Chef's Path Professional Chef Knife Set - 8" Ultra Sharp Japanese Santoku Kitchen Knife - German High Carbon Stainless Steel Chefs Knife with Sheath & Premium Packaging - Best Value Cooking Knife

Product Information

FLAWLESS CONSTRUCTION - Forged continuously in a single piece from handle to blade, giving extra strength and eliminating any hiding places for bacteria making the knife incredibly hygienic.

The perfect everyday chef knife—ideal for dicing fruits and vegetables, cutting through thick cuts of meat, or chopping herbs. What we liked: Wüsthof is one of the leading brands of German knives, and its Classic chef's knife proved that it's still worthy of consideration for any knife collection. I have seen ladies using a utility and even a paring knife as their all-purpose knife (I’m genuinely amazed that they manage to do everything with such a small knife). Being stainless they are suited to a household where not everyone can commit to the care required for the maintenance of carbon steel knives.Like our runner-up pick, the Tojiro F-808, it lacks knuckle clearance for large hands, but the F-808 is a better value. In addition to Wirecutter staffers, those panelists included Sam Sifton, an assistant managing editor at The New York Times and founding editor of New York Times Cooking, as well as a group of chefs and line cooks at New York City’s Le Coucou (recipient of the James Beard Foundation’s 2017 award for Best New Restaurant). The sharp tip is particularly helpful when cutting around bones, and the fun handle colors are beautiful and great for personalizing.

It's worth noting that, while I looked at a large number of both Western and Japanese chef's knives, there are a few Western and many Japanese producers that were not included in this review. I like my 8 inches; however, they are sometimes too short when used in a professional kitchen (we need to prep larger food like an entire beef tenderloin that we need to portion size). The steel should be of good quality, the blade should be straight, and the handles, whether made of wood, resin, or some kind of plastic, should be solidly constructed, without any gaps, damage, or other obvious shortcomings. This knife has a razor sharp, cutting edge and it has a high quality hardwood handle which is secured with brass rivets. The long, sharp blade of a chef's knife allows for all sorts of cutting tasks, so you can slice a steak, chop a cucumber, dice an onion or mince some herbs.Where it tripped up was on the blade sharpness: It sported an excellent edge from the heel up to where the curvature began, but from there to the tip it was off, snagging on parchment paper and failing to glide through an onion as smoothly as it should have. Our experts appreciate that this German stainless steel knife excels across a variety of different tasks, but they note that the hard plastic handle was a bit less comfortable than some other options on this list. As the handle wood is untreated, it will benefit from the occasional application of a food grade oil to maintain the health of the wood, avoiding shrinkage and keeping the handle looking like new. We liked how easily it maneuvered around curves when cutting away butternut squash skin and citrus rinds.

If you enjoy a lighter-weight knife, you'll probably like the Material (although a lot of cooks may prefer a heftier model, like the Wüsthof). This tool doesn’t actually sharpen the blade—its sole purpose is to realign the microscopic teeth on the knife’s edge that get knocked out of alignment during use. You should get a new chef’s knife if you’re using an old knife set or a hodgepodge of hand-me-downs that aren’t, well, cutting it anymore.It weighs more than most of the other knives I tested, giving it a solid and sturdy feel, but it still handles well and has a sharp edge.

I could have butchered a bunch of chickens, but that seemed like too easy of a task: Any knife that had made it this far wasn't going to have much trouble with chicken, not even the squirmy skin. Precision engineering and master craftsmanship come together to create a flawless blade that’s perfectly balanced for effortless cutting. The most impressive knives were super-sharp and made paper-thin slices of tomato with no effort at all. It performed every cutting task in our testing especially well, making it a workhorse when it comes to meal prep.It's an affordable, all-purpose tool that does an ace job of blitzing parsley, dicing onions and deboning a chicken.