Boning Knives: Which is the Best for Your Cooking Style?

The three most common types of boning knives are straight, curved, and flexible. Although they can all be used to break down whole animals and large cuts of meat, trim silverskin and fat, and even fillet fish, their individual features are designed to navigate certain tasks better than others.

As you explore each type, consider how you'll use it and how often. If you're a diehard carnivore, having several high-end options in your kit may make sense, but if you're the occasional backyard holiday BBQ'er, a simple budget boning knife will likely do the trick!

Straight boning knives have a firm, rigid blade with little give. They range between 5 and 7 inches, and most flare out at the base of the heel to help prevent your hand from sliding off the handle onto the sharpened edge. Even with gloves, your hands get slippery when breaking down whole proteins, so this blade feature is great, considering we're working with higher-end knives, not cheap food service knives with rubber or polypropylene handles.

Straight boning knives are excellent at slicing around bones, cartilage, and connective tissue. The firm blade allows you to use the side of the blade to push meat around, pop off the cartilage, and twist and turn the blade when you have to put a little extra effort into deboning.

Longer straight boning knives are also great for portioning large cuts of meat, like beef tenderloin or pork loin, since the firm blade allows you to slice evenly without the blade angling awkwardly, like a flexible boning knife may do.

If you're looking to find a way to use a straight boning knife for more than just breaking down proteins, it can work as a utility knife in some instances. If you want tomato slices for a sandwich or need to cut some butcher's twine for a roast, there's no need to dirty another knife. However, due to the flare at the heel, if you want to tap chop with the blade, work on the edge of the cutting board so the flared heel isn't hitting the board.

Straight Boning Knives:

• Budget
  • K Sabatier Olive Wood 5" Boning Knife, first image above
• Good
  • Wusthof Classic 5" Boning Knife, second image above
• Premium:
  • Enso SG2 6" Boning Knife, first image below
• Premium
  • Steelport Carbon Steel 6" Boning Knife, second image below

Curved boning knives average 6 inches in length and have a pronounced upward curve in the belly of the blade, with a very narrow pointed tip. The knife's curve allows you to get under the silverskin on large, flat pieces of meat like brisket. The curved blade makes it much easier to move between various muscles while butchering, separating individual muscles from chuck roasts, and getting into hard-to-reach places.

Curved boning knives are more specialized than straight boning knives, so if you're looking for a dual-purpose blade, this is probably not the best option. However, if you do decide to use a curved boning knife on the cutting board, stick to slicing, as the curved edge doesn't make enough surface contact with the cutting board to be efficient at chopping.

Curved Boning Knives:

• Budget
  • Shun Kanso 6.25" Curved Boning Knife, first image above
• Good
  • Enso HD 6" Curved Boning Knife, second image above
• Good:
  • Shun Premier 6" Curved Boning Knife, first image below
• Premium
  • Zanmai Pro Zebra Damascus Boning Knife, second image below

Side Note: Hey, y'all! Chef Brandon here, the baldy from our YT videos. I lived in Texas four different times over a decade or so while my wife was a traveling nurse. While there, I learned how to smoke Texas Style Brisket and had to learn how to trim those big hunks of meat! I experimented with various knives, but nothing comes close to a curved boning knife for trimming brisket. I've experimented with a few different ones, and I prefer the narrow ones like the Enso HD or the Zanmai. Happy BBQing!

Flexible boning knives have much more give than a regular boning knife, but they are quite as flexible as a thinner fillet knife. The benefit of a flexible boning knife is that it can do most of what the others we've covered are capable of, but they are also great for small to medium-sized fish like trout, tilapia, salmon, and catfish.

Like the curved boning knife, the flexible knife is great for working with flatter proteins. You can press the side of the tip of the knife down into the protein, let the blade bend, and then push forward to trim off silverskin and fat, allowing you to work at different angles than you can with the other knives.

The thinner, flexible blades will be made with softer steels that can bend without breaking. If these knives are used regularly, they require honing and sharpening more often. On the flip side, they are the most affordable boning knives covered.

If you're just beginning to develop knife skills, we recommend steering clear of a flexible blade. Accidents can happen more easily since the knife can move in different directions than where you're directly aiming it.

