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The Best Kitchen Knives for All Your Slicing, Dicing, and Chopping Needs

We've got picks for the best chef's knife, bread knife, and more.

By
Ariel Kanter
Ariel Kanter
Ariel Kanter
Commerce Director
Ariel Kanter is the director of commerce at Serious Eats, where she manages everything from equipment reviews to gift guides. She's been with the site since 2016. Her writing has also appeared in New York magazine, Time Out New York, amNewYork, Afar, Today and Refinery29.
Learn about Serious Eats' Editorial Process
Updated November 08, 2024
Six chef's knives laying on a white countertop

Serious Eats / Vicky Wasik

One of the most important things I've learned during my time at Serious Eats is that if you want to be a good cook, you need a good set of knives—and you need to take care of them. You'll want to sharpen and hone your knives, clean them well, and store them safely.

Another important knife lesson: While it may seem convenient, purchasing a whole set of knives in one of those blocks isn't always the best option. As with sets of pots and pans, you'll generally end up overpaying for less important pieces and under-spending on the ones you'll reach for most.

This is why we've taken the time to separately review individual types of knives, testing to see which performs the best at a variety of tasks—after all, you won't use the same knife to slice bread as you would a terrine, or the same knife to both peel a shallot and carve a turkey. Below, you'll find our picks for the best-performing chef's knife, santoku, paring knife, bread knife, and more.

Because knowing how to properly maintain and store knives is just as important as the knife itself, I've also included our favorite sharpeners, honing steels, and accessories. There's a lot to cover here, so let's get...chopping.

Things to Consider When Buying Knives

Material and Maintenance

Misono Swedish Carbon Steel Gyuto

Serious Eats / Ashlee Redger

Most kitchen knives are made of stainless steel or carbon steel, and often with varying levels of each (for example, some knives are high-carbon stainless steel). Stainless steel is more forgiving in that it's malleable and won't chip, and oftentimes can be kept in decent shape for a while just by running the edge over a honing rod. It's low maintenance, and won't rust or get covered in splotches after washing or use.

Carbon steel requires more maintenance: After use, it needs to be dried off completely and wiped down with mineral oil to prevent rusting. It's also more brittle than stainless steel. But carbon steel does have its merits: it's easier to sharpen and often sharper overall out of the box. In the end, choosing which material depends on how much effort you want to put into maintenance.

What Kitchen Knives Do I Need?

a collection of kenji's knives on a black countertop

Serious Eats / J. Kenji Lopez-Alt

As mentioned, if you had to buy one knife, make it a chef's knife. These versatile blades are good for chopping and slicing, and you can even break down a chicken with them. A paring knife is nice to have for tiny tasks, like supreming citrus or coring strawberries, while the toothy blade of a serrated bread knife makes it easy to cut crusty loaves or slice slippery tomatoes. Those are the big three, and beyond that, it's all about having fun and loving knives, like we do.

A santoku knife is a fantastic Japanese-style all-purpose blade that's a little more compact than a Western-style chef's knife and offers a push-cut chopping experience. Another blade that could be of interest is a petty knife, which is like a longer paring knife; they're great multipurpose blades that can slice through joints on a chicken or chiffonade some basil. Then, there are meat cleavers, which are sturdy, large knives that bring the heft and can splice through chicken breast bones or even hardy produce like winter squash. In short, there's a whole wide world of fantastic knives out there, and this article is just the tip of the iceberg.

Our Favorite Kitchen Knives

The Best Chef's Knives

There is no knife more essential than a chef's knife. The ultimate multipurpose blade, it can do just about anything that needs to be done, whether you're chopping an onion or carving a roast. If, for some reason, you have space for only one knife in your kitchen, this is the one to get.

We tested 34 knives for our review of the best chef's knives, and our contenders included both Japanese- and Western-style knives (Western blades are often heavier and more curved than their Japanese counterparts). To find the best ones, we spent days slicing tomatoes, dicing onions, and cutting up a whole lotta carrots. As a result, we found eight winners for every budget and style preference. Our favorite Western-style knife is the Wüsthof Classic Chef's Knife; it's sturdy and sharp, and long loved by many of our editors. The Misono gyuto is a fantastic Japanese option, one that starts sharp and stays sharp, even after lots of slicing, dicing, and chopping.

A chef knife chopping an onion

Serious Eats / Vicky Wasik

The Best Santoku Knives

A santoku is the quintessential Japanese workhorse knife. Like a chef's knife, it can be used for all sorts of tasks, but there are some key differences.

First, santokus tend to have shorter, more compact blades (about six to seven inches) that are flatter than that of a traditional Western chef's knife. This is ideal for shorter, downward strokes, as opposed to the rocking-chopping and -slicing you'd do with a longer blade. The blade design also falls somewhere between the Japanese chisel and a Western double-bevel. For a helpful visual guide to all those blade styles, head on over to our santoku knife review.

