The 6 Best Butcher Knives of 2024, Tested & Reviewed

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These razor-sharp blades can handle ribs, whole chickens, and steaks.

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Food & Wine / Jason Horn

For slicing meat, whether breaking down an entire animal, cutting steaks, or turning a whole fish into fillets for grilled king salmon, you need a butcher knife. These blades come in different styles built for different tasks, but at least one should be on your list of essential kitchen knives.

I put a dozen of these tools to the test in my kitchen, and it's helped me find the best butcher knives to add to your collection. If you like smoking barbecue, cooking over a fire on the grill, or saving money by buying meat in bulk, one of these butcher knives is probably for you.

This sharp, hefty blade is up to almost any task, and it's inexpensive to boot.

The Granton edge doesn't line up with the curve of the blade and makes it look cheap.

The name cimiter (also spelled cimitar or scimitar) originated with a thick, curved sword used in the Middle Ages, and that's pretty much how I'd describe this knife. It's the longest and third-heaviest of my test group, with a textured plastic handle for a very secure grip. It's balanced a bit toward the blade end, which makes it pull itself downward into the meat as you slice. I was able to remove the whole chicken breast in essentially one stroke thanks to the long blade. It also performed quite well in the paper test, an indication that it's just plain sharp in addition to being well-designed.

The Mercer cimiter is well below average in price, and it beat out options triple and quadruple the cost in my tests. The only downside of it being inexpensive is that it also looks inexpensive. The black plastic handle is plain and generic. The Granton edge — the series of divots along the blade that help keep meat from sticking — doesn't line up with the curve and almost seems like it was mis-stamped into the blade. This didn't affect performance, but it stood out visually.

Blade Length: 11.5 inches | Total Length: 16.75 inches | Weight: 8.4 ounces | Blade Material: Stainless steel | Handle Material: Plastic

This light, maneuverable, inexpensive knife is incredibly sharp.

The handle is rather slippery, especially when wet.

This F. Dick is another basic-looking knife that well outperformed its price level. The blade was just amazingly sharp, sliding through both paper and chicken like it was soft butter. Most impressively, it was able to slice through the skin on the first try every time, while other knives took a little sawing to get started. The knife has a good length but is light, well-balanced, and maneuverable. I also liked the large bolster, where you can rest your index finger comfortably and safely when you need to apply lots of force to get through joints.

I didn't love the handle of this knife, however. Its cheap plastic has an almost smooth texture that's not terribly secure to hold, especially if your hands get wet and greasy. It seems like F. Dick paid a lot more attention to the blade than to the grip, but I'd rather the brand did that than the opposite.

Blade Length: 10 inches | Total Length: 15.5 inches | Weight: 5.8 ounces | Blade Material: Stainless steel | Handle Material: Plastic

This knife might be made for the outdoors, but it's a wonderfully well-built tool for kitchen, too.

It's quite expensive.

With its small size and included sheath, the Benchmade Meatcrafter is intended as an outdoor knife for hunting and fishing trips. But it's also a versatile blade that can serve many purposes in the kitchen. My favorite thing about this knife is the handle, which is made from Santoprene, a rubberized plastic with an almost sticky texture. It's rounded and comfortable to hold, but the material ensures that it will not slip out of your hand, almost no matter the circumstances. (It also rinses off just as easily as smooth plastic.)

The blade itself was very sharp in testing, slicing right through paper as well as chicken joints. The small size might not be the perfect choice for breaking down an entire beef primal cut, but on the other hand, the Meatcrafter could double as a paring knife for detail work or slicing vegetables. It's a well-constructed knife, and you can see that in details like the riveted rather than the one-piece-of-plastic sheath, the complex shape of the grip, and even the reinforced hole to attach the knife to a lanyard.

The downside is that the Meatcrafter is very expensive, especially given its small size. It's both the shortest and priciest of the blades I tested.

Blade Length: 6 inches | Total Length: 10.75 inches | Weight: 3.1 ounces | Blade Material: Stainless steel | Handle Material: Santoprene | Includes: Sheath

This substantial blade offers power and control at a great price.

It's not very well-balanced, and the smooth handle can be slippery.

You don't need to spend a lot of money to get an excellent butcher knife: Three of the four cheapest models I tested wound up in the list of winners. Zwilling's Twin Master is a bit shorter than the Mercer and F. Dick above, but its thickness and curved shape can still take on substantial cuts of meat. I got great control with this knife, using the pointy tip to feel out joints and separate chicken wings, legs, and thighs with just one chop. Another nice feature is the divot for your thumb on top of the handle, which lets you push down with extra force.

