The Best Chef Knife
Best for Experienced Cooks
Best Starter Knife
How We Found the Best Chef Knives
170 knives considered
4 experts interviewed
3 top picks
The Best Chef Knives
There’s a reason we call the best kitchen knives “chef knives.” A good chef is a multitasker, so a good chef knife is designed to handle multiple jobs. Think of all the slicing and chopping involved in a beef stir-fry or a chicken noodle soup. You want a single tool that can handle it all. But the best chef knife can’t be defined by a single set of features.
It’s all about hand-feel: The right knife should feel almost like an extension of your forearm. We talked to two chefs, a cooking instructor, and a knife expert, then chopped, diced, and peeled with 11 bestselling chef knives to see which stood out.
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The 3 Best Chef Knives
- MAC MTH-80 Professional Series 8-Inch Chef Knife with Dimples – Most Popular Shun Classic 8″ Chef Knife – Best for Experienced Cooks Victorinox Fibrox 8-Inch Chef’s Knife – Best Starter Knife
The Best Chef Knives: Summed Up
| MAC MTH-80 | Shun Classic | Victorinox Fibrox | |
| The best | For popularity | For experienced cooks | Starter knife |
| Price | $144.95 | $164.95 | $32.95 |
| Weight | 7.1 ounces | 7.3 ounces | 6.6 ounces |
| Inches wide | 1.88 | 1.80 | 2.00 |
| Bolster | Half-bolster | Half-bolster | N/A |
| Knife style | Japanese | Japanese | European |
MAC MTH-80 Professional Series 8-Inch Chef Knife with Dimples
Comfortable and maneuverable
Balanced weight
Dimpled blade
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Why we chose it
Comfortable and maneuverable
The MAC MTH-80 Professional Series 8-Inch Chef Knife with Dimples is the brand’s “most popular knife for everyday use” — and it was the most popular knife in our testing room. It’s maneuverable enough to chop mint leaves, slice carrots, and peel butternut squash, offering clean cuts without requiring perfect form. “The MAC knife is one of my favorites,” Brownstein told us. “The weight/balance is perfect for me. It’s wide enough to keep your food together and it keeps a great edge.” Bob Tate, knife sharpener and owner of Seattle Knife Sharpening & Supply, agrees that the MAC is good for smaller hands and for people who want to make thin cuts. It’s a Japanese-style knife, which means it’s going to be smaller in general than a European-style knife.
Balanced weight
At 7.1 ounces, the MAC is right in the middle of our contenders in terms of weight, but the blade is only 1.88 inches across — which means you never feel like you’re wielding a cleaver. In fact, the MAC’s satisfying heft was a running theme, with one tester describing the knife as “thin and light, but balanced.” This balance might have been helped along by the MAC’s half-bolster. Two of the three full-bolstered knives that we tested got dinged for feeling “clunky” or “heavy,” while the knife without a bolster felt “almost too light” to some of our testers.
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Dimpled blade
The MAC’s granton edge — aka the “dimples” along the side of its blade — are designed to prevent food from sticking to the knife as you chop. Brownstein noted that these divots don’t make a huge difference; the best way to keep sticky food off is to rub the blade of the knife with a little plain vegetable oil before cutting things like garlic or potatoes. But testers did notice that the MAC accumulated fewer bits of carrot and mint than dimple-less knives.
Points to consider
Expensive
The MAC is one of the best kitchen knives around, but it comes at a high price. It’s not more expensive than most high-end knives, but if you’re a beginner cook, spending over $100 for a kitchen knife might seem like too much. That said, if its price isn’t a deal breaker, the MAC is a great knife for beginners and pros alike. When we asked Brownstein which knife she’d like to take home with her, as a thank you for helping us with the tests, she chose the MAC.
Shun Classic 8″ Chef Knife
Functional, beautiful design
Unique D-shaped handle
Not for beginners
Requires high level of maintenance
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Why we chose it
Functional, beautiful design
The Shun Classic 8″ Chef Knife made a vivid impression when we started chopping. Testers had no trouble halving a butternut squash, and the knife was maneuverable enough to peel said squash in “nice long strips.” It was also the only knife we tested that made that satisfying “shwing” sound when we sliced.
The Shun, like the Mac, is a lightweight Japanese knife with a half bolster. “I love Shun knives,” Brownstein told us. “They’re beautiful — like a functional art piece — with great balance and good quality steel.” At 7.3 ounces, with a blade that’s 1.8 inches wide, it had a heft and balance similar to the MAC.
