French kitchen knives: Why Opinel belongs in your kitchen

French kitchen knives don’t need to be complicated. I’m not talking about €400 blades that stay in a drawer because you’re scared to use them, but the knives most French home kitchens actually have: practical, sharp and always within reach. When I went to the Chestnut Festival, I took my Opinel knife along for opening roasted chestnuts, and it did the job perfectly. The funny thing is that I wasn’t the only one who’d brought my own knife, and there was even an Opinel stall at the festival!

That’s what I love about these knives. They aren’t showpieces, they’re everyday tools that earn their place in a French kitchen (and quite often in a coat pocket too).

Opinel has been making knives in Savoie, at the foot of the French Alps, since 1890. Most people know the folding pocket knife with the wooden handle, the one you’ll find in French drawers, camping bags and picnic baskets. But Opinel also makes proper kitchen knives, at sensible prices, and if you cook French food at home they’re well worth knowing about.

What is a French knife?

When people say “French knife”, they usually mean one of two things. The first is a French chef’s knife, or French-style chef’s knife, a Western chef’s knife whose edge stays fairly straight for most of its length before curving up quite sharply towards the point. That flatter edge is lovely for slicing onions and shallots finely, because more of the blade stays in contact with the board.

The second meaning is simply a knife made in France. France has a long knife-making tradition, with Thiers in Auvergne as its historic capital and the Laguiole folding knife named after a village in Aveyron. Opinel comes from a third region, Savoie, and its knives are the ones you’ll find in the most ordinary French homes.

Do you really need good knives for French cooking?

French cooking assumes you have decent knives. You’re slicing shallots very finely for a vinaigrette, trimming green beans, cutting through a tough pumpkin for soup, chopping herbs, or slicing a good pain de campagne for a fig and goat cheese toast without squashing it flat.

Cheap stamped blades will get you through, but once you’ve used a well-made knife you really do feel the difference. A good French kitchen knife is sharp enough for fine work, sturdy enough for everyday chopping, and balanced so your hand doesn’t ache after an hour of prep which counts if you love spending a lot of time in your kitchen like me!

Opinel’s kitchen range is simple and honest: good stainless steel, comfortable handles and prices that mean you’ll actually use your knives every day instead of saving them for best.

The Opinel story

Joseph Opinel started making his folding knife in Savoie in 1890, when he was just 18. That little wooden-handled knife became super iconic. In 1985, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London included it in its selection of the 100 most beautiful products in the world, alongside the Porsche 911 and the Rolex watch, and it has also been shown at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

There are lovely stories around it too. Picasso is said to have used an Opinel to carve his sculptures, and in 1989 the word “Opinel” made it into the Larousse dictionary, alongside other French household names such as Bic, Frigidaire and Solex. That same year, the Opinel museum opened in Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne.

What I love most is how little the design has changed. The blade shape is the same, the wooden handle still has that familiar curve, and the rotating safety ring that locks the blade, the Virobloc, was invented by Marcel Opinel in 1955 and still works on the same principle. When a design lasts well over a century without needing reinventing, you know it works.

The kitchen knives came much later, but you can feel the same approach behind them: good blade shapes, solid stainless steel and simple, comfortable handles. They aren’t trying to reinvent French cooking, they’re making knives that feel familiar and do the job well.

Are French kitchen knives good?

A “Made in France” label alone doesn’t tell you much, because a knife is only as good as its steel, its shape and how it feels in your hand. The good news is that Opinel’s kitchen knives score well on all three. The Parallèle, Intempora and Les Forgés 1890 knives are made in France, and they use well-known stainless steels: Sandvik 12C27 or X50CrMoV15, both of which take a good edge and are easy to resharpen at home.

So, are Opinel kitchen knives good? For home cooking, yes, very. They aren’t the flashiest knives in the shop, but they’re sharp, comfortable and sensibly priced, which is also important of course. I have Opinel knives that see daily use and are still sharp, comfortable and doing their job perfectly.

They aren’t for everyone, though. If you want an extremely hard, thin blade that you sharpen on a whole set of stones, a specialist knife shop will have more to offer you. Opinel is for people who just want to cook and enjoy the process of chopping.

