Professional S Starter Knife Set

Most kitchen knives are made in pieces: a blade stamped from sheet steel, a handle attached afterwards, and a joint between them that spends its life getting wet. Zwilling's Professional S starter set does away with the joint entirely.

Each of the three knives in the Zwilling Professional S set has its blade, bolster and tang forged from one bar of steel, a process Zwilling calls SIGMAFORGE. Nothing between blade and handle can work loose. The steel is the company's own high-carbon stainless formula, and after forging every blade is ice-hardened, a treatment Zwilling applied to patent in 1939 and still sells under the name FRIODUR. Zwilling credits that step for the corrosion resistance, the flex and the length of time the blades hold an edge. The finished hardness is 57 on the Rockwell scale: hard enough to keep a keen edge, springy enough not to chip.

Every blade is honed and hand-finished, then given a laser-controlled edge so the cutting angle stays constant from heel to tip. The forged bolster ahead of the handle doubles as a finger guard and puts weight behind the grip. The polymer handle sits on three rivets, bonded to the full tang.

The set covers a 4 inch paring knife, a 5 inch serrated utility knife and an 8 inch chef's knife, which is most of what cooking actually asks for. They will survive a dishwasher. Zwilling would rather you washed them by hand, and after all that forging it seems fair to oblige. The mark itself goes back to Solingen in 1731, when Peter Henckels registered it.