Babish 8-Inch Chef Knife – High-Carbon German 1.4116 Steel Kitchen Knife – Professional Cutlery for Precise Slicing and Chopping

By Bill Marsano, independent product tester and home cook. Anyone interested in value for money should consider this knife for its high quality, Japanese style (although it’s made in China) and impressively low price. I bought one for myself and another, later, as a gift. Both arrived very sharp out of the box and have stood up well to use by conscientious home cooks. (I have since bought and been pleased by Babish’s “Clef” and Santoku.) All are made from 1.4116 stainless steel, one of the cutlery industry's standard steels because of its stain-resistance, durability and ease of cleaning and honing. Edge retention is very good—treated well, the knives will stay sharp far longer that ‘bargain’ blades made of softer steel. Please note: a couple of fear-mongering reviews claim that the knife is dangerous because it is so sharp and has no bolster. This is ignorant nonsense. First, if you have used only very dull knives, you will need to go slowly with this or any other sharp knife. Second, the heel (back end) of the blade is perpendicular to the cutting edge, so your hand cannot slide forward onto the cutting edge--period. Bolsters may aid balance or be relics of earlier forging technology, but they are in no way safety features. No Japanese knives have bolsters because they interfere with sharpening and prevent use of the pull-cut technique. (Zwilling, Wusthof and other leading brands offer both bolster and no-bolster models). To keep your knife sharp, use a “steel” or “butcher’s steel” (a.k.a. “honing rod”). A good steel (not ceramic or diamond-coated but all steel) will cost more than the knife (See Amazon’s 12” Zwillings) but will save many times its cost (and inconvenience) in professional sharpening. Learn to use it from your butcher and some online videos, and use it OFTEN.—Mr. Marsano steels his knives after every use. None has ever been sharpened and some are a decade old. He uses only no-bolster knives and still has all the fingers he was born with.

I'm a bit of a knife nerd. I'm not gonna be that guy that lists all my knives, but suffice to say this is on the board with some pretty premium cutlery. Here's why I adore this thing:Oh, quick note before starting. Get a sharpener. No kitchen knife stays sharp forever and a sharp knife makes a world of difference. Remember, at the end of the day all a premium knife does is stay sharp longer. If you just get good at sharpening this could be end game. I recommend the King double sided whetstone, and watch the Adam Ragusea sharpening video. And practice!Alright, why I love this knife!- Room For GrowthEven if you upgrade later, this can stay in your collection to ram through joints or hammer through a hard squash when you'd feel bad doing that with your other knives. Or when you just want to do a quick task and put the knife in the dishwasher, you can! No exotic wood handle to shrink or high carbon steel to discolor!- Serious Geometry:This knife is well balanced and it feels great in the hand. There's no heal (where the bolster extends all the way down to the back of the blade) so you can easily sharpen the whole thing with a single whetstone.- Guest-ProofIt lives on the magnet board next all my others. When guests come over who don't know how to treat a knife I can hand them this! It doesn't feel like an insult because it's still a serious knife and I keep it razor sharp so it performs beautifully. But then I can watch them cut a sandwich directly on a stoneware plate without even one tear rolling down my cheek! Just chuck it in the washer, sharpen again, and back it goes.- Excellent DurabilityIt's a soft steel so it doesn't chip and it sharpens easily. Bit of a plus or minus here, but if you have a real knife like this you should also have a sharpener. There's really no task this thing can't do.

I just moved into a new home and am replacing the essentials that my old roommate used to own. Obviously, for anyone who cooks at home, you need a few decent knives. Now, my background and current job is working in bars/restaurants. I work on the bar side of things, but have definitely been around commercial kitchens where cooks come in with their daily-driver types of knives. Sure, you have high end restaurants / chefs who own and use $300+ knives (cost per knife), but for most people working in kitchens, they're looking for affordable, good quality knives they can use daily.This knife seems to fit that bill. Granted, it's a serrated bread knife, so it has limited uses. Personally, at home, I'm never slicing bread. All the bread I purchase comes pre-sliced unless you're talking about kaiser rolls or sub style buns. But, my primary use for a bread knife at home is slicing fragile fruits and vegetables like tomatoes and citrus, and cutting sandwiches in half. At my bar we've been using the same restaurant supply store brand serrated knife to prep our bar fruit for 5 years. It was probably a $10 knife at the very most. It still works well, and it has definitely seen a ton of use. Never sharpened once.So, for myself at home, I wanted to buy a good quality bread knife that wouldn't break the bank. I didn't want to go cheap like $10, but didn't want to spend over $50 either. I saw this on Amazon and it fit the bill and had good reviews, so I ordered it. I really love how this knife feels. Great weight balance, and feels quality. It came out of the box super sharp, and I've had a chance to test drive it on slicing tomatoes for sandwiches, and it's super accurate. You can go paper thin if you wanted, and it won't "warble" and start going sideways like some poor quality serrated knives can do. I then made a sandwich and cut it in half. It cut through all of the meat, veggies, and bread like butter. Seriously, like two passes and the sandwich was perfectly cut with nothing dangling and hanging on, it was like a laser cut.I did a bit of research after buying this knife, and saw some reviews out there saying Babish knives will lose their edge fast. That's fine by me, that will happen to any knife, that's why there are wetstones and sharpeners out there, so that's not a,n issue for me. Also, I want to note that I didn't know who Babish was before buying this knife, so I'm not purchasing this as a fanboy or anything. I bought it purely on the price, design and reviews.The reality is, is that you can buy a whole knife set with a wood block for about $50-$80. So, spending $24 on just one knife might seem dumb. But, for 99.9% of home cooking you only need a few knives. A good santoku, a bread knife, and arguably some decent steak knives (depending if you serve your steak pre-cut or not). Those entire knife sets come with about 8 knives you'll probably never need to use, and trying to save a few bucks by buying the whole set will compromise the quality of all the knives.All that being said, I'm happy with my purchase. I also bought the santoku knife this brand offers. Again, I don't mind sharpening knives. I've done it A LOT. If, for whatever reason, these knives can't hold an edge for like a week of general use over time (like some other reviews online say), I'll probably come back here an update my review. But, I just don't see it happening based on the quality of materials used and my week's worth of use on it so far. Are there better knives out there? Of course. Do you really need them as a home cook? Probably not. If you're on a budget and just want a few good knives, I would recommend this brand for sure.