The French kitchen knives you actually need

French home cooks don’t tend to own fifteen specialist knives. Three or four good ones that you reach for all the time will cover almost everything.

The paring knife No.112

This is the real workhorse of a French kitchen, the small knife you pick up again and again during a single meal.

Opinel’s paring knives have blades of about 10 cm in stainless steel, with beech or polymer handles. They sit well in the hand and are easy to control. I use mine for everything from prepping a salade Niçoise to slicing cornichons for raclette. It basically lives on the counter, because I pick it up ten times a day.

If you’re starting with just one knife, start here. The Essentials kitchen set, with a paring knife, a serrated knife, a vegetable knife and a peeler, is an easy way to kit out a French-style prep station in one go.

The French vegetable knife No.114

The vegetable knife in the Essentials set has a rounded tip rather than a sharp point, which makes it comfortable and safe for peeling, chopping and slicing vegetables at the board. It’s the knife a lot of French grandmothers would hand you if you offered to help with the soup.

The chef’s knife No.218

This is the big one, with a blade of about 20 cm, for serious chopping, slicing and general prep.

Opinel’s chef’s knife has an honest, comfortable weight and balance, and the blade cuts cleanly instead of crushing what’s underneath it.

The Santoku knife No. 219

The santoku comes from Japan, but it has become very common in French kitchens over the past few years. The blade is shorter than a classic chef’s knife, around 17 cm, with a straighter edge and a rounder, squarer tip.

Opinel’s santoku knife has a 17 cm blade with little hollows along the edge that let air in and help stop slices sticking to the side of the blade. It’s brilliant when you’re slicing a whole pile of courgettes (zucchini) or potatoes for a gratin.

The bread knife No. 116

If you eat bread every day, which you probably will if you cook French, a good bread knife stops you from flattening every pain de campagne you touch.

The Opinel bread knife has a long serrated blade that bites into the crust without turning everything into crumbs. The olive wood version is the one I like most, as it has a little more weight and looks lovely sitting out on the counter.

Which Opinel kitchen collection should you choose?

Opinel divides its kitchen knives into three main collections. It can sound confusing at first, but it’s quite simple once you see how they differ.

Parallèle: the classic

This is the traditional line, with varnished beech handles and stainless steel blades. They look exactly the way you’d imagine French kitchen knives to look, the handles are comfortable and the prices are very reasonable. There are olive wood versions too if you’d like something a little more decorative.

The Parallèle Trio set, with a chef’s knife, a carving knife and a paring knife, is excellent value if you’re replacing a drawer of odd knives that don’t match.

Intempora: the modern one

Intempora knives have polymer handles instead of wood and a full tang, which means the steel runs right through the handle and gives them a lovely balance. They don’t have the romance of wood, but they’re easy to look after, and if you have a busy lifestyle or just want knives that can cope with a busy kitchen, they make a lot of sense. Personally, I really like the grip on the Intempora collection.

Les Forgés 1890: the premium line

These are hot-forged, full-tang knives in X50CrMoV15 stainless steel with stabilised beech handles, heavier and more substantial than the other two collections. They’re made for people who cook every day and want knives that will last for decades. They’re gorgeous, but probably a bit much if you only cook a few times a week, and they cost noticeably more.

The pocket knife in the kitchen

It might sound odd to use a pocket knife as a kitchen tool, but my No.8 stainless steel lives in the kitchen drawer and gets used like a paring knife. It’s sharp, nimble, and looks right at home on a cheeseboard. In France, the line between a kitchen knife and a pocket knife is much blurrier than in a lot of other countries, because a good sharp blade is a good sharp blade, folding or not.

The classic Opinel No.8 pocket knife comes with a stainless steel blade or a traditional carbon steel blade. Carbon steel gets very sharp but darkens and can rust if it’s left wet, so stainless is the easier choice for the kitchen.

Opinel pocket knife No. 8

The smaller No.6 with an olive wood handle is perfect for the table: small, pretty and not at all intimidating.

Specialist French kitchen knives

If you love particular ingredients, a few of Opinel’s more specialised knives are very useful.

