If you hate prep when you’re cooking at home or never mastered knife skills, a mezzaluna might be just the tool you need to simplify your at-home meal prep. Though a good chef’s knife can handle any prep, if you can’t use it properly, prep can take forever, taking the joy out of cooking and turning it into a real time suck. That’s where a mezzaluna can really help.
A mezzaluna knife is a curved blade, typically with two handles on each end of the blade. (Fun fact: Mezzaluna means half moon in Italian, stemming from the blade’s crescent moon-shaped curve.) It may not sound like it, but that design difference goes a long way to making cutting, chopping and mincing a heck of a lot easier. Instead of slicing things more or less individually as you would do with a chef’s knife, the mezzaluna’s curved blade and handles on top mean you can quickly rock it back and forth like a see-saw across the ingredients. That means faster, easier cutting, with a lot less effort and time too. We’re talking time savings on the level of a great pair of kitchen shears only mezzalunas are way more fun.
This easy see-saw motion makes mezzalunas great for quickly cutting things like herbs, veggies and greens, nuts, garlic and just about any vegetable you can comfortably fit under the blade. Not to mention, mezzalunas make mincing a breeze because of the easy repetitive cutting motion, and you can use them to slice meat, cheese and even pizza with a longer-bladed mezzaluna. Sure, the cuts will be less precise than if you used a chef’s knife properly, but the pros of using mezzalunas outweigh the cons for most people in most cooking prep situations.
Related Stories
Even beyond the immediate practical benefits in comparison to chef’s knives, some mezzalunas, especially those with single grips, can be a great slicing alternative for those with dexterity issues or anyone who can only use one hand. And if you can use mezzalunas with two grips, the process is much easier on your wrists and hands, not to mention safer than a chef’s knife because your hands are far from the blade and can’t slip toward the sharp part of the knife.
But perhaps most importantly for anyone who cooks, mezzalunas bring more fun to what is usually the least fun part of cooking.
Before you go rushing off to the nearest cooking store to buy your mezzaluna, you’ll want to keep the following in mind: how big of a blade do you want, do you want one or two blades and what kind of handles do you want?
And hey, we can save you that trip to the store because we rounded up some of the best mezzalunas for sale online. We’ve got great single-blade and double-blade options as well as single-grip, budget-friendly and long mezzalunas. We even included a curved cutting board designed for mezzalunas at the bottom to make using your new mezzaluna even easier. Though mezzalunas work great on flat cutting boards, the concave shape of a curved board means no ingredients will escape the board or the cut of your mezzaluna. So simplify your cooking prep and check out some great mezzalunas below.
1. Wusthof 9-Inch Mincing Knife
BEST OVERALL
The German-made Wusthof Mincing Knife is just a well-made mezzaluna knife. Not all mezzalunas can boast being made of high-carbon stainless steel, but Wusthof’s can. While chromium- and nickel-alloy steels may hold up to rust better, high-carbon stainless steel makes the knife harder and retains sharpness longer. That means it’ll work better longer than many other cheaper mezzalunas and also explains the high price point. Aside from the quality steel and two hefty handles, this single blade clocks in at 9 inches, which is the sweet spot to cut everything from small herbs to pizza if you like. So if you’re looking for a mezzaluna to use for the next 10 years, as long as you hand-wash it and don’t try to cut through concrete, the Wusthof Mincing Knife will continue to stay sharp for all your kitchen prep needs. And if you do eventually need the mezzaluna sharpened, you can send it off to Wusthof for a professional tune-up.
2. Triangle Germany 7-Inch Mezzaluna Knife
BEST DUAL-BLADE MEZZALUNA
Germany does it again with the Triangle Germany Mezzaluna Knife. This two-bladed mezzaluna will make prep a breeze with twice the amount of chopping as you rock the knife back and forth. The 7-inch stainless steel blade is nice and sharp, and the handles are made to be anti-slip because the last thing we need to do is cut our hands while prepping. The only downside, true of all two-bladed mezzalunas, is that food will slowly get stuck on the inside sides of the blades, which can be a little annoying to dislodge. But that’s a problem for every chef’s knife too and it’s a small price to pay for all the time saved in prep.
3. Amco Stainless Steel Mezzaluna
BUDGET PICK
If you just need a small mezzaluna knife for easy mincing, the Amco Stainless Steel Mezzaluna makes for a great budget pick. It’s incredibly easy to use and makes for a solid first purchase for those who’ve never used mezzalunas before. You basically grab it like you’re making a fist over the silicone grip and you just rock your hand left and right with a little pressure to start mincing fruits, vegetables or herbs for whatever you’re whipping up that evening. Unfortunately the blade is not very long at 4.75 inches, but that just means it’s not suitable for cutting larger items.
