Call off the search: we've found Britain's best small kitchen knife!

TOG Petty knife is a flashing blade that's on the cutting edge

TOG Petty knife
(Image credit: TOG)
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We're currently putting together a guide to the best kitchen knives – smaller bladed ones, since we already have a guide to the best chef's knives. This TOG Petty knife is our favourite smaller slicer.

The terminology gets a bit confusing when we're talking about smaller kitchen knives. At 12.5cm, this one is a bit bigger than the average paring knife, but not by much. It's a size that is also sometimes called an 'office knife'. Oh and TOG also refers to it as a 'utility knife'. Anyway, it's a small kitchen knife and it's excellent.  

TOG Petty knife

The veins of copper running through the steel give a unique appearance and allegedly kill bacteria

(Image credit: TOG)

TOG's knives are an always intriguing hybrid of Japanese and European styles. Handmade from 17-layer steel by artisans in Seki, Japan, each of these Petty knives is individually numbered. The unique appearance of the blade comes from the use of a layer of copper, exposed in stripes. The steel layers start with a hard central core steel for optimal sharpness, with softer steel layers for strength. The copper has anti-microbial properties, supposedly (and also happens to look very cool).

The benefit of this is that the TOG Petty seems to need less sharpening and honing than a lot of more traditional Japanese knives. 

The kebony maple wood handle is another part of the iconic TOG 'look' and is arguably as important as the razor-sharp blade when it comes to the user experience. The wood has a slight softness to it, and is shaped so as to be extremely comfortable, while the laser-etched pattern aids your grip (and also happens to look very cool).

Despite its really rather beautiful appearance, the TOG Petty is a very practical kitchen tool. It's perfectly weighted and the size means it's ideal for a whole range of cutting duties, from chopping veg to peeling apples. It also makes a great cheese knife and can be used for, as TOG puts it, 'light butchery and small fish'. The very sharp point is extremely handy if you're wrangling tricky subjects such as onions and tomatoes. 

Easy to clean and keep sharp, the TOG Petty should last you a lifetime. We've had a TOG Santoku (a slightly down-sized cook's knife) for years now and despite some quite gross abuse, it is still going strong. 

• Shop all TOG knives at TOG

• Shop TOG knives at Amazon 

Duncan Bell
Duncan Bell

Duncan is the former lifestyle editor of T3 and has been writing about tech for almost 15 years. He has covered everything from smartphones to headphones, TV to AC and air fryers to the movies of James Bond and obscure anime. His current brief is everything to do with the home and kitchen, which is good because he is an excellent cook, if he says so himself. He also covers cycling and ebikes – like over-using italics, this is another passion of his. In his long and varied lifestyle-tech career he is one of the few people to have been a fitness editor despite being unfit and a cars editor for not one but two websites, despite being unable to drive. He also has about 400 vacuum cleaners, and is possibly the UK's leading expert on cordless vacuum cleaners, despite being decidedly messy. A cricket fan for over 30 years, he also recently become T3's cricket editor, writing about how to stream obscure T20 tournaments, and turning out some typically no-nonsense opinions on the world's top teams and players.

Before T3, Duncan was a music and film reviewer, worked for a magazine about gambling that employed a surprisingly large number of convicted criminals, and then a magazine called Bizarre that was essentially like a cross between Reddit and DeviantArt, before the invention of the internet. There was also a lengthy period where he essentially wrote all of T3 magazine every month for about 3 years. 

A broadcaster, raconteur and public speaker, Duncan used to be on telly loads, but an unfortunate incident put a stop to that, so he now largely contents himself with telling people, "I used to be on the TV, you know."

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