The Best Chef’s Knives, Rigorously Tested By A Former Line Cook (2024)

As a former line cook and current recipe developer who uses a chef’s knife every day, I know that it’s the MVP of any knife collection. The best chef’s knives excel at precise knife work and tougher cuts alike: from chopping through hard winter squash to mincing delicate herbs to breaking down raw chickens. After extensively testing 10 popular blades, I found the MAC Professional Series MTH-80 to be the best chef’s knife for most home cooks; it easily tackled every culinary test it faced (and this still holds true after a year of long-term testing). The Global Classic Chef's Knife is a worthy runner-up due to its light weight, minimalist design and incredible precision.

More than two blades impressed me, though. After evaluating each knife’s sharpness, versatility, comfort and price, here are the four winning chef’s knives:

When a chef’s knife feels like a true extension of your hand—easy to hold, control and maneuver—you’ll know you’ve found the right one for you. If you prefer heavier, German-style knives that shine during heavy-duty tasks, you can’t go wrong with the Wüsthof Classic Ikon. And for those seeking a more affordable pick, consider the Our Place Everyday Chef’s Knife, which performed nearly as well as the other winning knives for a much lower price. Read on for more details on the best chef’s knives, based on my rigorous testing process.

A hybrid of Western- and Japanese-style knives, the MAC MTH-80 (often referred to as the MAC Mighty) is sturdy yet agile, the kind of knife you feel you can bend to your will before you even pick it up. It boasts an extremely sharp factory edge that makes it a pleasure to use right out of the box. For these reasons, it’s my pick for best chef’s knife overall.

The MTH-80 Is A Pleasure To Use

Throughout testing, the knife excelled equally at slicing, dicing and chopping. It effortlessly julienned scallions, cut some of the neatest diced onions and easily maneuvered around the curves of the baby watermelon rind. While thin, its blade didn’t feel overly delicate or brittle like many Japanese-made carbon steel knives; it slipped through dense butternut squash with ease (though it’s still wise to use a high-quality wooden cutting board with this pick).

What’s more, the MTH-80 remained comfortable to hold; I could put in lots of cutting time without any undue wrist or hand strain. Weighing in at 6.5 ounces, the MTH-80 is one of the lighter chef’s knives I tested. The ergonomic resin pakkawood handle, featuring a slight curve at the end for your pinky to rest on, adds to the knife’s overall grip.

Other Perks Of The MTH-80

Like the majority of the knives I tested, the MTH-80 features a partial (or half) bolster, which allows you to sharpen the full length of the blade. The blade itself is stamped, meaning the metal was cut out of a sheet of steel and extends all the way through the end of the handle. The blade also features dimples on both sides to help reduce how much food sticks to the knife.

After concluding my first round of testing, I believe the MAC MTH-80 is absolutely worth the investment: It’s a high-quality knife that will make meal prep faster and cooking more enjoyable. (Check out my full review of the MAC MTH-80.)

Long-Term Testing Notes

After my initial testing, Forbes Vetted’s senior home and kitchen editor Amanda Arnold continued testing the MAC MTH-80 regularly for one year—and it has proved again and again that it’s the best option out there. To start, it’s retained its sharp edge impressively long (she took it to be professionally sharpened after 11 months of relying on it as one of her main blades).

Equally as important: It’s continued to be a joy to use, thanks to its sturdy construction and ergonomic handle. It effortlessly glides through all kinds of produce and other foods, keeping her grip pain-free. If you’re looking for a knife that’s nimble yet sturdy, you’ll find none better.

The 2024 Forbes Vetted Best Product Awards are here: Explore our 150 top-recommended items across categories after extensive research and testing.

The entirely stainless steel Global G-2 chef’s knife is my runner-up to the MAC MTH-80. While it performed every cutting test just as well, some elements of the knife’s design can be polarizing (which I’ll get into).

A Sharp, Ultra-Light Blade That Passed Every Test

For starters, the Global G-2 is incredibly lightweight—no matter what you’re chopping, it feels like the blade flies right through. Thanks to that and the fact that its blade edge was incredibly sharp out of the box, the G-2 passed my cutting tests with flying colors: It noiselessly sliced through scallions, produced perfect swaths of watermelon rind with minimal waste and slipped remarkably easily through onions while dicing.

Because of how lightweight this knife is, I was initially concerned it wouldn’t be able to stand up to sturdier ingredients, like butternut squash and chicken. But while testing, the G-2’s blade smoothly sliced through dense squash flesh and chicken joints better than some of its weightier competitors.