The chestnut knife

If you cook with chestnuts (and you should, because roasted chestnuts are wonderful), the Opinel chestnut knife is cleverly shaped, with a short curved blade that makes scoring chestnuts before roasting much easier. The same curve makes it great for fiddly jobs like peeling garlic or pitting fruit, which is why Opinel sells it as a knife for chestnuts, garlic and stones.

The oyster knife

For oysters, a dedicated oyster knife with a short, strong blade is far safer than improvising with a butter knife. Opinel’s N°9 oyster knife has a stubby 6.5 cm blade that slips between the shells and twists them open. If you serve oysters more than once or twice a year, it’s worth having your own (my oysters guide explains how to open them). Otherwise, you can always ask the fishmonger to do it for you.

The mushroom knife

If you forage or buy whole wild mushrooms regularly, the Opinel mushroom knife is a small joy. It has a curved blade for cutting stems cleanly and a boar bristle brush on the end of the handle for brushing away the soil without damaging the mushrooms. It feels slightly indulgent until you use it, and then you wonder how you ever managed without it. It has quite a following among foragers, too.

How to keep French kitchen knives sharp

French kitchen knives aren’t high-maintenance, but they do need basic care, and a sharp knife is safer and more pleasant to use than a blunt one.

Sharpening

Opinel knives arrive sharp, but regular use will blunt any edge. A sharpening stone gives you a much better result than a pull-through gadget. Opinel’s natural sharpening stone works well with their steel: lightly wet the stone, hold the blade at an angle of about 20°, and draw it across the stone several times on each side.

If you’d prefer everything in one box, the knife care set includes a stone, some oil and a cloth. Every few months is usually enough if you cook every day.

Washing

Wooden handles don’t like dishwashers or soaking in the sink, and Opinel is very clear about that: wash them by hand, then dry them straight away. The Intempora handles are tougher, but Opinel still recommends washing those by hand too, and it really does help any knife last longer.

Looking after wooden handles

Beech and olive wood handles slowly darken and take on a patina from your hands, which is part of their charm. If they ever start to look dry, rub in a little food-safe mineral oil or beeswax now and then. It stops the wood from cracking and makes it feel lovely in the hand.

Use a kind cutting board

Always use a wooden or good plastic board. Glass and marble are brutal on a knife edge (and horrible to listen to!).

How much do Opinel kitchen knives cost?

Opinel’s prices are very gentle for French-made knives. On Opinel’s French website in November 2026, a Parallèle paring knife costs €10.90, the Parallèle chef’s knife €38.90, the Parallèle bread knife €35, the Parallèle Trio set €74, and the Intempora santoku €65. Les Forgés 1890 is the exception, with a chef’s knife at around $200 in the US. Prices vary by shop and country, so check before you buy.

The real value isn’t just the price tag, though. With basic care, these knives last for years. And once you’ve lived with them for a while, you tend to add to your collection, not because the first ones wore out but because they’re a pleasure to use: a bread knife to go with your chef’s knife, a santoku for vegetables, a small pocket knife for cheese at the table.

Building your French kitchen knife collection

If you’re starting from nothing, go for the Essentials set with its paring knife, serrated knife, vegetable knife and peeler (that’s how I started too!), then add one Intempora chef’s knife or the Parallèle Trio when you’re ready. That gives you everything you need for everyday French cooking.

If you already have decent knives, add the pieces that suit the way you cook: a bread knife if you buy or bake a lot of bread, a santoku if you chop mountains of vegetables, a No.6 olive wood pocket knife for cheeseboards, or a chestnut knife if autumn chestnuts are your thing.

And do buy the stone or the care set at the same time, because sharp knives only stay sharp if you look after them.

FAQ

Over to you

I’ve been using Opinel knives for years now, from the one I took to the chestnut festival to the paring knife that gets more use than anything else in my kitchen. They don’t come in fancy boxes, but they’re properly good French kitchen knives that happen to be affordable, sharp enough for precise work, comfortable enough for a long prep session and sturdy enough to hand down.

Do you have a favourite Opinel that’s been in your kitchen for years, or a French knife you picked up on holiday? Tell me in the comments, I’d love to know which one you reach for first!

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