Unique D-shaped handle
The Shun got an overwhelmingly favorable response from experienced chefs for its grip and balanced weight — and even novices liked it better than the Japanese-style Miyabi knives we tested, which had blades and handles that felt stiff and clunky. In fact, the Shun’s handle was a standout feature. Rather than being totally round (like some traditional Japanese knives), it’s D-shaped: The curve of the D fits into the curve of your fingers as you grip the knife.
Points to consider
Not for beginners
The Shun is clearly designed for people who already know their way around a kitchen. Several novice cooks in our group struggled to maintain a comfortable grip, with one lamenting, “It just doesn’t feel right.” The knife’s spine was also less forgiving, rubbing against index fingers that slid out of a proper pinch grip.
Because the handle is designed with a professional pinch grip in mind, if you’re not maintaining proper form, your mileage may vary. But if you master the right technique, your Shun can stay sharp for a long time. “My favorite brand of knife is Shun,” Chef Ariane Resnick told us. “Their Western-style Japanese knives can go ages without sharpening, even with serious use.”
Requires high level of maintenance
The trade-off for the Shun’s visual elegance is that the knife requires careful maintenance. The handle is made of a wood/plastic composite, which is more delicate. Brownstein noted that too much water exposure would be bad for it; you’ll need to dry both the knife and its handle thoroughly after use.
The knife is also Damascus-clad: The blade is made of steel, then coated with an outer layer of Damascus steel. While Damascus on its own is quite strong, when it’s only an outer layer, the knife edge is more likely to chip. In fact, Shun’s website includes this warning in its FAQ: “Chips can happen due to improper cutting technique. Shun Cutlery is designed to be used in a smooth, slicing motion — and never in a forceful, up-and-down ‘chopping’ manner.”
Victorinox Fibrox 8-Inch Chef’s Knife
Budget-friendly
European-style knife
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Why we chose it
Budget-friendly
The Victorinox Fibrox 8-Inch Chef’s Knife is an excellent option for people who want to start cooking regularly but aren’t yet ready to invest a lot of money, offering a solid performance for around $45. Tate agrees that the Victorinox is the best knife for people who are on a budget (although he, like our testers, prefers a wood handle to the Victorinox’s plastic). Brownstein told us that commercial kitchens often order this knife for their line cooks. If you’re looking for low cost but respectable quality, the Victorinox is a good place to start.
European-style knife
The Victorinox is a European-style knife, meaning the blade is both wider and slightly thicker than the Japanese-style MAC and Shun. It only weighs 6.6 ounces (lighter than both the MAC and Shun), but the blade measures 2 inches across at its widest point. Even though it didn’t feel quite as maneuverable as the Shun or the MAC — with one tester noting she “didn’t like the large handle for cutting small things” — she believed the Victorinox was “great for large things” like squash.
Points to consider
Plastic handle
The Victorinox’s handle was its most controversial feature. Made of Fibrox, with a slightly textured pattern, it offers a no-slip grip even if your hands are wet. Our fingers felt undeniably safe. But the handle also felt bulky to some testers, with several people noting the material seemed “cheap” or “flimsy.” One tester even told us, “Each time I use it, it’s more comfortable. But it feels cheap, so I have a mental block there.” If you’re on a budget and new to cooking, however, the Victorinox is your best option.
How We Chose the Best Chef Knives
Eight-inch knives
While many aspects of the best chef knife come down to personal preference, blade length and material were rare areas of consensus: All the experts we spoke with recommended 8-inch, stainless steel blades for home cooks.
“Eight inches is great,” chef Ariane Resnick explained. “Twelve or 13 is enormous! I’d only recommend that if you do a lot of cutting really large food.” Bon Appetit also recommends 8 inches, noting, “Residential-kitchen counters, nonindustrial cutting boards, and civilian muscles can’t handle anything much bigger than that.” This size allows for both precision tasks like dicing garlic and larger jobs like chopping root vegetables or cuts of meat.
Stainless steel blades
We placed an emphasis on stainless steel knives. While there are benefits to ceramic — it can be sharper, keep an edge longer, and prevent rust — the downsides are significant. Ceramic is extremely brittle, and if you chop into a rogue bone or hit your cutting board at the wrong angle, there’s a good chance that your blade will chip.
Bestsellers across nine brands
We compared buying guides from Serious Eats and Consumer Reports, noted the preferences of users in cooking forums like Chef Talk and Chowhound, then polled our experts to see which brands they preferred, bringing our list of 28 brands down to just eight consistently popular options.