Unfortunately, this knife's handle isn't up to the same standard as its blade. As with the F. Dick, there's not much texture to the plastic — it's slippery even when clean and dry. Another flaw I found was with balance. The knife is weighted substantially toward the blade end. That's better than if the handle pulled down but it's still noticeable and takes getting used to.

Blade Length: 8 inches | Total Length: 13.25 inches | Weight: 5.5 ounces | Blade Material: Stainless steel | Handle Material: Plastic

This small-but-hefty knife has great balance and a distinctive look.

It's not as sharp as some of its competitors.

Global knives have a unique all-metal handle with a dimpled texture that's easy to clean, easy to hold, and easy to recognize from across a room. It might feel a bit strange if you're not used to it, but I found it very secure in addition to looking nice. The blade is only 7 inches long, but the weight behind it makes it useful for jobs like turning a whole roast into pork chops, or breaking down multiple whole chickens for economical freezer storage.

The Global butcher's knife is extremely well-balanced thanks to its thick, oversized-butter-knife-looking blade, and it feels heavy for its size. It was able to break through joints with few problems, though I did have a bit more trouble getting slices started than with other knives. It wasn't quite as sharp straight out of the box — especially the last quarter-inch or so nearest the hilt, which was noticeably duller than the rest of the blade. Still, if you want a distinctive knife that's also effective, the Global beat out lots of competitors.

Blade Length: 6.75 inches | Total Length: 11.6 inches | Weight: 6.8 ounces | Blade Material: Stainless steel | Handle Material: Stainless steel

This thin, sharp, and flexible knife offers fine control with delicate fish, and it's priced quite nicely.

The handle isn't super-comfortable, and it's not very useful with red meat.

When you think of a butcher knife, you probably envision a blade made for beef, lamb, pork, or poultry. But fish needs butchering as much as any of those, and it calls for a special blade design. My favorite fish fillet knife in testing, this Victorinox is quite flexible, a key feature in working around tiny, delicate fish bones. It's thin in profile, a helpful feature for cutting off thin fish skin. On top of that, the knife is a great value, well below average for similar models.

My main quibble with the Victorinox fillet knife was its handle: It's a little too short and narrow to hold comfortably, and the plastic isn't deeply enough textured to provide a firm grip. It's also very much a specialized knife for seafood. The small, lightweight blade isn't great for other kinds of meats, or for general slicing and chopping. But if you're a serious pescatarian, love fishing, or want to get into homemade sushi, it's a magnificent option.

Blade Length: 8 inches | Total Length: 13.5 inches | Weight: 3.1 ounces | Blade Material: Stainless steel | Handle Material: Plastic

The heavy-duty Mercer Culinary 12-Inch Granton Edge Cimiter is my top pick, thanks to its low cost, large size, and sharp blade. It's a versatile knife for boning, slicing, and chopping almost any type of meat. If you prefer a smaller blade that's worth paying extra for, the Benchmade Meatcrafter 6-Inch Hunting Knife is equally useful in the kitchen and the woods, with serious quality of craftsmanship.

Based on expert recommendations and the results of previous tests, we chose 12 butcher knives to compare side-by-side for this story. I made general notes on shape, balance, comfort, and feel before performing a series of identical tests. (The Victorinox above was the winner of a separate set of testing involving 12 fish fillet knives.)

After completing the other tests, I revealed the retail prices of the knives to consider value. At the time of testing, the 12 butcher knives ranged from $35 to $200, with an average of $89.

All butcher knives are intended for cutting meat, but there are many different types of meat you might want to cut, and several different styles of butcher knives.

A boning knife is shorter than a typical chef's knife, with a thin, curved blade and an extremely sharp edge. As the name suggests, it's made for separating meat and bone, with a shape made for precise control. A fillet knife is a type of boning knife with an especially thin and usually flexible blade that's gentle on delicate fish flesh.

A breaking knife has a similar design to a boning knife, but with a larger and longer blade, at 8 to 12 inches. It's made to break down a large cut into individual steaks or chops and to trim off excess fat and connective tissue. It's extremely sharp but can be too long and too heavy for general chopping and slicing. (Most knives labeled simply "butcher knife" are this type.)

Looking a bit like a sword, a cimiter has a long, curved blade that's wider than a boning or breaking knife. It can make precise, even cuts through thick steaks or use its weight to hack through joints and portion out whole poultry.

