A great knife is the cornerstone on which a great meal is crafted. But if you ask 3 cooks what would make a terrific knife, you can probable get at minimum 5 responses. The reality is that what can make the ideal knife for you will depend on several things, together with your consolation level with knives, the dimensions of your palms, and what type of food you like to cook.
That mentioned, there’s a reason your simple 6- to 8-inch chef’s knife is ubiquitous: It truly is the most multipurpose knife. The chef’s knife is able of dicing veggies, slicing meat, chopping herbs and nuts, and, in a pinch, it’ll even go by means of little bones with no way too much issues.
There is a bewildering array of chef’s knives readily available, from grime-affordable to incredibly expensive specialty blades. To support you make feeling of it all, we sliced and diced with dozens of knives until eventually a basic reality emerged: A inadequately-made $10 blade you sharpen each and every working day is far more helpful than a $200 blade which is boring. Each and every knife demands to be sharpened, some just have to have it more than others. Considerably of the price tag big difference in knives comes down to the good quality of components, which in convert usually interprets into how nicely the blade holds its edge.
We caught typically with 8-inch blades, the sweet location for the basic chef’s knife. Tests involved the things you would do in your individual kitchen—peeling, filleting, dicing, chopping, cubing, slicing, and all the other conventional prep perform for meats and veggies. Below are our picks.
Up-to-date December 2020: We’ve extra the pretty common International G-2 and up to date pricing.