A chef’s knife is a good investment if you aspire to hone your cooking skills. You, therefore, need to know your preferences to make the right choice.
With a myriad of options on the market, picking the best chef knife for beginners can be unnerving. It becomes thornier to rummage through different textures, shapes, and sizes.
Fortunately, this article is meant to make the selection process seamless. So let’s see what models are best for a starter.
A Quick Summary of Top of My List
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Best choice
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Dalstrong |
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Best Japanese
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Shun Cutlery |
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Best Premium
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WÜSTHOF |
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Check Price |
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Zelite Infinity |
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TUO |
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HENCKELS |
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| Budget pick |
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Mercer Culinary |
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Farberware |
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01. Dalstrong 6-inch Chef Knife
Great food starts with a great knife, the Dalstrong 6″ chef’s knife is perfectly made to take your culinary skills to the next level. The design offers peak performance and easy maneuverability, especially for beginners.
The edge is painstakingly hand-sharpened, making the knife maintain a perfect balance between resilience and sharpness. This helps you make ultra-thin dices and slices effortlessly.
The ultra-sharp, precision-forged knife is made of high-carbon German steel for incredible durability. It also makes the knife stain and wear-resistant.
The handle is made of G-10, a sturdy military-grade, and non-porous material to ensure the knife lasts for a long.
In addition, the handle is easy to hold, clean, and maintain, giving you hassle-free moments in the kitchen. You’ll also like the broad blade that allows easy knuckle clearance.
The knife features a protective finger bolster to ensure an incredible balance for your right or left-hand use.
Finally, I would say, it’s a great budget-friendly chef knife that you can buy for yourself, or give someone else as a great gift box for kitchen purposes!
02. Shun Classic 6-inch Japanese Chef’s Knife
Shun Classics is the original Shuns’ Japanese-style chef knife with a broader audience in North America. The blade is lighter with a razor-sharp edge to ensure your dicing and chopping moments are incredible.
Rather than heavy, Western handles, Shun classics offer you graceful control in the kitchen, especially if you’re a beginner.
The Pakkawood handle has a slight ridge on the right side to ensure it fits into the contours of your fingers securely and comfortably. More so, the handle is waterproof, durable, and won’t harbor bacteria for food safety.
The knife is backed against manufacturing defects. The product is fundamentally made through a heat treatment process to ensure your knife gives you lasting value.
With heat treatment, Shun classic comes out finer-grained and stronger. Sharpened to a steeper angle, the blade is designed to cut in a slicing, smooth motion.
03. Wusthof 1040100116 Classic 6-inch Chef Knife
Wusthof 6-inch is explicitly designed to help you hone your cooking skills. This is an all-purpose chef knife for under $200 for preparing meals and can be used for slicing, chopping, dicing, and mincing.
As a beginner, chopping or slicing vegetables in equal sizes makes your food cook uniformly, and Wusthof 6-inch helps you through it.
The knife features a full tang and triple-riveted handles to offer a wide range of cutlery that can satisfy your cooking.
It’s forged from a single block of premium carbon stainless steel for elegance and durability. The full bolster protects your hand, providing balance and safety.
The comfortable and robust handle offers a solid grip to prevent the knife from slipping as you prepare meals. You’ll also enjoy exceptionally long edge retention for long service life.
Due to the balance and weight, this kitchen knife is perfect for heavy-duty work like cutting thicker meat and vegetables.
04. Zelite Infinity 6-inch kitchen Knife
If you value performance, durability, and comfort in your kitchen, then the Zelite 6-inch chef is the ultimate choice.
This multipurpose chef knife is suitable for slicing, mincing, chopping, and dicing all fruits, vegetables, and meat.
In addition, the reduced length gives you great control and cutting power, making you perfect your culinary skills. This might be an excellent chef’s knife for small hands with a reasonable price range.
Zelite 6-inch pro series is made of high-carbon stainless steel for added durability and excellent performance. It’s also stain, corrosion, and rust-resistant, thus low maintenance. In addition, the blade is tough and boasts incredible edge retention.
You’ll value the comfort that comes with this pro series knife by Zelite. A full tang, rounded, ergonomic handle is ideal for beginners for perfect slicing moments. In addition, it provides perfect balance and robustness to give you full control.
05. TUO 6-inch Knife with Luxurious Gift Box
Hone your culinary art with a TUO chef’s knife. The product is designed with high-carbon German stainless steel for higher durability.
The steel is processed under high-tech heat treatment for a razor-sharp edge. This ensures your knife lasts for a long, with the superior edge retention and corrosion-resistance feature.
The edge is hand sharpened and honed at 18 degrees. This makes the knife incredibly sharp for unrivaled efficiency. As a beginner, it ensures your work in the kitchen is finished in no time.
Fiery TUO chef knife is a versatile knife ideal for mincing, dicing, or chopping your meat and vegetable uniform pieces.
You’ll like the ergonomic Pakkawood handle. Compared to other wood handles, it’s way more sanitary and stable.
The design ensures no cracking or expansion for maximum food safety. The ergonomically designed handle offers a comfortable grip and beautiful look that is even not available in an expensive chef’s knife.
