This is our full review of Aikido Steel’s Signature Knife Set. We put Aikido knives through a rigorous test – assessing everything from sharpness, performance, price, look and feel, customer service, quality of materials and engineering, ease of cleaning, and so much more.
After 6 months of testing these knives across various dimensions, this is the most in-depth review of Aikido Knives you will find on the internet (more thorough than The Knife Expert’s recent review).
Summary: Aikido Knives Review
Our Rating: ★★★★★
Aesthetics: Beautiful pakka wood handles and stylish blades
Quality: Razor sharp, long-lasting, stainless steel blades
Price: Great value, especially when the 7-Piece Set is on sale.
Customer Service: US-based customer service with fast email response time
Note: This is not a sponsored post and The Daily Kitchen has had no contact with Aikido Steel. The Daily Kitchen bought the Aikido Signature 7-Piece Knife Set with our own money and tested the knives as unbiasedly as possible.
What is Aikido Steel?
Aikido Steel’s mission is to produce professional quality knives for the everyday kitchen. That really resonated with the team here at The Daily Kitchen: we’re incredibly focused on helping our readers create approachable yet extraordinary home culinary experiences. When we heard about Aikido knives, we knew we had to take their most popular product, the Signature 7-Piece Knife Set, for a spin to find out what the hype was all about. Over the last few years, we’ve gone through our fair share of kitchen knives, so we are excited to provide this review for our community of home chefs.
What’s included in the Aikido Steel Signature Knife Set?
The Aikido Signature Knife Set consists of seven knives. When we went through the line-up of knives that Aikido Steel included in the set, we couldn’t agree more with their selection. The set includes the following knives:
- 8-inch Chef Knife: An all-purpose knife meant for dicing and chopping vegetables, cutting fruits, and slicing meat.
- 8-inch Slicing Knife: The ideal knife for large slicing tasks, like slicing meat or pineapples, due to its long thin blade.
- 8-inch Bread Knife: A long serrated blade, essential for those who love fresh bread and cakes.
- 7-inch Santoku Knife: A Japanese-style blade that does a fantastic job chopping fruits, vegetables, chicken, and meat.
- 5-inch Santoku Knife: One of our favorite knives because it’s so easy to handle. Similar to the larger style described earlier, it is very efficient for small cutting tasks, like quickly chopping raw ingredients.
- 5-inch Utility Knife: A multi-purpose knife, especially with its lightweight and pointed blade meant for slicing bagels and sandwiches, cutting small pieces of meat, chopping herbs, and other quick cutting tasks.
- 3.5-inch Paring Knife: Best suited for tasks when precision is key, like peeling ingredients and chopping herbs.
Again, we couldn’t agree more with Aikido Steel’s selection of knives, as they seem to have covered the full spectrum of food types and cutting tasks. If you’re on a tight budget, you can always choose their Signature 5-Piece Set, but unfortunately, you’ll have to do without the Bread Knife and Slicing Knife. And if you’re looking to build out your full collection of Signature Series knives, you can always add some of their add-on knives, like their 6-inch Boning Knife and 7-inch Nakiri Knife. More recently, they’ve also added a set of 4 Steak Knives to the Signature Series.
How do Aikido Steel Knives look and feel?
First Impression
The first thing we look for in kitchen knives is how they feel immediately when you hold them in your hands. Aikido Knives are all nicely weighted and well-balanced. This is an important initial sign that these are professional quality knives and not for amateurs. The knives felt both sturdy and stable when I held each of them individually. Overall, it was clear Aikido Steel had put thought and intention into their design and construction.
Knife Blades
The stainless steel knife blades were sleek, shiny, and nicely polished. One of the reasons people love the Aikido Steel Signature Set is because of the beautiful blade pattern, which I admit, looked even more incredible when I saw it in person versus the photos on their website. I tried to capture this pattern in the photos below, but it’s hard to do it justice.
Handles
The handles are made from beautiful pakkawood, a durable synthetic material that lends itself well to the home kitchen while still exuding a uniqueness not found with knives from your typical department store kitchen brand. The wooden texture of the handles balances nicely with the gleam of the steel blades. When holding the knives, we felt the rounded handles were comfortable to grip, which is an important consideration if you’ll be preparing meals on a daily basis.
So, how do Aikido Steel Knives actually perform?
This is the million dollar question we wanted to answer when we started our test drive of these knives six months ago. After using Aikido Knives for more than half a year, we found that they are indeed as durable and sharp as Aikido claims in their marketing. With regular sharpening, you’ll get even better results. Just this week, we prepared a barbecue lunch for ten guests and the slicing knife was the star of the prep process, dividing a whole sirloin with ease.
The most important thing to understand with this knife set is that, because it’s so comprehensive, you’ll always have the right cutting tool available to you only an arm’s length away. That being said, when it comes to evaluating the blades, we typically want to understand how well a knife retains its edge. With the Aikido Signature Set, we found very little degradation in sharpness, far less than what we would have expected at this price point. We’re guessing this is because of the high-carbon composition in their steel blades. Other knife sets at this price point that we have evaluated in the past (like Zwilling) needed sharpening after every use to maintain the same level of factory sharpness. Now, we’re not saying we didn’t sharpen our Aikido knives at all – we did – and every knife will go through wear and tear in the kitchen and at some point will need sharpening. However, we are thoroughly impressed by how well these knives perform after using them every day for the last few months.
Are Aikido Steel Knives easy to store and clean?
Storage
The Aikido Signature Set comes with 7 knives, which we found to be a good number for a complete knife set. Some other knife sets we’ve seen on the market come with ten or even twelve knives, which tends to take up too much space in your cutlery drawer or you need a massive knife holder on your counter. Furthermore, large knife sets tend to be overwhelming, as there are just too many options when you reach for a knife from the knife block. Hence, we found Aikido Steel’s selection of 7 knives ideal, as it made both storage and everyday usage very easy to manage.
Cleaning
Fortunately, the blades of the Aikido Signature Knife Set are made from stainless steel, which makes cleaning them incredibly easy. From our experience, all you need to do is gently wipe them with a soapy wet sponge or cloth, and then run them through a stream of water. We’ve never had to use steel wool or the rough side of sponge on them. As with any knife, it’s important to hand dry them right away to avoid unsightly rust or water marks forming.
Are Aikido Knives worth it?
Aikido Steel’s website shows the regular price of the Signature 7-Piece Set is $478. This is an expected price for a set of seven professional kitchen knives. In fact, professional knife sets can cost anywhere from $600 to $800.
A few weeks a year, Aikido Steel runs storewide sales, where they markdown all items anywhere from 40% to 50% off. When this happens, it’s important to act quickly, as they sell out fast. You likely will never get a set of restaurant-grade kitchen knives at this price. If you are seeing their regular price of $478 on their website and want to get notified of their storewide sales, sign up for The Daily Kitchen email newsletter, and we’ll let you know.
At The Daily Kitchen, we aim to serve the home chef, who typically has a budget of $100 – $200 for a good set of kitchen knives. So, if you can get Aikido Steel’s Signature Knife Set when they are running a sale, they are definitely worth it.
Do we recommend Aikido Knives?
Yes (whole heartedly). From the professionally quality blades to the lovely aesthetics of the wooden handles, we are very impressed with the Aikido Steel Signature Knife Set. As culinary enthusiasts, we have tried literally dozens of knife sets. After 6 months of using Aikido Knives, we can, without a doubt, recommend this knife set for your kitchen. It’s rare that we find a knife set that balances both good design and consistent performance.
