10 Best Tried and True Japanese Santoku Knives in 2022 (Food Coordinator-Reviewed)

The "three virtues" which give the santoku its name are slicing, dicing, and mincing. The shape of this knife makes it useful for cutting meat, fish, and vegetables. In particular, blades made of stainless steel are resistant to rust and chipping, very sharp, and easy to clean and care for, making them perfect for home cooks.

Chef's knives (the closest Japanese equivalent is the gyuto knife) are similar and equally popular, but santoku knives have shorter and thinner blades, making them better for smaller kitchens. The shape of the edge also differs, with santoku knives having a gentle curve or fairly straight edge, which makes them good for julienne-cutting vegetables.

If you have a santoku knife and a small petty knife (similar to a paring knife) you can probably cover all your kitchen cutting needs.

We recommend considering the following points before buying a santoku knife.

Santoku knives are available in a variety of materials. We've picked up the most common materials, so take this into consideration when choosing your next Japanese santoku knife.

The most common blade material used in santoku knives is stainless steel, a rust-resistant alloy made by adding chromium to iron.

While not as sharp as steel, otherwise known as hagane in Japanese, stainless steel santoku knives are available in a wide price range, and are easy to maintain, thanks to their rust resistance, making them better suited for domestic use.

However, just because they have a high resistance to rust doesn't mean you don't need to take care of them; make sure to wipe off any moisture after you use them.

Molybdenum vanadium steel is made by adding molybdenum and vanadium to regular stainless steel to make it harder and stronger, which enables it to hold a sharper edge, and for longer. However, because it's harder than your average stainless steel, it's also more difficult to sharpen.

This material is suitable for home kitchen knives, but is also used for professional-grade knives as well as medical scalpels, so you know it's capable of fine cuts. It's resistant to rust and longer-lasting than plain stainless steel.

Cobalt alloy is an incredibly hard material that is also easy to sharpen. While knives made from cobalt alloy are sharper than those made from molybdenum vanadium, the latter is superior in terms of rust resistance and how long it holds its sharpness. Still, cobalt alloy is another common material used in santoku knives for home use.

Knives made of hagane steel are best for those who want sharpness above all else. Since hagane is an incredibly strong material, it can easily slice through hard fish bones with ease.

However, while this material is superior in terms of sharpness, its hardness also means that it can easily chip. It's also prone to rusting as well. If you're not someone who can take good care of your kitchen tools, choose something else.

Stainless steel composite knives use hard stainless steel at their core for increased sharpness, sandwiched by softer stainless steel to make it easy to sharpen and maintain. However, knives made from this material are not as sharp as those made from steel or steel composites.

Damascus steel is a type of laminated steel in which multiple metals are layered on a core material.

While Damascus is often thought of as a sharp material, in honesty, it depends on the quality of steel used. Still, Damascus knives are indeed often sharp and available for affordable prices.

A large knife is more difficult to work with, but if it's too small, your food prep time will increase. For a santoku knife, we recommend a blade length of 6 to 7 inches. It's also a good idea to not exceed the size of your cutting board, so that you don't cut up your counter accidentally or chip the blade on a plate.

You may think a lighter knife is easier to hold and manipulate, but in fact a good knife should have some heft to it. Most santoku knives are in the range of 3.5 to 10 ounces.

We recommend something between 4 and 7 ounces. Having a little weight helps you cut more easily. If it's too light, you have to supply more force. Of course, if it's really heavy, you'll get tired just from holding it.

Some knives are stainless steel all the way into the handle, while others have plastic or wood handles. If there are gaps where the materials join, water, dish soap, and bacteria can get in. Obviously, the solid steel types are the easiest to wash in this sense.

If your knife has a handle made of a different material, look for a steel cap where the handle and blade meet. This is called a bolster. 

Knives with a smooth bolster that seamlessly connects the blade and the handle are easy to clean and are less likely to accumulate bacteria due to their lack of any gaps between materials. Additionally, bolsters can prevent water from getting inside wooden handles, preventing them from rotting.

We picked out some of the most popular products and tested them for sharpness, ease of use, and rust resistance.

Then, based on our tests, we ranked the top 10 Japanese santoku knives available online.

Japanese prices for some of the products are given, but they've been converted into US dollars to make it easy for you.

We put each product through a series of tests to check for the following:

1. How well does it cut?
2. How long does it stay sharp?
3. How easy is it to use?
   
4. How easy is it to maintain?

Then we gave them a score out of 5 and ranked them.

First, we tested the sharpness of each knife. We used three foods for this test: tomatoes, skin-on chicken, and a large sushi roll. 

We had food coordinator Yuki Hirao check how easily and smoothly she was able to cut each food and how clean the cuts were in order to evaluate the sharpness on a five-point scale.

No matter how sharp a knife is, they eventually become dull if you continue to use them. The longer a knife can retain its edge, the easier and safer it is to use.

In this test, we dragged each knife on a plastic cutting board 3,000 times under the same conditions to simulate a knife that has been used for roughly three months. We compared how well the knives cut in comparison to when they were new and gave high scores to the knives that maintained their sharpness.

Next, we tested each santoku's usability.

While actually cutting the food we prepared, we comprehensively evaluated each knife for how easy it was to grip, how well the food was released from the knife, and its weight.

While it may not be a surprise, we found that knives with textured handles were less prone to slipping during use, making them easier to use than non-textured knives.

Additionally, knives with straight handles were difficult to grip. Because they required more effort to hold, it resulted in more fatigue during periods of extended use. We recommend choosing a knife with a curved, ergonomic handle. 

Santoku knives can be used daily, so it’s also important to keep them in a good condition. As the final test, we evaluated each santoku knife based on its corrosion resistance and how easy they were to wash.

For corrosion resistance, we evaluated each knife's materials based on its listed product specifications. To evaluate how easy they were to wash, we checked to see if the knives had a bolster or not, their shape, and whether they were dishwasher-safe or not.

We found that when it comes to keeping clean, single-piece stainless-steel knives got higher scores than other knives, but we also found that as long as a knife has a bolster, it didn't make that much of a difference in comparison to single-piece knives, as they were both easy to wash.

You've got your fancy knife; now you need something to keep it sharp, to cut on, and an alternative when a knife just won't get the job done.

Author: Kano Ichiyama/Translation:Susan Lucier-Ogawa, Mitsuki Nagasawa, Emi Amemiya/Photos: Koichi Miura, Yuuki Inagaki, Saya Iwagami

 Updated: January 6, 2022

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