Beyond that, the only major downside we found was that the blade could crack after some use. Even knowing the product is made in China and is made to be cheap, that’s an obvious sign of a defective product. But that tends to be the exception, not the rule, and if that does happen you can always send it back to Amazon for a replacement. For the most part, as long as you aren’t too aggressive with the knife and hand-wash the blade, you’ll almost certainly get a ton of use out of it and great cost-per-use over time. This blade is Amazon’s Choice for a mezzaluna knife for good reason because thousands of people have used it successfully.
4. Kuhn Rikon 6-Inch Mezzaluna Knife
BEST SINGLE-GRIP MEZZALUNA
If you can spend a bit more than the budget pick and want a great single-grip mezzaluna, the Kuhn Rikon Mezzaluna Knife offers a few more notable benefits. First, the blade is 6 inches long, so it can handle larger items more easily and cuts more with each rock back and forth. It’s also made from Japanese stainless steel, so you can trust that this blade will be as sharp as Japanese steel chef knives, which are among the best in the world. Add in the fact that this blade is nonstick, so you’ll have a lot less food sticking to the blade as you quickly chop through your carrots, lettuce, cucumbers or whatever small, sticky items you decide to throw under it. Two important things to note as well are the arc of the blade and the scalloping on the steel. The arc is less pronounced on this knife than some other blades, so it works great on flat cutting boards. On the down side though, because of the scalloping on the steel, this blade shouldn’t be sharpened at home, so when it finally dulls you may have to buy a new one. But it’s so sharp that it’ll be a long time before that happens.
5. Triangle Germany 14-Inch Mezzaluna Knife
LONGEST MEZZALUNA
So you’re an amateur pizza chef and you’re looking for that extra wow factor when you can finally have friends over for dinner again. The Triangle Germany 14-inch Mezzaluna Knife is exactly what you need to cut your pizza in style. Triangle, which also makes the best two-bladed mezzaluna, brings the same quality to bear in this super long knife. With this length of blade, the question isn’t what can you cut, it’s what can’t you cut. As long as you’ve got a cutting board that can handle this mezzaluna, the stainless steel blade will make quick work of just about any veggie or green. Though Triangle made the knife to be rust-free and dishwasher safe, the company recommends hand-washing and so do we if you really want the knife to last as long as possible. That’s always the case with any stainless steel blade, even ones made to be dishwasher safe, and mezzalunas are no exception.
6. Joseph Joseph Mezzaluna Folding Herb Chopper
BEST FOR EASY STORAGE
If you’re like millions of Americans living in a major city, you probably have a small kitchen and an even smaller utensils drawer. That’s where the Joseph Joseph Mezzaluna Folding Chopper comes in handy. The big selling point for this mezzaluna is the fact that the handles fold in and out, functioning as the grips while cutting and also the sheaths when you store the knife. That gives this blade unparalleled storability, which can be a huge plus in a small kitchen. The upside is also the downside though. Because the handles are meant to fold in and out, they aren’t as sturdy during cutting as other mezzalunas with two fixed handles and, even worse, the blade can swing out and cut your hand if you only pick up one handle. But as long as you’re careful and treat it like the sharp blade it is, you should be able to avoid this problem. Other than that pro and con, this is a solid mezzaluna with a blade around 6 inches, so it’s ready to handle mincing and chopping with ease.
7. Wusthof 8-Inch Mezzaluna
MOST UNIQUE
If you’re looking for a mezzaluna closer to the experience of a traditional chef’s knife, look no further than the Wusthof 8-inch Mezzaluna. This design borrows more from traditional ulu knives than traditional mezzalunas, but both designs make use of a curved blade. Where it differs from most mezzalunas is the grip. The grip doesn’t feature a traditional pair of knobs or a single grip you slip your fingers through. Instead, you handle the mezzaluna directly, with a grip built right on top of the blade. This makes the cutting experience and grip closer to that of a chef’s knife and involves more of an up-and-down wrist motion with respect to any other mezzaluna knife and may be more appealing to those with more experience handling chef’s knives. And at 8 inches long, this knife will have no problem cutting whatever you need.
8. Checkered Chef Mezzaluna Cutting Board
BEST MEZZALUNA CUTTING BOARD
If you’re really looking to up the convenience level of your prep, concave cutting boards pair well with mezzalunas because they’re both curved. Curved cutting boards also make it more difficult for food to slide off the cutting surface, a common problem for flat cutting boards. That’s why we recommend the Checkered Chef Mezzaluna Cutting Board. It’s inexpensive and made of rubberwood, which is hard enough for durability but soft enough to not dull your blade. This particular board offers 8 inches of cutting space so it works well for most of our mezzalunas, and as a bonus, the bottom is flat, so you can flip it over and use it for a cheese board. Yup, that’s multifunctionality at its classy best.
Invest in a Tortilla Maker, and You’ll Never Need Store-Bought Tortillas Again