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See why.The Best Paring Knives
For precision cuts, call on the (cheap) little guy.
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See Everything We TestedWhat You Need To Know
A good paring knife is a small but mighty addition to any knife collection. Its diminutive size makes it more maneuverable and better able to hug curves than bigger knives. We choose a paring knife over a chef’s knife for three primary tasks where control is paramount. One: poking things without stabbing too widely or deeply, as when scoring chicken skin to help the fat render, piercing boiled potatoes to gauge doneness, or nipping into salmon fillets to see if they’re cooked through. Two: surgical incisions, such as splitting open dates to fill with blue cheese for our Devils on Horseback, slicing pockets into pork chops to stuff them with herbs and cheese, hulling strawberries, or coring tomatoes. And three: peeling fruits and vegetables such as apples, oranges, or stubborn celery root (whose skin is too tough for a peeler).
To find the best paring knife, we tested eight models priced from $8.76 to $49.95, including our previous winner from Wüsthof and our previous Best Buy from Victorinox. We limited our testing to knives with blades 3 to 4 inches long, as we know from past testing that shorter blades can’t reach through the food and longer blades are difficult to control.
First off, all the knives we tested were at least decent. We favored one knife that excelled at every task we threw at it, but I’d bet you $100.00 that if you stopped a stranger on the street and asked him/her to choose one of the knives we tested to take home, he/she would choose the wrong one. That’s because—there’s no other way to say it—our winning paring knife looks cheap. And it is cheap, selling for less than $10.00. It’s light and small with a plastic handle and none of the heft, snazzy looks, or authoritative air some of the other knives have. But it was the best performer nonetheless.
What separated this small, unassuming blade from the pack? For one, the slight, no-frills plastic handle was comfortable, a quality that might be more important for a paring knife than for any other knife. That’s because, unlike chef’s knives, paring knives are often used in the air, off a cutting board: You hold a strawberry in one hand and hull it with the knife held in your other hand. Thus, using a paring knife requires the user to cut in different directions on different planes, swerving this way and that around, say, bumps on a piece of ginger root or the curved exterior of an orange. When we made these cuts with heavier paring knives or with those that had larger handles, our hands got tired. Fatigue wasn’t an issue with our light, slim winner.
We also liked its blade, which was sharp and felt particularly smooth in use: “I’m not pushing, just guiding,” sa...
Everything We Tested
Highly Recommended - WINNER
- Agility: 3 stars out of 3.
- Comfort: 3 stars out of 3.
- Sharpness: 3 stars out of 3.
The blade on this paring knife is identical to that of our original winner; it’s just as sharp, thin, and nimble as ever, and it’s capable of making ultraprecise slices and incisions. Its plastic handle is easy to grip and accommodates large and small hands easily. In addition, the handle doesn’t add too much weight to the knife overall, allowing for agile, effortless use.
Highly Recommended
- Agility: 3 stars out of 3.
- Comfort: 2.5 stars out of 3.
- Sharpness: 3 stars out of 3.
This knife was “superadept”; its sharp, flexible blade nimbly hugged curves, so we could surgically remove peels or cores without plunging too deeply. It was the lightest knife we tested, with a slim handle that a few testers found insubstantial but most praised for its ability to disappear in your palm and become an extension of your hand: “There’s no disconnect between my brain and the blade.”
Recommended
- Agility: 2.5 stars out of 3.
- Comfort: 3 stars out of 3.
- Sharpness: 2.5 stars out of 3.
Our old winner had a comfortable handle, but it felt a hair less sharp and agile for certain tasks. It was great for slicing cheddar and crunching down through apple cores, but for more nuanced jobs, like sliding between the skin and flesh of fruit, its thick spine and rigid blade made it feel a bit “like a bulldozer.” That said, its sturdy design and weight inspired confidence on the cutting board.
- Agility: 2.5 stars out of 3.
- Comfort: 2.5 stars out of 3.
- Sharpness: 3 stars out of 3.
This “razor-sharp” little knife earned praise for its edge, which arrived and remained impressively keen throughout testing. But it was more rigid, so it was less adept at hugging curves and removed slightly fatter peels. Its blade was the shortest in our lineup, at 3 inches, so testers struggled to cleanly quarter whole apples and often had to make two cuts. A minority of testers found its handle a bit too plump.
Recommended with reservations
- Agility: 2 stars out of 3.
- Comfort: 2.5 stars out of 3.
- Sharpness: 3 stars out of 3.
This knife was the heaviest we tested and the second longest, so it crunched through apples with confidence and ease but felt “a little remote” on more delicate tasks, “like I’m trying to use a chef’s knife to do paring tasks,” said one tester. Its weight also tired our hands eventually, and while its stiff, thick-spined blade was quite sharp, it wasn’t flexible, so it struggled on turns.
- Agility: 2 stars out of 3.
- Comfort: 2.5 stars out of 3.
- Sharpness: 3 stars out of 3.
This knife looked like a miniature chef’s knife, with a wide triangular blade. Its blade was strong and sharp, so it made straight cuts extremely well. We docked minor agility points because the blade was also thick and stiff; we could feel it “trailing” around curves, and its weight tired our hands after a while. A few testers thought the slightly rotund handle was harder to grip, but most found it okay.
- Agility: 2.5 stars out of 3.
- Comfort: 2.5 stars out of 3.
- Sharpness: 2 stars out of 3.
We really liked this little knife at first. It looked just like our winner. But its edge didn’t last; by the end of testing, it couldn’t cleanly slice paper. We measured the blade at 3.25 inches, so its length wasn’t problematic—it just didn’t stay sharp enough. Its handle was also slightly bigger than others, and some testers complained that it didn’t sit as comfortably in their palms.
- Agility: 2.5 stars out of 3.
- Comfort: 2.5 stars out of 3.
- Sharpness: 2 stars out of 3.
“Is that an oyster knife?” asked almost every person who walked by this knife in the kitchen. The answer is no, but it does look like one, and much like an oyster knife, its tip wasn’t very sharp, so it couldn’t hull strawberries as deftly as others. The rest of its blade was reasonably sharp, but its fat handle felt cumbersome for some.
- Agility: 2 stars out of 3.
- Comfort: 2 stars out of 3.
- Sharpness: 3 stars out of 3.
This long, skinny knife was very sharp, but its handle was off. It was too long, was broader at the end, and tapered as it approached the blade, which gave it a weird momentum, like our hands were always sliding toward the blade. It was heavier, too, which was taxing after a while. It wasn’t very flexible and had a thicker spine that dragged when we peeled fruit.
Reviews you can trust
Reviews you can trust
The mission of America’s Test Kitchen Reviews is to find the best equipment and ingredients for the home cook through rigorous, hands-on testing. We stand behind our winners so much that we even put our seal of approval on them.
Hannah Crowley
Hannah is an executive editor for ATK Reviews and cohost of Gear Heads on YouTube.