The Best Kitchen Shears

The best shears can perform tasks large and small, delicate and tough. They’re sharp, powerful, and can be used comfortably by cooks with different dominant hands. The Shun Multi-Purpose Shears ticked all those boxes and more, earning our top ranking. 

What You Need to Know

Kitchen shears are an essential component of any cook’s knife kit, capable of handling delicate and tough tasks alike. We use them for cutting twine and parchment, snipping herbs, trimming pie dough, cutting florets from heads of cauliflower and broccoli, and butterflying chickens, to name just a few. They also help us open food packaging and cut other non-food materials.

How Shears Work

Each pair of shears has two blades. The first is a cutter blade, which has a smooth edge that has been ground to a specific angle on both sides, similar to the blade of a chef’s knife (see “Sharp Cutter Blades” below). Unsurprisingly, the cutter blade is responsible for most of the cutting action. The “anvil” blade, by contrast, is usually serrated and a bit thicker, the better to help grip and secure the food being cut. The blades are attached at a pivot, and the handles of the shears act as levers, forcing the blades together to cut whatever you want.

What to Look For

• Sharp Cutter Blades: While cutter blades are generally sharpened to a wide edge angle (traditionally 50 to 70 degrees), we found that the narrower the angle on the blade, the sharper it was and the more easily it sliced through food. Not all manufacturers were willing to disclose edge angles, but our favorite model had an unusually acute angle of 19 degrees, providing a knife-like sharpness (for comparison, chef’s knives are typically sharpened to about 15 to 20 degrees). And although narrower edge angles can make some blades more vulnerable to chipping or scratching, our winner remained intact and razor-sharp throughout testing. 
• Anvil Blades with Deep, Sharp Serrations on the Edge: The type and placement of serrations on the anvil blades mattered too. For the serrations to truly bite into and stabilize the food, they had to be on the edge of the blade or at least on the bevel. And the deeper and sharper the serrations, the more securely they held the food.
• Long, Narrow Blades: The blades on the models we tested ranged from 3 to 4 inches long. While that’s a seemingly small difference, extra length helped; we preferred blades of at least 3.5 inches, as they made longer, smoother strokes through food. We also prized narrower blades, which felt more agile and were easier to maneuver around food, allowing us to get into a head of cauliflower to snip off florets.
• Moderate Weight: We liked shears that wer...
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