- Global MAC Messermeister Miyabi Shun Victorinox Wusthof Zwilling
Anolon, BergHOFF, Calphalon, CasaWare, Chicago Cutlery, Clauss, Cuisinart, Curtis Stone, Ginkgo, Ginsu, Ivo Cutlery, KAI, Ken Onion, KitchenAid, OXO, Pfeilring, Rosendahl, Sabatier, Wolf, Zyliss
Each brand makes multiple models (Miyabi has eight different 8-inch stainless knives), so we contacted each company to ask which models were bestsellers — we wanted designs that were time-tested and proven. If we were directed to more than one bestseller, we ordered them both. Then we brought those knives to our testing kitchen to see which ones would make the cut.
Best-performing
Deborah Brownstein, cooking instructor and owner of Mangia Bene Catering and Kitchen Coach Cooking School, visited our testing room to help us put our contenders through their paces.
To grade on hand-feel, we put our knives through four common kitchen tasks. With Brownstein keeping a watchful eye for good technique, we minced mint leaves, diced carrots, peeled butternut squashes, and butterflied chicken breasts. Our testing group was comprised of a range of ages, body types, and hand sizes — not to mention vastly different levels of cooking experience — so we were surprised to find that there was a consensus as to which knives felt best.
- Global G-2 8-Inch Chef’s Knife MAC MTH-80 Professional Series 8-Inch Chef Knife with Dimples Messermeister Meridian Elite Chef’s Knife Messermeister Park Plaza Carbon 8″ Chef’s Knife Miyabi Kaizen Chef’s Knife Miyabi Morimoto Red Series 600 S 8″ Chef’s Knife Shun Classic Chef Knife Victorinox Fibrox 8-Inch Chef’s Knife Wusthof Classic Chef Knife Zwilling J. A. Henckels Professional S 8-Inch Chef Knife Zwilling J. A. Henckels Forged Razor Series 8″ Chef’s Knife
How to Care for Your Chef Knife
Know which parts of your knife are which
No single feature makes a knife objectively better. Rather, they’re indicators of how the knife is designed to perform. But it’s good to know the names of each feature to understand your personal preferences.
- Butt: The back end of your handle. Heel: The back end of the blade, closest to your fingers. Tip: The front half of the blade. Not to be confused with the point. Point: The literal pointy bit at the end of the knife. Edge: The sharp side of the blade. Be careful. Spine: The top of the blade. Some people place their index fingers along the length of the spine as they chop, but this is considered bad technique. Tang: The steel that extends past your knife blade and into the handle. When a knife has a full tang, it means the steel goes all the way to the butt. Bolster: The thick band of steel between the knife handle and the knife heel. A full bolster extends all the way into the heel; a half bolster stops before the heel. Some knives have no bolster at all. Granton Edge: The dimples on the blade. Not all knives have them. In theory, these stop food from sticking as you chop.
Keep your chef knife properly sharpened
As Rachel Muse, private chef and founder of Talk Eat Laugh, puts it: “If you buy a professional knife, you need to keep an edge on it, otherwise it’s like owning a car and not putting fuel in it.” If there’s a professional knife sharpener in your area, you can outsource the task. If not, MAC and Shun both offer mail-in sharpening (Shun offers it for free). You can also learn to sharpen your knife yourself.
Hone your knife
A knife honing rod, or honing steel, is designed to keep your knife functioning well between sharpenings. Honing straightens the edge of a knife, while sharpening literally grinds away part of the steel to produce a sharper edge.
Brownstein recommends honing your knife each time you pick it up (the whole process should only take 10 to 20 seconds) or, if prepping a lot, whenever it starts to feel dull. She offers these tips:
- Hold the steel upright and move the blade swiftly across and down the steel at a 25-degree angle, as if you were cutting slices of cheese. After you hone, check your knife’s sharpness by gently sliding it across a soft tomato. The knife should bite into the fruit right away without pressure.
Not all of our experts recommend honing. “People often hone incorrectly,” Resnick told us, “so unless you know you’re doing it right, it’s not worthwhile.”
Learn the right way to chop
If you’re looking to improve your chopping game, Bob Tate offers these tips:
- Imagine your cutting board is a clock. Most people point their knife toward noon, placing the food horizontally across the cutting board. But if you angle your knife so that it points toward 10 o’clock (and adjust your food to stay parallel), the knife becomes an extension of your forearm and is easier to handle. Keep your knife in contact with your cutting board or work surface. There’s no need to lift it off the cutting board for each cut.