What makes a good santoku? It needs to be razor-sharp, lightweight, and comfortable. As with a chef's knife, much of finding the best santoku knife for you comes down to personal preference, so the best strategy is to try working with a few and seeing how they feel. But if you want specific recommendations, we did identify a few winners in our review, all at different price points, all of them capable of effortlessly filleting fish and breaking down chicken. Our favorite was from Mac, and breezed through these tasks and more.

A santoku knife cutting up a raw chicken

Serious Eats / Vicky Wasik

The Best Nakiri Knives

Nakiri knives may not be commonplace in the Western kitchen, but they're extremely useful—especially for cooks who cook lots of vegetables. (The word nakiri translates to "leaf cutter.") When we tested a dozen nakiri knives, we favored ones with a balanced feel from handle to blade. Most we tested were six to seven inches. While blade material didn't matter much, it was clear that thinner, sharper blades, like on the Tojiro and Global, were superior: They allowed for more precision cuts.

four nakiri knives on a cutting board with a bowl of cut up sweet potatoes
We tested nakiri knives by using them to slice tomatoes, mince shallots, and cut up hardy sweet potatoes.

Serious Eats / Grace Kelly

The Best Paring Knives

Paring knives are great for tiny tasks like coring strawberries or slicing citrus for a cocktail garnish. And you don't have to shell out too much for one. One of our favorite models from Victorinox is less than $10 bucks—a true deal. If you want to spend more and own a super sharp and nimble paring knife, we also liked this one from Tojiro.

A person using a paring knife to hull strawberries.

Serious Eats / Taylor Murray

The Best Serrated Bread Knives

A bread knife is recognizable by its saw-toothed edge, which helps it easily and gently slice through all types of bread without squishing the crumb. But the drawback to a serrated blade is it's really difficult to sharpen, so once it gets dull, you either need to send it out to be sharpened by a professional or get a new one. For this reason, you shouldn't spend too much on a bread knife, either.

But you should know which ones are good—the ones that saw as easily through crusty loaves as they do ripe tomatoes and delicate white bread. The Tojiro Bread Slicer handily outperformed the competition in our tests and has long been a Serious Eats editor favorite. If you need a heavy-duty slicer (for super-crusty sourdough boules and such), we also recommend this knife from Dexter-Russell.

A person using a serrated bread knife to thinly slice a tomato

Serious Eats / Ashlee Redger

The Best Boning Knives

While boning knives can be flexible or rigid, we prefer the flexible ones; they're ideal for tricky maneuvers, such as slipping between joints when boning a whole chicken or filleting small fish. We also favor straight blades, because they're much easier to use than those with spines that curve upwards. And don't forget the handle: It matters a lot with this style of knife. We prefer ones that were slightly grippy and rounded, letting us confidently switch up our grip mid-task, without any fear of slipping. Put all those qualities together and you get the Victorinox boning knife, a flexible blade with a grippy handle that sailed through our tests. The Global was another contender for its wicked sharp and supple blade.

A collection of boning knives on a marble countertop

Serious Eats / Ashlee Redger

The Best Meat Cleavers

We discovered many things when we reviewed meat cleavers. First, being big and hefty is fine and all, but if the cleaver is too big and heavy, there's a risk of losing control—not ideal when wielding a large knife. Second, it needs to be sharp; pure power won't cut through slippery chicken skin. Finally, while you might wanna take a meat cleaver to a thick pork shoulder bone, they're really only meant to cut through small bones. You'll need a bone saw (or a good butcher) to cut up thick bones.

Our favorite meat cleaver from Victorinox was sharp, a good middling weight, and featured a sturdy wooden handle that let us have control with each chopping stroke.

Lamson Cleaver on marble

Serious Eats / Grace Kelly

The Best Slicing and Carving Knives

While slicing and carving knives aren't a necessity, they're really handy to have around during the holiday season, when you're serving up big roasts for a crowd. Thinner and longer than typical chef's knives, they'll slide right through that family-sized turkey without any mess.

Let's start first with the differences between the two. A carving knife has a long, narrow blade that comes to a sharp point; it's especially useful for cutting in and around cartilage and bones. A slicing knife is also long and narrow, but it doesn't taper like a carving knife. It has an even width from the blade to the tip, which is rounded, not pointed.

A slicing knife is used to make nice, long slices of terrines and delicate cuts of meat; the shallow divots keep the meat from adhering to the blade, and the length ensures that you have plenty of surface area to slice the meat, instead of sawing at it. I think we can all agree that meat that's been sawn, with all that glorious juice dripping out onto the cutting board, is the lump of coal of the food world.

