The Best Boning Knife for All Your At-Home Butchering Needs

A warning: There will be some detailed description of butchering below. If you aren’t into reading the particulars of breaking down a chicken, proceed at your own risk.

Unlike, say, a chef’s knife or a paring knife, a boning knife isn’t an everyday tool for the home kitchen. But if you cook and serve a lot meat, it’s almost as fundamental as a good set of steak knives. Buying the best boning knife can help you save money in the long run, because you can buy bigger proteins at lower prices and break them down into individual cuts yourself. You likely will have to purchase one separately. They tend not to come with many knife sets, which tend to stick to a short list that includes a chef’s knife, a paring knife, a bread knife, and some sort of utility blade.

Their sharp blades cleanly cut the breast off a chicken; the sharp tip can be wiggled between joints to remove the thighs, legs, and wings without making a mess of things. Flexibility helps you navigate your knife around bones, turning large cuts of meat like pork shoulders into weeknight-friendly portions. A thin blade with a thick sturdy handle can easily slide under a tenderloin’s stubborn silverskin, cut excess fat from a brisket, or fillet a fish with a single stroke.

In our search for the best boning knives, we tried models that cost less than twenty bucks all the way up to some that cost hundreds of dollars. There were knives with blades as straight as an arrow and others with dramatic curves. Here’s what we found when we put them to the test.

When choosing the absolute best boning knife, we needed to consider which model would do a great job no matter who was holding it, whether it’s a pro chef who knows their way around a rough cut of meat, or a home cook who is still working on her knife skills. The Wusthof has a straight blade, which, unlike a curved boning knife, gives the user a clean sightline between the position of their hand and the tip of the knife as it works its way around meat and bone. This means it’s easier to make precise cuts.

The weight and balance of the Wusthof Classic is just about perfect, with a good heft that helps it work its way through joints and lightweight bones. It’s not too thick, not too thin, with just enough flexibility to smoothly navigate around muscle and tissue while remaining rigid enough to maintain control cutting through dense sections of meat. The handle is comfortable, letting you hold it underhand or overhand, and a fat bolster lets you choke up on the knife if needed to apply more force.

Other things we loved about the Wusthof is its ability to hold an edge and how easy it is to sharpen once it dulls. To use a boning knife effectively, it needs to be supremely sharp, and on the whole, Wusthof’s fully forged knives don’t dull easily. But when this best boning knife needs maintenance, the heavy steel and straight blade make it simpler to use with a knife sharpener. That’s a nice feature since a novice may struggle putting a new edge on a flimsier, steeply curved blade.

We picked the Wusthof as the best boning knife because it can deliver incredible results regardless of the skill level of the person holding it. However, experienced cooks might prefer a curved blade to work around large bones, or a paper-thin blade to butcher fish. That’s not to say the Wusthof can’t do either of those things; this is simply a matter of preference.

The Victorinox’s blade is curved, but not so curved that it interferes with precision. The handle is not too fat or chunky; and the textured handle material makes it easy to hold and control without slippage. The blade we tested is fairly rigid (although there is a flexible blade model if you want something with more play), so while it can bend enough to skin a fish or jiggle between joints, it’s also sturdy enough to cleanly cut through meat without wobbling. The price point is also attractive; at less than $30 at the time of writing, it’s a great option for anyone who doesn’t see themselves using a boning knife on a daily basis.

If you’re new to knifework, it may take some time to learn how to work with a curved blade; however, since the Victorinox’s curve is so slight, the learning curve (ahem) isn’t a very steep one. But it’s also not as easy to sharpen this knife compared to the Wusthof, but if you only use it a few times a month, it shouldn’t lose its edge too quickly.

The Shun Premiere is a serious boning knife for serious cooks, so if you think you have the skills and you regularly butcher meat, you’ll like it. The blade is highly curved, which helps improve visibility when held in a horizontal position, like you would when filleting a fish or butterflying a chicken breast (as we said, not as easy to use if you’re using the point to get in between joints). The bolster is thin enough that it doesn’t hurt when you choke up on the handle, making this knife feel like an extension of your hand, giving you excellent control. Out of all the knives we tested, the Shun Premiere was among the most rigid, which professionals will likely see as a plus because it provides stability, but could be a hindrance for those who have never used a boning knife before.

The things that will make experienced cooks like it so much make it a tough sell for beginner butchers. Rigid blades aren’t as forgiving if you’re filleting a fish, and the steep takes some getting used to for a task like breaking down a whole chicken. It’s also expensive compared to our other two picks, so we’d recommend it as an upgrade to something you already have or potentially as a gift, but not as the first boning knife you ever buy.

When it comes to testing boning knives, you can learn just about everything you need to know by using them to break down a chicken. We started with the basics, removing the white meat sections by slicing around the rib cage and separating the dark meat from the carcass by running the knife through the hip joints. Next, we used the tip of the knife to separate the wings into segments, then cut the meat of the drumettes away from the bone to make chicken “lollipops.” Finally, we turned to deboning. We went back to the dark meat, completely removing the bones from the chicken thighs and frenching the legs.

How we judged boning knives

The ideal boning knife should be light enough to comfortably maneuver around big pieces of meat with large bones (like pork shoulders), allowing you to easily change position and direction as you go. At the same time, it should have enough heft to break through joints and cartilage without needing to apply a tremendous amount of pressure.

Unlike most other kitchen knives, boning knives can be held either overhand and underhand. Not only should they be comfortable to hold in both positions, but it should be easy to shift between the two while working.

Curved knife blades are better for large slabs of meat, making them great for professional kitchens, but not as practical for home cooks, who typically cook with straight blades. Unless you’re regularly breaking down meat every single day, it’s unlikely that you’ll be able to quickly and easily adapt your line-of-sight and cutting techniques for a curved blade. Straight blades act as an extension of your arm, allowing you to work the tip around irregular lines with precision. A curved blade requires a little guesswork as you start to use it. That means that if you’re only using it once or twice a month it could take you some time to feel comfortable with it. Consider how often you’ll be using your boning knife, as well as your overall knife skills, before you make your buying decision.

A blade should be thin enough to slip between meat, bone and connective tissue without ripping everything to shreds, but not so thin that it feels flimsy and hard to control. In terms of blade length, everything we tested was between five and six inches long. If you’re browsing online, that’s a bit shorter than most things you’ll find labeled as “fillet knives,” so don’t be confused.

Other boning knives we tested

This knife would be a top contender if it wasn’t for the poorly designed bolster; its sharp angles make it uncomfortable whenever you need to choke up on the handle, and almost painful when changing your grip from overhand to underhand.

This is an excellent budget knife, with a textured, ergonomic handle that makes it easy to grip. Maybe that’s why you’ll see it at butcher counters all over. However, its curved six-inch-long blade may make it more difficult for novice cooks to use, for the median home cook. And someone with the knife skills already to use it may want to spring for the Shun upgrade

This knife felt too chunky when compared to the rest of the field. The handle was a bit too bulky to get fully comfortable with and made it difficult to seamlessly change position while cutting.

This is a beautiful carbon-steel boning knife, but not a functional one. Its look is due, in part, to its carbon-steel blade—a beautiful black that takes on a rugged patina that stainless-steel blades can never hope to duplicate. However, the blade is longer than it needs to be in order to break down a chicken or skin individual portions of fish. The Steelport’s handle is too big to offer a real feeling of control and it’s far too heavy to feel comfortable in your hand. If it was marketed as a slicing knife, it would get high marks, but as a boning knife, it fails every test.