The 4 Best Santoku Knives, According to My Tests

My Favorite Santoku Knife

The Made In Japanese Damascus Steel Santoku topped my tests with its sharp blade, good looks, and high performance in all situations. For a budget option, the Mercer Culinary Genesis Santoku did quite well in testing despite its shockingly low price.

How I Tested Santoku Knives

I tested 12 different santoku knives. Beginning with general design, handle comfort, and weight balance, I rated the knives on a variety of characteristics as I put them through a series of identical tests.

• Sweet Potato Test: I used each santoku to halve, peel, and chop a sweet potato into cubes. Cutting through the dense flesh was a good way to judge each knife's power and precision with heavy items, and peeling helped observe the level of sharpness.
• Mozzarella Test: To measure performance with soft, sticky ingredients, I used each knife to cut a small ball of mozzarella into slices. I noted how much effort and back-and-forth sawing I needed to get through the cheese, how easily I was able to get thin and even slices, and how much the slices stuck to the side of the knife.
• Garlic Test: To rate chopping performance, I used each santoku to chop three peeled garlic cloves thoroughly. I noted how efficiently each knife cut through the garlic and how much time and effort I needed to reduce it to a fully minced texture.
• Steak Test: I used each santoku to cut 3 ounces of steak into cubes, noting whether any blades had trouble slicing through meat and how easily they were able to make even pieces.
• Cleaning: Between tests, I hand-washed each knife, noting those that needed extra scrubbing on the blade or handle, and any that were especially slippery when wet.

Only after completing all my other tests did I reveal the retail prices of the santokus to consider value for money. At the time of testing, the 12 santokus ranged from $38 to $199, with an average of $131.

What I Looked For in the Best Santoku Knife

Blade Material and Design

Steel is by far the most common material used for knives of all kinds. Japanese knives in particular are often made from carbon steel, which contains extra carbon, making it harder than normal and able to hold a finer edge for longer. The disadvantage of carbon steel is that it's more brittle and more susceptible to rust. Stainless steel is made with added chromium, which makes it shiny and rust-resistant, but softer and less sharpenable. There are many different "recipes" for steel that have different combinations of properties, and some knives also layer multiple steels together to achieve different effects.

With the santoku in particular, the exact shape of the blade is important, too. The bottom of the knife should be rounded for a rocking cutting motion, but different models have different curves that work best with different knife techniques. A santoku's broad blade gives it power and is useful for things like crushing garlic cloves, but the shape also makes it heavy for its size — and each santoku is a little different in height, length, and weight.

Another design aspect to look for is a Granton edge. This is a series of divots carved into the blade that create air pockets so food doesn't stick. It's an especially helpful feature if you plan to slice a lot of meat, cheese, and other wet or sticky ingredients.

Handle Material and Design

It doesn't matter how sharp the blade is; if a knife is painful to hold or slips out of your hand, it's not a good knife. There are lots of different handle shapes available, and I find that the best ones are neither perfectly round nor perfectly square. Sharp corners are secure in the hand, but they're not particularly comfortable. Circular handles feel nice, but they're slippery, especially when wet. Round-cornered rectangles or oval shapes can both be very effective, with your favorite depending on exactly how you hold your knife.

In terms of handle material, wood and plastic are very common, along with composites like Micarta and Pakkawood, which are layers of wood and other materials bonded together in a plastic resin. Regardless of the material, you should look at the texture, which can range from perfectly smooth (easy to clean but potentially slippery) to rough and sandpapery (good for grip but can hold onto bits of food). Another handle design aspect to pay attention to is the rivets that connect the handle and blade: Ideally, these should feel perfectly smooth, with no gaps where corrosion can begin to form.

Weight and Balance

Santokus are fairly light knives in general: The ones I tested ranged in weight from 3.5 to 8.8 ounces. This is not meant to be a knife that's tough to lift, but there was a noticeable difference in feel between models. A heavier knife doesn't offer as much control, but the weight helps cut through tough or dense foods with less effort. Lighter knives are more agile but less powerful, but you do want some amount of weight to hold the blade securely in your hand.

Just as important as overall weight is weight balance. Ideally, the handle and blade offset each other perfectly, which makes the knife as stable as possible and gives you the most control. But if a knife is a bit unbalanced, it's better if it's weighted toward the blade than toward the handle. A heftier blade can feel like it's pulling itself through food, while a knife that's balanced toward the handle wants to pull the blade backward out of the food.

Other Santoku Knives I Tested

Strong Contenders

Masamoto HC Japanese Santoku ($198 at Amazon)

I felt perfect control holding this knife, and it did a beautiful job in my tests. The reason it's not on my list of winners is that it discolored quite badly after a single rinse and wash. I washed all the test santokus together in the same way and the Masamoto was the only one with this problem, so it's a lot less forgiving than competitors when it comes to care. (Notably, Masamoto's nakiri did not discolor in my nakiri testing and was my pick for best splurge.)

Tojiro Professional Santoku ($92 at Amazon)

Tojiro's nicely priced santoku gave me great control, especially when peeling the curved surfaces of a sweet potato. However, it was not as sharp as the higher-priced models above, needing a notable amount of sawing to slice the steak and lots of chops to get through the garlic.

Victorinox 7-Inch Rosewood Santoku ($67 at Amazon)

This wood-handled santoku is a great budget buy, with an extremely sharp blade that performed much better than I expected given the lightweight design and plain wooden handle. It would have been my pick for the best value, except the Mercer Genesis did even better and is cheaper.

What Didn't Make the List

None of the santokus in my test stood out as a bad performer; the models not included above just fell a bit behind the rest, either in performance or value. All five come from brands that we trust and that have produced winners in other knife category tests: Global, Mac, Misen, Shun, and Wüsthof.

Our Expertise

Food & Wine senior writer Jason Horn tested 12 santokus at home and wrote this roundup. With a master's in journalism and a culinary degree, he's been writing about food and drinks for nearly 20 years, including at Liquor.com, Playboy, and Serious Eats. Our resident knife-testing expert, he's also tested and reviewed butcher knives, meat cleavers, oyster knives, brisket slicers, and more.