In our review of the best slicing and carving knives, the Wüsthof Classic 9-inch Carving Knife came out on top. It's razor-sharp, it slides through turkey "like butter," as Daniel puts it, and it's perfectly balanced. It is on the more expensive side, but if you often find yourself with a roast that needs carving, it'll serve you well. As for our favorite slicing knife, that award goes to this inexpensive model from Tuo.

a slicing knife sitting on a marble countertop

Serious Eats / Taylor Murray

The Best Deba Knives

Deba knives are sturdy Japanese fish-filleting blades. Unlike boning knives, their blades are thick and heavy, using their heft to glide along (and cut through) fish bones. We tested 10 deba knives (and had a local fishmonger use our favorites, too) and fell in love with the versatile, user-friendly knife from Kai Seki; it was sharp, balanced, and cut through fish flesh and bone with ease. We also liked the Sakai Takayuki Japanese Knife as a carbon steel option (read: it was super sharp straight out of the box).

natalia gattuso using a deba knife to fillet a scup

Serious Eats/Grace Kelly

The Best Petty Knives

Petty knives (a.k.a utility knives) sit between a chef's knife and a paring knife, with a long, thin blade and shallow heel. This makes them ultra versatile: We love grabbing this knife to supreme citrus or cut around the joints when breaking down a chicken. Our favorite petty knife from Tojiro has been long-loved, especially by commerce editor Grace Kelly who has been using hers for over two years. "I love the compact but elegant form of the Tojiro petty knife," she says. "It's nimble and stays sharp even after frequent use."

The Best Knife Accessories

A Honing Steel

Sharpening and honing a knife aren't the same thing. While sharpening actually creates a new beveled edge by removing material from the blade, honing realigns the edge of the blade so that all the teeth that make up that edge are all going in the right direction. By running your knife along the ridges of a honing steel, you'll buff out those microscopic dents that can throw your blade out of alignment. Now when you see chefs on cooking shows honing their knives, you can at least know why they're doing it (though how they can do it so fast is still beyond me).

For everyday use, we recommend the Zwilling Bob Kramer honing steel. It aced our tests, honing both stainless steel and carbon steel blades easily. Once you have the steel, check out our instructions on how to hone your knife—but do yourself a favor and start slow.

a hand holdinga. honing rod and a knife

Serious Eats / Ashlee Redger

A Whetstone

A whetstone actually sharpens your knife, whisking off microscopic material from the blade for a newly beveled edge. While the technique may take you a few tries, using a whetstone is by far the best way to get your knife sharpened, and it's more affordable than sending out your knives to a professional. In our review of whetstones, we recommend getting a set of one 1,000 grit stone for sharpening the blade and a fine grit stone of 5,000 or 6,000 for smoothing it out. The Shapton set we picked as a winner has both grits, and each is color-coded to boot. We also liked the Amazon basics set, which did a great job sharpening carbon steel blades.

Knife being sharpened on whetstone

Serious Eats / Vicky Wasik

Knife Storage (That Won't Dull Your Knives)

There are many ways to safely store your knives. I personally prefer to hang them on a magnetic knife rack, which saves precious counter space and creates some nice wall decor for the kitchen at the same time. In our tests, we loved the pretty and effective one from Jonathan Alden; it held a full set of knives securely. If you like to keep your knives hidden away, try using a cork-lined box that'll fit right into your drawer.

Knives in two drawer storage racks

Serious Eats / Vicky Wasik

Blade Protectors

If you often transport your knives, blade protectors are a necessity. You don't want blades just dangling willy-nilly in your bag, do you? Consider your safety! Or, at the very least, consider the blades' safety. Rubbing against everything in your bag will make them dull. Blade protectors are the way to go.

A Knife Roll

Whether you have limited kitchen space or you're taking your knives to a dinner party or work—hey, for some of us here, taking knives to the office is a real thing!—a knife roll is a great way to keep them safe and organized. In our tests, we came to love the simple but durable roll from Messermeister, which zips closed for extra protection. We also liked the sturdy roll from Dalstrong, and the compact Hardmill Roll if you're just looking to pack a few knives instead of your whole set.

messermeister knife roll on a gray surface

Serious Eats / Grace Kelly

FAQs

Should I buy a knife set?

We don't think most knife sets are worth it. For starters, they're usually expensive and full of extra knives you might not need or want. Also, not every brand makes the best everything. So, shopping knives a la carte will get you the best value, performance, and utility.

What is the most useful kitchen knife?

If you're going to buy just one knife, we recommend getting a chef's knife (an 8-inch one in particular). For most home cooks, the majority of prep can be done with a chef's knife.

What is the best chef's knife?

We actually have a few picks when it comes to a chef's knife, which is a kitchen workhorse. Our favorite high-end, Western-style chef's knife is the Wüsthof 8-Inch Classic Chef's Knife, which is super-sharp. A budget-friendly pick in this category is the Mercer Culinary 8-Inch Millennia Chef's Knife. As for Japanese-style chef's knives, we love the nimble, lightweight Misono UX10 Gyutou Knife, and the budget-friendly Mac Knife Chef Series Hollow Edge Chef's Knife.

What's the best way to store knives?

One of our favorite ways to store knives is on a magnetic knife strip. Not only does this prevent knives from getting dinged up, but there's also no risk of digging around in a drawer and your hand meeting the sharp blade of a knife!

Why We're the Experts

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