Curved Boning Knives:

• Budget
  • Victorinox Swiss Classic 6" Flexible Boning Knife, first image above
• Budget
  • Zwilling Gourmet 7" Flexible Fillet Knife, second image above
• Good:
  • Global 6" Flexible Boning Knife, first image below
• Premium
  • Messermeister Royale Elite 6" Flexible Boning Knife, second image below

The Japanese version of a boning knife is called a honesuki. The blade is more triangular than the other boning knives, with a tall heel, ranging between 4 and 6 inches. The honesuki was originally designed for butchering birds like chickens and turkeys, but it can break down any other protein that works with a shorter blade.

Unlike the other knives, the honesuki can have a thick spine, like the Moritaka below. This is great for removing cartilage and joints from chicken bones and using it as leverage while pulling off skin.

Today, many knife makers market honesuki knives as prep knives. The tall heel provides knuckle clearance, so you can tap or push chop while prepping various ingredients without banging your knuckles into the cutting board. Many chefs claim they can prep all day with just two knives: a chef's and a honesuki!

Japanese Honesuki Knives:

• Budget
  • Tojiro DP 6" Honesuki Boning Knife, first image above
• Good
  • Shun Classic 4.5" Honesuki Knife, second image above
• Good:
  • Hatsukokoro Kumokage Aogami #2 Kurouchi Damascus 5.9" Honesuki, first image below
• Premium
  • Moritaka 5.9" Aogami #2 Carbon Steel Honesuki, second image below

Fillet knives are longer and even more flexible than any boning knife. They are intended for fish, more so than meat. However, if you love to fish and catch your own dinner regularly but still enjoy cooking with whole chickens or trimming up some filet mignon from time to time, a fillet knife will definitely do the trick. Just stay away from bones, using the blade's side to pop off chicken bone joints, or using it for leverage when pulling thick pieces of fat or separating muscles by hand. Save these delicate blades for filleting small fish, scoring skin, and effortlessly breaking down flat fish!

Utility, Prep, and Petty knives are incredibly versatile and deserve a home in every kitchen. From simple veg prep to cutting up a pineapple, filleting a fish, and portioning pork loin, these knives basically can do it all.

Petty or utility knives range from 4 to 6 inches and have a relatively straight and uniform blade shape. Depending on the length, they may have a slight heel, but not enough to allow full knuckle clearance. However, some, like the Moritaka above on the right, can still be used for tap and push chopping when held at the right angle.

Petty is used to describe Japanese knives, while utility covers everyone else around the globe; either way, they are talking about the same style of knife.

Prep knives generally have a more triangular shape, like the honesuke knives we covered, with a taller heel, allowing better knuckle clearance. You'll often find "ko" knives, like the ko-bunka or ko-nakiri, falling under the prep knife category. Regardless of the name or category, a knife roughly 5-6 inches long, with a tall enough heel to provide knuckle clearance, is an absolute workhorse. 

A prep knife like the Miyabi Koya shown above has a tall enough heel to provide knuckle clearance. It also has a narrow tip, which makes it great as a boning knife. Meanwhile, some prep knives are too wide at the tip of the blade for precision trimming, so consider the tip of a prep knife if you're looking for a dual-purpose boning blade.

Technically, boning knives are specialty blades, considering their duty is in the name. However, many of these knives can be used for much more than breaking down chickens or trimming some pork loin.

In fact, we've had many customers share that instead of buying steak knife sets, which are usually only used a few times a year, they purchased several boning or utility knives instead, creating utility-boning-steak-hybrids that can be used year-round. Brilliant!

So, if you're considering adding a boning knife to your kit, let's recap what you should consider.

1. How often do you break down whole animals or large cuts of meat? 
2. Do you need a budget knife that will be used a few times a year, or a nice Damascus blade to add to your collection?
3. Do you want a blade that's great for meat and fish?
4. Would you rather invest in a one-size-fits-all knife that you can also use for veg prep?

Answering these four questions will help you decide which boning knife, honesuke prep knife, or utility blade is best for your kitchen.