Only use your knife on food. When Brownstein teaches cooking classes, she’s astonished at how many students use their chef knives for tasks like cutting open boxes. “A chef’s knife is your most important kitchen tool,” she says. “Buy a pair of kitchen shears for boxes and bags!”
Avoid the dishwasher
Regardless of manufacturer instructions, never put your chef knife in the dishwasher. And while you’re at it, never toss it into the sink. Every time the knife blade bangs against something — like the plastic spines of your dishwasher or the metal sides of your sink — it has the potential to dull, and you want to keep the blade as sharp as possible for as long as possible.
Instead, wash your knife by hand with standard dish soap, then use a clean dish towel or paper towel to rub it completely dry. (If you let it air-dry, it can develop water stains or rust spots.)
Chef Knives FAQ
All of our experts felt that knife sets were a waste of money. “Buy knives one at a time,” Muse told us. “Each chef will have their own mixture; a set is too constricted and too prescriptive.”
After you’ve invested in a quality chef knife, you may want to expand your collection with any of the following:
- A serrated bread knife for cutting loaves of bread A paring knife — which has a very short blade — for tasks like paring apples or potatoes A boning knife or filleting knife, depending on the cuts of meat and fish you typically cook
As a general rule, if the purpose of the knife is in its name (bread knife, filleting knife, even steak knife or grapefruit knife) it marks a task that will be difficult to accomplish with an all-purpose chef knife.
The best steel for chef knives typically lands between 55 and 60 on the Rockwell hardness scale — that’s hard enough to retain a sharp edge, but soft enough to avoid being overly brittle. (You want your knife to be able to take a beating without fracturing.) The harder a steel, the longer it will stay sharp but the more difficult it will be to re-sharpen on your own, often requiring professional service to get it back its factory condition. If you’d like to learn more about their specific properties, the guides at KnivesAndTools. com and The Manual are great places to start.
According to Bob Tate, you should hold your kitchen knife in a pinch grip: Grip toward the front of the handle, with your thumb and your curled index finger pinching the base of the blade.
At a glance, Santoku knives and chef knives look nearly identical. But each caters to a different cooking style. Santoku knives are shorter, lighter, and thinner, with a rounded tip and a flat edge. This means that cutting requires an up-and-down slicing motion. A chef knife’s blade is curved and allows you to cut by rocking the knife against the cutting board.
A Santoku excels at tasks that require agility, like mincing delicate herbs or making precise cuts. The trade-off is that it’s not as versatile as a chef knife and is likely to struggle against larger tasks, like cutting up a chicken or slicing through squash.
Traditionally, Japanese-style knives are inspired by katana swords, with sharper edges and better edge retention. Japanese-style knives are typically honed and refined by hand and fitted with a straighter edge than those of European-style knives. They’re thinner as well, usually consisting of a single bezel edge, and they are prone to rusting. They also usually contain more carbon steel or soft iron material than their European counterparts, which makes the knives harder, but not necessarily stronger.
European-style knives, by contrast, are thicker, heavier, and stronger. Consisting of a rounder blade and finished by a machine instead of human hands, European-style blades are known for being more durable and made with less carbon in their steel than their Japanese counterparts — this means they aren’t as “hard,” but they also won’t break or chip as easily.
The quickest way to determine whether or not your knife needs sharpening is to conduct what is known as the Paper Test. Hold a folded, but not creased, piece of paper in one hand, and lay the edge of the knife at an angle against the top of the paper with your other hand. Slice outwardly. If the knife fails to slice smoothly and cleanly, it needs to be sharpened.
Having a dull blade on your knife is potentially dangerous; the dullness of the edge will force you to apply more pressure when you’re cutting, which will result in a higher chance of slipping and/or missing your intended cuts. Here are some of the best ways to sharpen your chef knife:
- Scrape the edge of your knife against a long steel rod tool called a sharpening steel Send the knife in to the manufacturer for sharpening Use an electric or manual sharpener, which requires you to simply hold your blade over the device and let the device do the work Use a whetstone. Because of its difficulty, this option is only recommended for professional use.
About the Authors
The Reviews. com staff is dedicated to providing you with all the deep-dive details. Our writers, researchers, and editors came together from Charlotte, Seattle, San Juan, Fort Worth, Fort Lauderdale, San Diego, and Chicago to put this review together.
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Table of Contents
- The Best Chef Knives Our Picks Comparison Chart Most Popular Best for Experienced Cooks Best Starter Knife The Search Guide to Chef's Knives FAQ
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