The G-2’s Divisive Design

Now onto the knife’s love-it-or-hate-it design: It lacks a bolster, the cuff of metal that typically sits where the knife blade meets the handle (which is filled with sand for weight). While its absence didn’t affect the blade’s performance, there were times when the side of the blade pressed up against my finger uncomfortably. J. Kenji López-Alt, the author of the New York Times–bestselling books The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science and The Wok: Recipes and Techniques, has similar thoughts on the Global: “They’re nice and well balanced, but when I’m holding it, the blade can dig into my finger a bit.”

Additionally, this was the only knife I tested that features a stainless steel handle, which takes some getting used to in terms of the feel. The signature dimple pattern all over the handle is meant to provide a nonslip grip, which I, as a sweaty-palmed cook, can attest to. However, be careful not to get your hands too greasy while using this knife, as things might get slippery.

Long-Term Testing Notes

Arnold, after nearly a year of using the Global G-2, is still blown away by its sharpness. Since adding it to her cutlery arsenal, she’s only had to sharpen it once—after about nine months of regular use. While this knife did lose its edge about a month sooner than the MAC MTH-80, professional sharpening restored it beautifully. To this day, it’s our favorite chef’s knife for super-precise cuts.

At $70, the Our Place Everyday Chef’s Knife provides great value for a knife that consistently performed almost as well as my pricier top picks. Featuring a full-tang, stainless steel blade, this German-style knife feels strong without being weighty. Additionally, the thermoplastic handle comes in six trendy pastel colors that make the knife enjoyable to look at.

Razor-Sharp Out Of The Box

Out of the box, the factory edge on the knife was extremely sharp, making tasks like thinly slicing onions a breeze. It also had the agility and maneuverability to easily follow the curves of the watermelon rind, which isn’t something I can say about many of the other blades I tested. Even more notably, the Everyday Chef’s Knife earned top marks in my butternut squash test—a real feat, considering how difficult a vegetable it is to chop.

A Handle Designed To Teach You The Pinch Grip

Of the 10 knives I tested, the Our Place knife was the only one that came with a protective sheath for storage, which is a nice touch. The handle, too, stands out for its uniqueness. Described by Our Place as a “proprietary intuitive pinch grip handle,” it features a groove that’s meant to coax you into holding the knife in a pinch grip, the grip commonly used by pros. If you want to master the pinch grip but need to work on your knife skills, the Our Place knife might help get you there. If you’re not invested in mastering the pinch, though, the groove may feel like it’s in the way of your natural grip.

Where the Our Place knife falls short of higher-end knives, such as the MAC and the Global, is in its overall construction: It doesn’t feel quite as well crafted. But it’s a small price to pay for all the other benefits you get in one well-priced package. (To read more about my findings, check out my full review of the Everyday Chef’s Knife.)

The elegant Wüsthof Classic Ikon features the hallmark details characteristic of German knives: Its wide, rounded blade is conducive to rock-chopping, as well as scooping up and transferring food from the cutting board to the pan. Despite being the heaviest knife I tested—it clocks in at nearly 9 ounces—I found this pick to be balanced overall, plus easier to control and maneuver than many of its much lighter competitors.

A Comfortable And Sturdy All-Purpose Blade

Thanks to its curved ergonomic handle, the Wüsthof Classic Ikon is remarkably comfortable to hold. While it feels sturdy in your hand, it’s not bulky, distinguishing it from some of the clumsier German-style knives I tested. When slicing through butternut squash and peeling watermelon, for example, the blade glided through the hard produce with ease.

While it makes a great all-purpose blade, it’s not as precise a slicer as the MAC or Global chef’s knives, which both have thinner blades. For example, the Classic Ikon wasn’t as adept at neatly dicing onions and chives, and I had some trouble getting clean cuts through chicken skin. (Japanese knives generally excel at fine knife work over German knives for this reason.) But if you want a knife that’s robust, hefty and durable, this may be your blade.

Other Chef’s Knives I Tested

In addition to the four winners, I tested six other chef’s knives that didn’t quite make the cut.

Victorinox Swiss Classic 8-Inch Chef’s Knife: This popular budget-pick knife was a solid middle-of-the-road performer across all my tests, which means it ultimately didn’t get top marks. While it made relatively clean and easy cuts, it often required extra effort to maneuver the knife.

Miyabi Kaizen II 8-Inch Chef’s Knife: While this knife’s flashy Damascus pattern makes it a looker, it had mixed results in my tests. It has a very handle-heavy balance point that works against the blade as you cut, meaning it takes more effort on the cook’s part to simply halve an onion or dice squash. (Speaking of squash, the thin blade wanted to bend while I was cutting rounds of butternut.)

Zwilling J.A. Henckel’s Classic 8-Inch Chef’s Knife: This knife excelled at cutting through chicken bones. However, regardless of whether I was slicing chives, dicing onions or doing finer knife work, this knife felt like it had a mind of its own, as if it were somehow resisting my direction.

