(upbeat music) - A good chef's knife
needs to do three things. Needs to cut through all sorts
of ingredients with ease, have a good comfortable
handle, and stay sharp. And it's even better if they
don't cost an arm and a leg, which some of them can. - You can spend a ton of
money on a good chef's knife, Julia, you know that. We have recommended Old
Faithful which is the Victorinox Swiss Army Chef's
Knife for decades now. This is a fabulous knife but there are always
new knives on the market so we retest it frequently,
which is what we're doing here. We have this lineup of 10 chef's knives. We set a price cap of $75
'cause as you mentioned, we don't wanna spend too much money. All the blades are about eight inches long which is a super useful length for us. They're all stainless
steel or stain resistant. At the very beginning
and then again at the end of the testing we used
an industrial sharpness testing machine to test the sharpness. We also had a squad of
testers who had varying hand strengths and dominance. They sliced tomatoes, they diced onions, they minced parsley and garlic. They broke down whole chickens and they prepped and diced
hard butternut squash. - [Julia- Oh, that's a tough one. - There are a couple of
factors that go into sharpness. Very important is the blade geometry. And that is the blade at the very bottom gets ground down to the cutting edge. And if you have a narrow blade geometry, something like 12 or 13 degrees, that can help a knife feel super sharp. The range for our knives
here was 13 to 16 degrees and testers were surprised
that some of the knives at the wider end of that
range felt super sharp. I want you to try your
copy of Old Faithful there while we talk about sharpness. Slice of tomato, see what you think. - Oh, I know this knife very well. Ooh yeah. - It's almost like those knives
are connected to our hands. It's an extension of our arm. - I know, there's no muscle involved and usually you can do some
pretty fine work if you want to. Yep.
- Very nice. - Yeah. So, you know, one of the
things that made this knife as sharp as it is was not
in fact the blade geometry 'cause it was at the
wider end of the spectrum. It was how the blade was sharpened and honed at the factory,
which was news to us. - [Julia] Interesting. - It has to be really well
sharpened really well honed. When testers took a super
close look at the cutting edge it was very smooth, very even. Give this one a try just
as a point of comparison. - Well, they look like the
same thickness from above. - Yeah, they kind of do. - All right, let's see. Oh no, I have to use, I mean, I'm still able to cut
the tomato just fine. - [Adam] Of course. - But I'm really having to put a lot more hand power behind it. And if I had a lot of
cutting to do that would eventually make my hand a little tired. - I mean, you're definitely
getting through the tomato but it's really more about the
journey than the destination, 'cause as you say this
one probably just doesn't feel as sharp. - Yeah, and actually I have to really push if I wanna get a thin slice,
I have to really push down on the tomatoes, which
squeezes out all the juice. Yeah, no, that's not as good. - Yeah, and that doesn't have
to do with the cutting angle. It has to do with how it
was sharpened and honed at the factory.
- Interesting. - So there are a couple of other factors that testers look for in a knife. One is all of these
knives have a little bit of curvature to the blade. That's so you can rock them
and mince through parsley or garlic or something like that. - Right. - Testers liked a gentler
curve, like the one in your hand to something like this,
which is more dramatic. You can see how sharply that
curves up towards the end. - Kind of looks cool. - Yeah, I mean, it looks great, but they felt that it felt awkward. - (laughs) It's like a rocking horse. - Yeah, it's just like a rocking horse. - No, I like having a firm edge. - So another factor to look
for is height of the blade, especially towards the heel by the handle. Again, Old Faithful, wrap
your hand around the handle. Plenty of space for your knuckles. - [Julia] Right.
- Try this one. - Oh, this is my biggest pet peeve. Yeah, my knuckles can hit the
board before the knife blade. - So testers were looking for
a two inch height at the heel. The last thing is how thick the blade is and how it tapers from
the heel towards the tip. Thicker blades felt a little clumsier. They preferred thinner blades. They preferred thicker at the heel. So if you're cutting
through a chicken bone or something tough, you can get through it with a little more authority,
but a taper towards the tips. They also liked a spine
that was a little rounded so that if you're choking up on the knife and you're gripping it really
hard, you're not gripping into a sharp edge on
the spine of the knife. - Ah, yep. - The handle obviously very important. You know, a softer material a little more rubbery,
a little more grippy. No weird swoops or shapes
in the handle was preferred. - Yeah, because this
stays firm in your hand. Even if your hands get a little slick. This one stands out to
me 'cause it's rounded which looks cool, but no, it's a spinner. It would spin around in your hand if your hands were a
little wet or slippery. - Yeah, it's a hard material. It's comfortable as long as
your hands aren't slippery and then it gets a little
dangerous, a little dicey. Julia, try and contain your
shock when you hear this. Old Faithful won again. - Not surprising.
- This is the knife. This is the Victorinox
Swiss Army Fibrox Pro 8 inch Chef's knife. It's terrific, it's got
a well proportioned blade that stays nice and sharp. The handle is comfortable
for all kinds of users. We still recommend that knife highly. It's $38, so it's a bargain. I will say it's on the light side. It weighs around six ounces. Some testers preferred
a slightly heavier knife and there was a heavier knife that kept up with Old Faithful. This is the Mercer Culinary Renaissance 8-inch forged Chef knife. It weighs about eight ounces. So here, try that. - May I?
- Yeah. - Oh, it is, yeah. - It was nice and sharp, but it gives you a little more heft. And the price was right on this one too. It's just $31. - Interesting, Adam, thank you. - My pleasure. - So there you have it. If you're in the market
for a new chef's knife and wanna spend less than $75,
there are two to check out. The first is a Victorinox
Swiss army Fibrox Pro 8-inch chef knife at about $38. And the other one, which
is a little bit heavier is the Mercer Culinary Renaissance 8-inch forged chef's knife at about $31. - [Announcer] At "Cook's
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