Most professional kitchens are dominated by chefs’ knives —long, sharp, and versatile. A good chef’s knife transforms raw ingredients through perfect cuts and detail-oriented knife work. Most home cooks, however, don’t require absolute precision for every cutting task. And when it comes to daily use utility knives, the santoku reigns supreme.

Originating in Japan around the 1940s or 1950s, santoku translates to “three uses” or “three virtues,” which might refer to meat, fish, and vegetables or to chopping, slicing, and dicing, depending on who you talk to. Santoku knives are often shorter than a chef’s knife with a relatively flat edge and a pronounced sheep’s foot point. Their overall shape lands somewhere between the nakiri , gyuto , and the deba knife—a sturdy, single-edge fish cleaver.…