Material The 8-Inch Knife: This is one chic-looking knife. Unfortunately, from the onions and squash with jagged edges, to the fact that I was exhausted after expending the effort it took to get this knife through all my tests, it did not live up to my expectations.

Wüsthof Classic 8-Inch Chef’s Knife: At $160, this was one of the more expensive knives I tested. Unfortunately, the blade edge kept threatening to slip while dicing onions and cutting squash—which ultimately makes it not worth the price tag.

Henckels Forged Premio 8-Inch Chef's Knife: This was the only knife I tested that came with only the blade of the knife packaged in hard plastic, and the exposed handle had a tiny ding in it. For the price, I wouldn’t be afraid to use this knife for more aggressive tasks like butchery or chopping big blocks of chocolate, but I couldn’t get it to yield good-quality precise knife work.

How I Tested The Best Chef’s Knives

The Selection Process

I selected 10 knives to test based on extensive online research and reviews of bestselling knives at major retail outlets, as well as recommendations from food industry professionals.

I considered a mix of German-style chef’s knives from widely available, well-known knife brands such as Wüsthof and Zwilling, as well as some knives from newer, direct-to-consumer brands such as Our Place and Material. While chef’s knives can range in size from 6 to 14 inches long, I considered 8-inch knives, which is the ideal size for most people.

The Tests

Because a sharp edge is paramount when considering which chef’s knife to buy, I put each knife through a series of cutting tests designed to see how the blade’s edge held up. I also evaluated each knife’s versatility, or how well they transform a wide range of foods into a variety of specifications. I conducted the following tests:

Cutting paper: To test for sharpness, I took each knife—fresh out of the box—and ran it through a sheet of printer paper, pulling the blade from the top to the bottom. I looked for how smoothly and easily each knife sliced through the paper and noted whenever a knife got caught in or tore through the paper.

Slicing scallions and chives: When using the proper technique with a sharp chef’s knife, you should neither hear nor feel scallions crunching underneath the blade. What I looked (and listened) for in this test was a smooth and quiet gliding through the scallions. I also minced chives to see which knives turned out light and fluffy herbs with minimal sticking to the blade (versus bruised chives that stick, indicating a duller blade).

Dicing onions: Similar to scallions, diced onions can tell you a lot about the knife’s sharpness. I worked my way through several pounds of onions, finely dicing them to see which knives glided through as if the onion were butter, and which ones struggled to make clean cuts due to lack of sharpness.

Chopping butternut squash: I used each knife to cube hard and dense butternut squash, the perfect example of a vegetable that is infinitely more dangerous to cut with a knife that’s even slightly dull. I looked for how smoothly each knife slid through the squash and how easy it was to produce neat, even cubes.

Peeling baby watermelons: To see how well the knives maneuvered around curves and grooves, I used each blade to slice away the rind of baby watermelons. Specifically, I noted how it felt to follow the curve of the rind as I sliced, as well as how many strokes it took to fully peel it off.

Breaking down raw chickens: I wanted to see how easily each knife could cut through the joints and smaller bones of raw chickens as I broke them down into eight pieces per chicken; I also examined the knives afterward to see if the test caused any chipping of the blades.

Cutting paper (again): After performing all of the above tests on each knife, I ran them all through a final paper test to determine whether any had lost significant edge sharpness.

Ease of use: As I made my way through each test, I also considered how comfortable each knife was to use, how easy it was to wield and maneuver and how precisely it executed my desired results. These criteria guided my selection of the winners.

Long-term testing: Since January 2023, Forbes Vetted senior home and kitchen editor Amanda Arnold has been using the winning knives in her home kitchen, noting how well the blades hold up to regular use. Her long-term testing notes have been incorporated throughout this piece.

How To Pick The Best Chef’s Knife

There’s no such thing as a “wrong” chef’s knife—but the best knife for you should feel like an extension of your hand. Whenever possible, shop for knives in person so you can immediately get a sense of the weight, balance and feel of a particular knife. That said, buying knives online can also be a great option if you don’t have access to a trusted knife or kitchen store—as long as you know what to look for. Here are some criteria from the experts to help you narrow down your options.

Material

One of the biggest decisions you’ll want to consider when buying a chef’s knife is whether you want a stainless steel or carbon steel blade. Stainless steel blades are very popular for their ability to take a beating in the kitchen without too many consequences. A trade-off of opting for stainless steel, however, is that you’ll generally end up with a knife that will dull more quickly (i.e., needs to be sharpened more often) and is harder to sharpen than a carbon steel knife.