06. HENCKELS Classic 6-inch Cooking Knife
Experience confidence in every cut you make with Henckels 6-inch knife. This classic knife boasts a precision, fine-edge blade honed for long-lasting sharpness.
It’s a versatile chef’s knife under $50, which you can use to dice apples, chop vegetables or potatoes, slice salmon, and mince shallots effortlessly.
Henckels 6-inch is a kitchen workhorse that’s up for any task, both heavy and light. The high-quality German stainless steel strengthens the knife for added durability.
With a smooth switch from blade to handle, the product’s forged design provides balance for easy handling and usage.
Cooks with small hands find this version ideal. The broad blade with curved cutting edge rocks effortlessly through chopping or dicing tasks.
This knife is dishwasher-safe for easy cleaning and maintenance. However, hand washing is highly recommended.
07. Mercer Culinary 6-inch Small Chef Knife
Honing your kitchen skills has never been this easy. Mercer chef’s knife is designed to make chopping moments easy and enjoyable. It features a Santoprene handle to provide a safe and comfortable grip.
The perfect blend of finely crafted steel and modern technology adds durability and strength. The high carbon forged steel is stain-resistance.
It also resists corrosion, rust, and discoloration, always making your item look elegant. The full tang ensures you have a superior balance while using it.
Mercer 6-inch kitchen knife is designed with a taper-ground edge for ultimate stability, long-lasting sharpness, and easy honing. The edge design also leads to increased efficiency when chopping, cutting, and dicing.
The excellent combination of design, materials, and quality craftsmanship is excellent for the value-minded kitchen.
Mercer chef’s knife keeps you safe with textured finger points and a protective guard as you cut food even it is certified by NSF.
08. Farberware 5160714 6-inch Knife
You’ll rarely find a knife that strikes a balance between affordability and excellent performance. EdgeKeeper is overtly designed to ensure your culinary skills are upped without breaking the bank account.
The knife features a sheath with creative technology to automatically sharpen the blade with each use. This is to ensure you’ll never experience a dull blade.
More so, the protective sheath comes with a built-in mechanism that hones the blade all the time. As a result, your knife ends up having excellent edge retention.
The blade is constructed of premium carbon steel that lends sharpness, durability, and strength. The rust-resistance knife is easy to clean and maintain.
The ergonomically designed handle provides exceptional comfort while using the knife. This knife is incredibly sharp, so be always cautious when using it.
Things You Need to Consider Before Buying
Getting the best quality chef knife for beginners requires you to consider the following facets:
Blade Materials
Essentially, steel is an ideal material. It has ductility, strength, excellent edge retention, and is highly durable. So before buying your knife you should know what materials they used.
Some of the most used materials are carbon steel, high-carbon stainless steel, and Damascus steel. If you want the best quality chef knives that hold the edge for a long time then you should choose the forged blades that are made from high-carbon stainless steel.
Handle Comfort
A good handle should feel secure and comfortable to you. The ergonomic handle is not slippery, and it’s easy to hold on to. If you’re forcing an unnatural grip, then that’s not a reliable chef’s knife for beginners.
Weight
Ensure you find the ideal knife weight for fun kitchen moments. Ideally, a heft knife tends to cut through vegetables and fruits easier since it “falls” with force.
On the other hand, a lighter chef’s knife allows easy maneuverability. The bottom line is to choose what suits your style.
Size
A 6-inch chef’s knife is suitable for beginners and offers an element of agility. However, this length falls short when slicing through essential things like a watermelon.
An expert always recommends a small-size knife for beginners. Or you can read this article where I explained a brief guide on how big should a chef’s knife be?
Bolster
It’s also called a shank, collar, or shoulder. It’s the thick portion where the handle and blade meet. It can add stability and strength to a chef’s knife. This feature is highly recommended for beginner chefs that will protect your finger from unexpected accidents.
Edge or Bevel
A chef’s knife always should be sharp and easy to balance. Professional chefs can easily handle all types of knives, but as a beginner, you should choose a double bevel/edge that will help you with effortless cutting and slicing. And single bevel would be hard to handle for a left-handed user.
Sharpness
Choose a knife with excellent edge retention that is easy to hone. Some blades are designed with self-sharpening technology. If your knife has a superior edge you can comfortably slice vegetables and meat.
Price
Knives come at different prices. Some are affordable, while some are expensive. However, as you consider the price, ensure to consider other aspects like sharpness, durability, and agility, to mention a few.
Construction
You might find a forged knife, which offers balance and durability. Forged knives are excellent for cutting through the volume of foods. But if you want a very lightweight knife, you can choose a stamped blade.
Ease of Cleaning
Pick a chef’s knife that’s easy to clean. You may find some products are dishwasher safe, while others are safe for hand wash.
Bottom Line
These chef’s knives are considered the best for beginners. The wide range of choices ensures you get a product that suits your skills.
What matters most is picking the chef’s knife that will help you hone your culinary skills as you progress to the professional level.
However, I hope now you can choose a model from my top list that can match with your personal preferences if you’re a beginner.
I have built kniveswow.com because as a home chef I know how important kitchen knives are. I use different kitchen knives every day and they always save my time. Here I share my thoughts, experience and knife maintenance tips with you. You can find more info about me.