Best Knives for Cutting Vegetables

The best knife for cutting vegetables is a nakiri, and the one to buy first is the Tojiro DP F-502: a genuinely flat 165 mm edge, 45 mm of blade height and a 1.8 mm spine, in VG-10 at 59 to 61 HRC. If you want one knife that also breaks down a chicken, buy a 210 mm gyuto instead and give up a little vegetable performance for a tip.

Produce is the easiest cutting job in the kitchen and the one most knives are worst at. Nothing about a carrot is hard. What makes vegetable prep miserable is a blade that wedges instead of parting, an edge that arcs away from the board so slices stay joined at the bottom, and a heel so short that your knuckles hit the board before the blade does.

1. A flat edge. A chef's knife has a belly, which is what lets you rock-chop. The cost of that curve is that only part of the edge touches the board at a time, so a stack of onion slices stays hinged at the bottom and you go back over it. A flat edge touches the board along its whole length and the cut is finished the first time.
2. Blade height at the heel. 45 mm is the number to look for. It clears your knuckles on a cabbage or a celeriac, and it gives cut food a surface to slide off instead of folding back into the blade.
3. Spine thickness. Under 2 mm at the heel. A thick spine has to shove the vegetable apart as it goes through; a thin one falls through. This is the biggest single difference between a Japanese knife and the one that came in your block set, and it matters more than the steel.

Steel comes third, not first. VG-10 at around 60 HRC stays sharp through far more produce than a 56 HRC German blade, but a sharp thick knife still wedges, and a dull thin one still slices better than you expect. If the choice is between a better steel and a thinner grind, take the grind.

Where a figure is not published by the maker or a specialist retailer we leave it blank rather than estimate it. How we source specifications.

• You already own a chef's knife. Buy the Tojiro nakiri. It is the cheapest large improvement available to a kitchen that already has a general-purpose blade, and it does the job that blade is worst at.
• You want one knife, total. Buy the Tojiro DP gyuto. 43 mm and 1.9 mm is close enough to nakiri geometry that vegetables are easy, and the tip means you never need a second knife for anything else. Our gyuto roundup goes deeper on the shape.
• Your board is small, or your hands are. The MAC MSK-65 at 6.5 in is the easiest of the four to control, and we cover that case properly in chef knives for small hands.
• You already use a nakiri daily. The Shun Classic is the upgrade, and its pakkawood handle works in either hand, unlike the D-shaped Classic chef's knife.

A flat, thin, hard edge is exactly the edge a bad board destroys. Glass, bamboo, stone and hard composite boards chip 60 HRC steel; rubber and soft Japanese cypress do not. If you buy one of these knives and keep using a bamboo board, the knife will not last and the board will be the reason. Our board picks are here, and chipping has six usual causes — the board is the first one to rule out.

Tojiro DP nakiri if you want the best vegetable knife on this page and you own something else for meat. Tojiro DP gyuto if this has to be your only knife. MAC MSK-65 if control on a crowded board matters more than reach. Shun Classic nakiri only once you know you reach for a nakiri every day — it does the same job as the Tojiro for several times the money, and the Damascus cladding is cosmetic.