What is the Best Knife for Slicing Fruit

I have had a few requests and several searches on this blog for more information on the best knife for slicing fruit. My favorite is a Wustoff 8″ Utility Knife. I own two of them as one, went for a wander in a kitchen a few years back and after replacing it, the first one found it’s way back to my tool box. I like this knife for several reasons but only for fruit. The steel is high quality carbon stainless and it keeps a good edge for a long time between sharpenings. There is no sign of rust on the blade or the rivets after 20 years. The blade is 8″ long which is sufficient for cutting and peeling watermelon if I need it. By the same token the blade is narrow enough that I can use it on a Kiwi fruit as well.

The knife has a full bolster and the blade at the heel of the knife is only an inch an a quarter wide. This is good for knife strength, it gives a solid feel when you use it. You can cut the ends off of a cantaloupe or honeydew and then follow the contour of the fruit down the sides and have it peeled quickly. The blade is very narrow so when you peel smaller items like an apple or the skin off of a jicama you can use the tip to go out around and down and the blade will bend a little to follow out, around and down very easily. The knife is also excellent with a mushroom slicing project when you need to bang out 5 pounds of sliced mushrooms in a hurry.

Now there are some drawbacks to this thin blade. Since the blade is only an inch or so at the heel you can not use it for any kind of job that requires a rocking action where the blade has to go to the board and rock back. You wind up hitting your knuckles on the board before the blade gets through the product. Chopping and dicing are not possible with this knife as you need at least 2″ at the heel of the blade to do that. When you slice the peeled cantaloupe this is not an issue since you are moving back and forth horizontal to the board and when you finish the tip of the knife is touching as you draw through for the final time. The knife is light weight easily manipulated, the 8″ blade is long enough for big jobs and slender enough to use the tip for fine work. The longer blade gives you the ability to keep your hand well back and slice with the middle of the blade where a 6″ would have your hand too close to your work and have your knuckles running into the fruit as you sliced it.

One other word of caution; if you get a knife like this be careful when you set it down. The spine of the blade and the handle are so perfectly balanced that the knife will sit perfectly upside down. As you can see in the picture it is resting with the blade exposed. On more than on occasion I have set mine aside to do something else and then realized that the blade was sitting there as an accident waiting to happen, just a heads up.

You can find this and many other fine knife offerings at ChefsKnivesToGo

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