The meat cleaver is a large, rectangular knife that you'll often see butchers wielding. It's a heavy, thick blade that's not necessarily razor-sharp; it's meant more for cutting through bone than for slicing meat from bone. To separate thick marrow bones or split a whole pig, you can even add force by hitting the spine of the blade with a mallet. (The Chinese cleaver has a similar rectangular shape, but it's much thinner and sharper, meant for slicing vegetables.)

“Balance is definitely the key to a good knife,” says Pawan Pinisetti, a winner of Food Network's Chopped and executive chef at Sérêvène in Miami. “A well-balanced knife will be critical to how well you can perform with it.”

A knife's balance refers how evenly the weight is distributed between the handle and blade. Ideally, a knife should hold level if you balance it on your finger right where the blade meets the handle. It should feel natural to hold, without the tip of the blade pulling itself noticeably up or down. This helps avoid wrist fatigue, make it less likely that the blade will slip, and gives you more accurate control in general.

Nearly all knives are made of steel — a mix of iron and carbon — but there are different "recipes" for steel that have different characteristics. Carbon steel has a high carbon content and is very hard, which means it can hold a sharp edge longer but is more expensive to make and more difficult to sharpen. Stainless steel incorporates chromium, which makes it a shiny, rust-resistant material that's softer than carbon steel. It can't be made quite as sharp as carbon steel, but it's easier to re-sharpen at home when it gets dull.

Most butcher knives are made of stainless steel, as it's better able to absorb the impact of knife on bone. Harder carbon steel is prone to chipping when used in butchery.

A grip that's comfortable and won't slip out of your hand is crucial with any blade, but that's especially true with a butcher knife you're likely to put a lot of force behind. Rubber and plastic are fairly common materials, as they're economical and easy to clean, though they might not look very fancy. Finished wood handles can be gorgeous, but they add cost and can catch food bits in their seams and rivets, while cheap unfinished wood feels rough and can start to deteriorate when it gets wet. One handle material many high-end knife brands use is Pakkawood, which is not actually a type of wood but a composite of wood and resin. This maintains the look of wood grain but has a completely smooth and fully washable surface.

The shape of the handle is also important to comfort and solid grip. Square corners and rectangular profiles are less likely to twist in the hand, but they're also cramped to hold. A mixture of rounded and angular tends to work best.

For the most part, you can sharpen a butcher knife the same way you'd sharpen any other kind of kitchen knife. There are many tools to do this, ranging from electric machines to the more precise and finicky whetstone, not to mention professional knife-sharpening services that will do the work for you. Extra-long, extra-tall, or highly curved butcher knives may not be compatible with every type of sharpener, so make sure you check your manual and test things out before potentially ruining your blade.

No matter how you sharpen, be sure to use a honing steel every time you pull out any knife to maintain the edge; if you do this, you should only need to give it a full sharpening once or twice a year.

Large butcher knives, especially cleavers, sometimes have a round hole near the corner of the blade. This feature is merely for convenient storage: It lets you hang the knife from a hook. However, we say hanging a knife is a bad idea, as it can spin around or fall down dangerously. A big butcher knife won't fit in most knife blocks; instead, look for a magnetic knife holder, which keeps butcher knives firmly in place, handy, and on visible display.

Victorinox Fibrox 10-Inch Cimeter Knife ($74 at Amazon)

Multiple pro chefs and butchers recommended knives from Victorinox's inexpensive Fibrox line, and this model proved both very sharp and very secure to hold in testing. I liked its substantial weight, but it was a bit too big for fine work. The main problem with Fibrox is that it's disappearing: Victorinox has decided to make the knives available only to commercial chefs, and they're becoming harder and harder to find at retail.

Dalstrong Gladiator Series 10-Inch Cimitar Knife ($114 at Amazon)

I was really impressed with the Dalstrong's handle, a really comfortable Pakkawood oval whose rivets felt perfectly smooth and cleaned up without a problem. It cut quite smoothly, but it was so heavy that it felt a little out of control. It's a good knife that I don't think is quite worth its high cost.

Messermeister Pro Series Kullenschliff Scimitar ($60 at Amazon)

Messermeister's scimitar is very, very sharp and got through chicken with ease. And despite its reasonable price, it's well-built — its Granton edge lines up with the curved blade, unlike the Mercer above. The handle is made of a similar plastic to the F. Dick above, which was similarly slippery, unfortunately. It's kind of a combination of my top two knives, but it's pricier than either one so it didn't make the winners.

The knives that earned my lowest scores all had multiple positive characteristics but one major flaw, whether an uncomfortable handle, unbalanced weight, dull blade, or too high a price. This included a Cutluxe, Wusthof, and Dexter-Russell, all brands whose knives have been top finishers in other tests.