Best Knives for Cutting Vegetables

Vegetables come in so many shapes and sizes, it’s sometimes hard to decide how to cut them or what knife to use. To help demystify it a little, we’ve come up with a list of the best knives for cutting vegetables.

This list includes what knives would work best, but a good rule of thumb is to use a knife that matches the size of the vegetable. Also, with wobbly vegetables, always try to make a leveling cut to rest the veggie on the cutting board for stability.

Best Knives for Peeling and Paring Vegetables

The trusty paring knife has been a go-to for home cooks, forever. Its shorter, straight-edge blade makes it ideal for small vegetables. Use these knives to peel, pare and cut things like potatoes, small peppers, cherry tomatoes and Brussels sprouts.

2-3/4" Paring Knife

3" Gourmet Paring Knife

Santoku-Style 3" Paring Knife

Best Knives for Cutting Trimming and Slicing Vegetables

These knives could fit into the utility knife category. Their blade length is a bit longer for trimming, slicing and cutting things like avocados, tomatoes, leeks and bell peppers.

4" Gourmet Paring Knife (or 4" Paring Knife)

Trimmer

5" Petite Santoku

Best All-Around Knives for Cutting Vegetables

Some knives just do more. These types of knives can chop, slice, dice and mince. The stalwart of any kitchen is a chef knife, but a santoku knife also works great, and if you have never used a vegetable knife (sometimes called a vegetable cleaver), it is a fantastic knife for large vegetables. All of these knives are good for chopping, dicing and mincing things like carrots, celery, onions, eggplant and cauliflower.

7-5/8" Petite Chef or 9-1/4" French Chef

7" Santoku

Vegetable Knife

Using knives that are well-balanced, comfortable to hold and sharp will also assist when cutting vegetables. In fact, a sharp knife is a safer knife since it requires less pressure to cut through something.

We didn’t name every type of knife out there because the list would have been exhaustive. But this list at least gets you started with understanding some of the basic knives used for cutting vegetables.

Be sure to check out the knife skills section of our Learning Center to learn how to cut a variety of ingredients.