Kitchen Shears

Sturdy kitchen shears are essential for everything from cutting kitchen parchment and snipping herbs to slicing pizza and spatchcocking a chicken. But styles and quality vary greatly, and many just aren’t up to all the tasks. To find our favorite, we tested numerous highly rated brands on tasks big and small.

Overall, we found that when shopping for kitchen shears, it’s best to look for blades made from high-carbon stainless steel, which stay sharper longer. Well-balanced, comfortable handles are key; the sharpness of the blades doesn’t matter if the grip is awkward or flimsy. Shears that come apart for cleaning also are a must. Finally, skip any shears with too many bells and whistles; built-in can openers and nutcrackers sound clever, but they often just get in the way.

In our testing, Japanese-made blades generally outperformed the others; Shun’s premium kitchen shears quickly emerged as our top choice. With an ergonomic handle that enhances control and comfort, their high-carbon stainless steel blades cut through chicken with ease. Heavier than the competitors, the sturdy construction and superior sharpness made every cut feel effortless. We also appreciated the bone notch feature, which provides leverage for cutting through smaller bones.

Our runner-up was Mitsumoto Sakari. We liked its spring-loaded design and detachable knife blade, though the handle shape was less comfortable for delicate tasks, such as snipping herbs. However, the sharpness was impressive, and dismantling the shears to use the blade independently worked well for spatchcocking.

Least impressive of the bunch was Mercer Culinary shears, primarily due to their duller blades, which struggled with spatchcocking and left frayed edges when cutting herbs. And though this model is designed to also function as a jar opener and nutcracker, these add-ons were more gimmicky than useful.