Carbon steel blades lack that protective chromium film and thus require more TLC than stainless steel to keep them spot- and rust-free. It’s especially important to promptly wash and thoroughly dry a carbon steel knife after every use. Carbon steel is also generally more brittle and fragile than softer stainless steel. But if you’re willing to put in a little extra care, carbon steel knives are generally sharper—and stay sharp for longer. “If you can look after cast iron, you can look after carbon steel,” says Josh Donald, co-founder of the renowned San Francisco knife shop Bernal Cutlery. “If you can sharpen it, it’s a great material to work with.”

Finally, you may come across many knives marketed as “high-carbon stainless steel,” which conjures a vision of a happy medium between stainless and carbon steel blades. However, Donald says using this phrase to play up a knife is akin to how food brands will slap the term “all-natural” on everything from milk to granola—it doesn’t always mean all that much. “Technically, culinary steel is high-carbon steel,” he says. “It’s kind of a marketing thing. Manufacturers want to play up that their stainless steel is good quality.”

Price

Chef’s knives come in a huge range of prices, from $20 to hundreds and even thousands of dollars. But you don’t have to spend a fortune on a great chef’s knife to find one that works for you. When looking at different price points, consider the brand’s reputation, how transparent it is about its manufacturing and forging practices and what you’re willing to spend. Remember: Spending hundreds of dollars on a fancy knife you’re too scared to unsheath isn’t a great idea. You want to buy a knife you’re encouraged to use all the time.

How To Care For A Chef’s Knife

Always Wash By Hand

There’s no special knowledge needed to take good basic care of any blade in a knife set. Get into the habit of washing your knife by hand and drying it with a cloth after each use; this will go a long way toward extending its life. Even if a knife brand claims its products are dishwasher-safe, never put your knife in the dishwasher or leave it soaking in the sink, as this will speed up corrosion and destroy the blade edge.

Regularly Hone And Sharpen

Keep a ceramic or metal honing rod (like this one) in your kitchen to realign the edge of the blade, as it will naturally slope to one side with use. While honing won’t sharpen the blade, it will preserve an already-sharp edge, so you can get more use out of your knife between sharpenings. Finally, sharpen your knife when the blade edge inevitably gets dull. At some point, you’ll want to decide whether you want to do this step yourself with a knife sharpener or bring it to a professional sharpener.

If you’re interested in learning how to sharpen your own knives, you might consider getting a carbon steel knife, which will be easier to sharpen. If you’re not interested in sharpening your own knives, stainless steel might be a better pick for you, with the caveat that you’ll need to be more vigilant about getting them professionally sharpened a couple times a year.

My Expertise

As a professional recipe developer and avid home cook, I use chef’s knives every day, both for work and for pleasure. I’m also a former professional line cook and previously developed recipes for Bon Appétit.

Because I make a living cooking food and testing recipes, I seek out knives that maximize my efficiency, which in turn makes cooking feel like a pleasurable activity rather than a chore. More than any other blade in my kit, I depend on a good chef’s knife to prepare a wide variety of foods every week, from dense and bulky squash to fine, tender chives to delicate fish and whole chickens.

For this piece, I interviewed two industry experts:

• Josh Donald, a cofounder of the renowned San Francisco knife shop Bernal Cutlery; I also consulted his book, Sharp: The Definitive Introduction to Knives, Sharpening, and Cutting Techniques, with Recipes from Great Chefs;
• J. Kenji López-Alt, the author of the New York Times–bestselling books The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science and The Wok: Recipes and Techniques

What Kinds Of Chef’s Knives Do Professional Chefs Use?

Considering how personal the experience of buying a chef’s knife can be, it’s not surprising that chefs generally recommend going with the knife that feels best to you. “It’s hard to say a Wüsthof is universally better than a Henckels or a Japanese knife,” López-Alt says. “It’s about what feels right to you. ... What fits my hand and what’s right for me might not feel right to someone else.”

What Chef’s Knife Stays Sharp The Longest?

Chef’s knives with a higher carbon content, like carbon steel knives, generally stay sharp for a longer period of time than their regular stainless steel counterparts. Carbon steel blades are harder than regular stainless steel, which helps them retain their edge for longer and requires less frequent sharpening. However, the blades’ hardness can make them more prone to accidental chipping or breakage. Carbon steel knives also require more care than stainless steel knives, as they are more susceptible to rust and corrosion. (Note: Stainless carbon steel knives are easier to maintain than straight carbon steel ones.)

How Long Do Chef’s Knives Last?

Some claim chef’s knives can last a lifetime—but that’s true only so long as you’re not really using them, Donald says. The reality is that knives will inevitably dull with use, and each time they get sharpened, you’re removing a little more metal off the edge. “Once you grind off a quarter of the blade, there won’t be enough room for your knuckles to clear the knife,” Donald says—meaning the knife will no longer be functional. So how long will a well-loved chef’s knife last? For celebrated chefs, it could be five years. For a home cook, it could be 10 years or more.