Most kitchen knife steel falls into five practical groups: steel that is simply poor, steel that is too soft, a broad and useful “optimal” band, expensive steel that buys very little extra in a kitchen, and very hard steel that can hold an edge for a very long time but is less forgiving, prone to chipping and a complete sod to sharpen. Most genuinely good everyday kitchen knives sit in the optimal band. The skill is recognising that band, and ignoring the noise above and below it.
If steel is overrated, why bother ranking it?
Because a bad steel will still sink a knife, and because the loudest arguments happen at the two extremes, where the least useful steels live. Once you can place a steel in one of these five groups, most of the marketing around it stops working on you. You are not looking for the hardest steel, or the rarest, or the one with the most impressive number. You are looking for the one that balances the things a kitchen actually asks of a blade.
What are the five types of kitchen knife steel?
Poor. Genuinely bad steel, or steel so poorly chosen or treated that it cannot take or keep a proper edge. This is the stamped supermarket knife that feels blunt within hours and never really sharpens up. No geometry or handle can rescue it. It is the floor, and it is worth knowing only so you can recognise and avoid it. Avoid it like the plague.
Soft. Steel, or steel left too soft in hardening, that will take an edge but loses it quickly. It sharpens easily, which is the one thing in its favour, but the edge rolls or dulls fast and you find yourself honing it constantly. A lot of perfectly pleasant looking knives sit here. They are not dangerous, just tiring, and we’d argue passionately that this is where most of the larger manufacturers sit, primarily for reasons of tradition or cost. Or both.
Optimal. The broad, useful band where good kitchen knives live. These steels balance five things at once: they take a fine edge, they hold it for a sensible length of time, they are tough enough for normal use, they resist rust and staining, and they come back to a keen edge without a fight. No single property is maximised, because maximising one usually costs another. This is the band we work in, not because it looks most impressive on a chart, but because it leaves room to get the rest of the knife right. It is also wider than the internet suggests.
Expensive. Steels that are genuinely good, but priced and marketed well beyond what they add in a kitchen. Often they buy a little more edge retention, at a real premium, and most cooks would never notice the difference in normal use. You are frequently paying for rarity, a name, or a specification that reads well rather than for a better dinner.
Brittle. The very hard, high wear-resistance steels that can hold an edge for a very long time. On paper they win. In a kitchen they are less forgiving of bones, hard boards and twisting cuts, and they are slow and difficult to bring back on ordinary sharpening kit. For certain careful uses they are excellent. As an everyday kitchen default they ask more of the user than they give back. Unless they were designed with the western market in mind, this category is almost entirely populated by Japanese knives and those made by knife geeks who last cut up a carrot in 1985.
Why “harder” and “more expensive” get mistaken for “better”
The trouble is that people rank steel on a single axis, usually hardness or price, when the optimal band is defined by balance. It is easy to sell “harder” or “more expensive” because both sound like more. But a kitchen knife is a set of compromises, and the best steel is the one that compromises well, not the one that maxes out a single figure.
Push hardness up and you can gain edge retention, but you usually give something away in toughness, ease of sharpening, or both. Push price up and you often gain very little at all. The sweet spot is not at either extreme. It is in the balanced, unfashionable part of the chart, which is rarely the part shouted about most loudly.
Where good kitchen knives actually sit
In the optimal band, for most everyday kitchen knives. A maker who understands steel is not chasing the hardest or the rarest option. They are choosing a sound, well behaved steel and then putting their effort into the parts that are harder to get right: the geometry, the hardening, the edge.
The steel we use, 14C28N, sits squarely in this band, and why it suits our knives is its own article, linked below.
The principle worth keeping
Steel is easy to rank badly and hard to rank well. If you find yourself drawn to the hardest or the most expensive option, you are probably being sold the extremes. The best kitchen steel is rarely the most impressive one on paper. It is the one that does everything a kitchen needs reasonably well, and nothing to excess.