Best Kitchen Knives Reviews For Easy Cutting & Chopping

An ideal kitchen knife makes meal prepping effortless and interesting, even for people who don’t like cooking.

However, purchasing a knife is often an overlooked choice.

In the baffling range of knives from cheap to expensive, people mostly depend on either budget or brand for making a buying decision – which mostly results in a wrong choice.

In search of finding the characteristics of the best kitchen knife, we ventured out to ask renowned chefs and culinary experts for their inputs.

And finally came to a conclusion that – A knife should be purchased based on its sharpness and ease of handling.

Using this information, we are going to test the knives from popular and well-reviewed brands to find out which is the winner and loser.

Top 4 Best Kitchen Knife Choices

• Victorinox Kitchen Knife Set (Swiss Classic)
• Solimo Premium Kitchen Knife Set
• Godrej Cartini Kitchen Knife Set
• Pigeon Kitchen Knife Set

How We Tested?

We purchased and unboxed all the four kitchen knife sets. The series of tests we performed on each knife are deep cut test, slicing test and fruit-cut test.

Before going into the test, we would like to share some information on the chosen kitchen knife sets.

Each set comes with three different knives that include – a paring knife (for cutting fruits), utility knife (for cutting vegetables and fruits) and bigger knives.

As you can see in the below image, pairing and utility knives are similar in all the brands. But the third or bigger knives are different in the four brands.

• The Pigeon and Solimo brand provide chef knives which are used for cutting meat, bigger vegetables and fruits.
• When it comes to Cartini brand, it comes with medium size knife suitable for slicing and cutting.
• And finally, the Victorianox provides a lengthy knife with rounded edge and zigzag teeth. It is suitable for cutting breads and the rounded edge is suitable for applying butter.

In our reviewing process, we tested only pairing knife and utility knife of each brand because they are the most commonly used ones in the Indian kitchens.

Test Performance of the Best Kitchen Knives

1. Deep Cut Test

In this test, we will take a tomato and try to cut its surface using every utility knife with minimum pressure. And we will check how deep each knife will cut.

Thumb rule to remember in this test analysis is – deeper the cut, sharper will be the knife.

First, we used Victorinox to cut the tomato using minimum pressure. And it has cut the tomato very smoothly and made a good deep cut.

The next goes the solimo brand knife. Though it made a cut, it was not as good as the Victorinox. The Cartini knife has also made the cut but it is not as deep as the previous ones.

And finally goes the Pigeon utility knife – when we used it for cutting the tomato with minimum pressure, it hardly made any cut or mark on the surface of the tomato.

So, the winner in this test is clearly the Victorinox it performed great compared to other knives. The Solimo and Cartini performed good while Pigeon knife performed poor.

2. Slicing Test

In this test, we will cut a potato for 3 to 4 slices using all the four utility knives. We will check which knife was easy to make the cuts and how much effort is taken by the knife.

We first used the Pigeon knife to cut the potato slices. While cutting, we observed that it needs more pressure and effort to cut the potato slices.

Secondly, we tried Solimo kitchen knife, it was easier to cut the potato slices compared to Pigeon knife. And because of the weight of the knife, it required less pressure as well. But due to the thicker blade, we were not able to cut thin potato slices.

Next comes the Cartini knife, we were able to cut potato slices easily with less effort similar to Solimo knife. And moreover, were able to cut thin potato slices because of its thin blade.

And finally, we tried the Victorinox. We were able to put very thin potato slices. And moreover, it took less effort and pressure compared to all other knives.

In conclusion, Victorinox is clearly the winner among the four options as it took less effort and pressure. Secondly, Cartini and Solimo performed good. But Pigeon knife performed the least as it required high pressure and effort than others.

3. Fruit Test

In this test, we took a guava as the medium to check out the performance of the four pairing knives. We preferred guava as it is slightly hard and not easy to cut.

We started with Pigeon pairing knife first. While cutting the guava, we observed that it needed more strength and pressure to cut through the fruit. And the overall performance is not that great.

The next pairing knife we tried is from the brand Solimo. It was better compared to Pigeon and was able to cut through the fruit with medium pressure and effort.

Next, we tried the Cartini pairing knife. While cutting the fruit, it was easy and performed better than above two options we tried.

And finally, the Victorinox paring knife, it smoothly glided through the guava and required fewer efforts and pressure as well.

Comparison Analysis of Four Kitchen Knives

In the final comparison of all the four kitchen knife sets, we will be analysing them based on the sharpness, ease of handling and build quality.

1. Sharpness

The Pigeon knives have performed the worst among all the choices. It isn’t a recommended option as it requires more pressure and effort for cutting or slicing.

Next, the Solimo brand kitchen knife set has performed good for deep cut and fruit cut test. But because of its thick blade, it hasn’t performed great in slicing test.

The Cartini knife set has performed good in all the three tests.

Among all the four choices, Victorinox has shown amazing performance in all the three tests because of its Swiss blade technology. So, we can conclude that it is sharper and great option than the other options. And requires less pressure and effort.

So, the clear winner in the sharpness factor is Victorinox.

2. Ease of Handling

In this factor, Pigeon has performed poor as it was not comfortable to use because of its uneven shape and design.

When it comes to Solimo knife, it performed great in terms of handling because of its balance weight and good ergonomic design. It was comfortable to cut the vegetables and fruits using this knife.

The next Cartini knife, it was also comfortable in terms of ease of handling. And the Victorinox knives, it as easy to handle them. But you may have to be extra careful while using them as they are extremely sharp.

3. Build Quality

When it comes to build quality, Pigeon brand knives have performed average as the blade steel quality and handle quality was not up the mark.

Solimo brand knives performed good as they are made from single steel design from the handle to the tip. The stainless-steel quality is quite good and the handle quality is also great.

Coming to the Cartini knife, the steel quality and handle quality were good but not as great as the Solimo brand.

Finally, the Victorinox knives the blade steel quality is extremely good and even the plastic handle quality was great.

Final Conclusion for the Winner –

So, based on this observation all the tests we performed we conclude the following.

The clear winner Victorinox is our favourite and 1^st recommendation for people looking the best kitchen knife in India. Because its sharpness was great, ease of handling was good and built quality is excellent.

The second option we recommend is the Solimo brand knives as they were good in terms of sharpness. And when it comes to ease of handling and built quality, they were great.

Our third recommendation will be Godrej Cartini knives as it performed good in all these test factors, be it sharpness, ease of handling or built quality.

We don’t recommend Pigeon knives as they didn’t perform well in the all the tests performed.

Takeaway –

A kitchen knife is an important piece of utility in our day-to-day lives. Practically, it is a sous-chef of every cooking expert and homemaker. Which is the reason, we have to make sure to purchase a quality knife.

Investing in a dull and blunt knife may affect the prepping work as it will take more effort and time to cut the vegetables and fruits. And moreover, using them for long time can give your blisters on your palms.

To help you out, we have chosen the popular consumer choices and tests them in our research lab to provide the most honest opinion on them.

Which was your choice among them? Or do you want to review any other product? Write to us in the comment section below. You can also share your opinions and queries.