You can usually always find me in the kitchen, cooking, baking, chopping, prepping…whatever needs doing in there, I’m usually doing it. And I’ve always wanted to try ceramic kitchen knives, and lo and behold, a lovely set was sent to me by Oliver & Kline to try and review. And while I’m sold on the type of product, this particular product comes a little short due to design. But overall, I’m a fan.
See, I thought ceramic knives were some kind of gimmick, some flash-in-the-pan product. “As Seen On TV” type thing, which usually denotes junk, so I avoided them. I spent good money on quality steel kitchen knives, after all. What could ceramic knives bring to the party? Turns out I had a lot to learn. Turns out, a well ground ceramic knife will hold it’s sharp cutting edge much longer than steel, practically never needing sharpening. Made of zirconium dioxide, it’s almost diamond hard, yet will never rust like steel. And because ceramic is non-reactive to acids, it isn’t affected by highly acidic foods. There is a caveat to all these positives, and that’s that ceramic knives are brittle. The fine edge can chip easily on bone or frozen foods, and twisting them to say, pull an avocado pit, could shatter the blade. And forget crushing garlic. And there’s no sharpening them at home, you need a special diamond-dust coated grinding wheel. But, those things are a small price to pay, in my book, for a super-sharp knife that will stay that way for a long, long long time. For slicing and paring, these knives quickly became my go-to.
Until I had to chop. Chopping up herbs, onions, garlic, parsley, cilantro, chives….was, to say the least, frustrating, and I’ll show you why. The bolster on my chefs knife doesn’t extend past the blade, and comes down clean to chop up anything. There’s no light coming through to under to illustrate that:
Now, on the same cutting board, with my Oliver & Kline chef’s knife:
See all that light? Nothing will be cut there, unless you manage to get the bolster to the very edge of the cutting board with each stroke, which is a nearly impossible task. And it frustrated the living hell out of me trying to chop. It’s such a shame that a design flaw like this made me put the knife away and not use it again, and Hubby said he’d find a way to alter the bolster to make it usable again, but ugh… I wanted to love these knives, and I don’t.
There’s a lot of good things here. The price is spot on. The darker blade of the ceramic usually denotes a tougher ceramic, and the non-slip grips of the handles are nice (ABS plastic coated in TPR), and aren’t even slippery when wearing gloves, for when you don’t want to small like garlic and onions all day. They’re reasonably sharp out of the box, which is important because you can not sharpen them at home. The presentation box with it’s magnetic lid is just beautiful, and the three sizes (6″ chef, 5″ utility, 4″ paring) are some of the best and most useful all-around sizes for the kitchen. There’s decent heft and the knives are balanced well. But ugh…again, that bolster. So close to the perfect prep knives for me. If you don’t do much chopping or prep, and slicing alone is your thing, these are hands down some of the best value ceramic knives I’ve found. You’ll enjoy them greatly. But for me, sadly, they missed the mark.
Connect with Oliver & Kline:
I received the above product(s) free of charge from Oliver & Kline. I am not obligated to provide a positive or favorable review, just my honest opinion. My review is based on my experience with the product and/or brand, which may differ from yours.
WOM-derful 