Forums. Studying reviews from Cook’s Illustrated, Serious Eats and Wirecutter gave us a list of must-test blades, but also quickly shaped a bell curve for our assessment of the best kitchen knives for the money. He grew up around a lovely set of Henckels, and he’s been peripherally aware of the movings and shakings in the kitchen cutlery world. Though he long ago gave up his dream of becoming a bladesmith himself, he’s made a few cooking knives. Our researcher for this review has been collecting and using knives of all sizes since he got his first Wenger Swiss Army “MacGyver knife” at age five or six. In this thread on Kitchen Knife Forums, a “beater” is a $240 handmade piece for one enthusiast, while for another it’s a dollar-store knife that he customized with his collection of sharpening gear.
When we looked around for opinions of high-end knife enthusiasts, it was clear that value is a very relative scale among knife buyers. Best German-style knife: Mercer – Renaissance.
The Tojiro – DP is Japan’s thin, hard-wearing wonder that slices all day, but it isn’t the bargain it used to be. If you’re looking for a bargain, the Greater Goods – 0556 is also great. The Nexus – BD1N is our winner, with a new steel that keeps an edge for a long time while also being easy to care for. Our cutlery enthusiast took eleven of the best kitchen knives for under $100 and put them through two months of testing.
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