Scott Heimendinger, an inventor from Seattle, recently started a fascinating project to find the best chef’s knife—but with a twist. To thoroughly test each knife’s performance on a variety of foods, he fastened 21 different knives to a slicing robot arm. The outcomes were surprising as well as fascinating.
As a cofounder of the well-known Sous Vide brand Sansaire and a graduate of Modernist Cuisine and Anova, Heimendinger has a track record of utilising state-of-the-art technology. He is currently working on an ultrasonic knife that will be available in 2025. But what really caught people’s attention was his side project, the Quantified Knife Project. In order to create a thorough “food cutting rank,” he connected 21 chef’s knives to a robot arm, tested them using five distinct foods, and gathered data.
For every knife, the robot arm was designed to cut through rolls, tomatoes, potatoes, cheese, and carrots. Although the results were analysed to provide an exact ranking, the performance variation was the most notable finding. The Shun Classic Hollow Edge and Moritaka Hamono were two knives that consistently performed well, while other knives were good at one food and bad at another. With the exception of cutting carrots, the $300 Wüsthof Amici performed exceptionally well in the majority of tests. Two knives, the Zwilling Solution Fine Edge and the Henckels Classic, came in last.
Through this massive data collection, Heimendinger learnt about the unpredictable nature of knives. Not everything that works well for one food will work well for another. His tests showed that specific cutting capabilities are more important than intuition alone, even for seasoned knife enthusiasts. Together with Heimendinger’s accurate data collection, the robot arm’s painstaking procedure provided a new viewpoint on knife performance.
The project reaffirmed the notion that a knife’s performance and design aren’t universal, even though it didn’t discount individual preference. Although the practical experience of handling and using a knife is still important, data-supported experiences can help us better understand what makes a great blade.