Good kitchen scissors are forged from a single piece of stainless steel, come apart at the pivot for proper cleaning, and hold an edge sharp enough to slice a tomato cleanly off the vine. Get those three things right and a $30 pair will outlast a kitchen drawer full of cheap office scissors that have wandered in from somewhere else. Get them wrong and you'll spend the next decade swearing at packaging you can't open.
Quick answer: Buy 8-inch kitchen scissors with forged stainless blades, micro-serration on the bottom blade, a take-apart pivot, and metal handles or rubberised metal grips. Expect to pay $30 to $80 for a pair that lasts ten years. Avoid moulded plastic handles with riveted pivots, which are almost always disposable.
I'm Dylan, I run xinzuo.com.au, and we sell two pairs of kitchen scissors that I use myself most days. One lives in the knife block next to the sink, the other in the BBQ kit. Between them they handle 90 percent of the small cutting jobs that would otherwise pull a chef knife off the magnetic rack. This guide is the one I wished existed when I was buying my first proper pair after years of mucking around with whatever came in the discount homewares aisle.
What Should You Look for in Kitchen Scissors?
Forged stainless steel blades, a take-apart pivot, micro-serration on at least one blade, and metal-cored handles. America's Test Kitchen ran their long-form kitchen shears review across paper, parchment, twine, herbs, pie crust, three whole chickens and cauliflower florets. Their winner had a blade angle of 19 degrees, which is in the same range a Western chef knife is sharpened to. That is the standard you want.
The four boxes I tick before I buy any pair:
- Forged stainless steel blades. Forged means the blade is shaped from a single piece of metal, not stamped out of sheet steel. Forged blades are heavier, stiffer, and hold an edge for years instead of months. The blades on a stamped pair fold over after six months of cutting through chicken bones.
- Take-apart pivot. The screw or pin that joins the two blades should release with a gentle pull or a quarter turn. If it does not come apart, you cannot clean the gunk that builds up between the blades after cutting raw chicken. Riveted pivots are a deal-breaker.
- Micro-serration on the bottom blade. The small ridges grip slippery food, so a chicken thigh or a piece of skin does not skid out of the blades while you cut. The top blade stays smooth so it can slice cleanly.
- Metal-cored handles. Handles that are pure plastic crack at the finger holes within a year. Handles that are metal underneath, with rubberised or composite overmoulds, take the load and last.
Blade length is the other variable. Anything under 3.5 inches is too short for cleanly slicing a chicken backbone in a single closing. Eight-inch overall length, with about 4 inches of blade, is the size that handles everything from herbs to packaging without feeling oversized. Both pairs we stock are 8-inch.
Why Does the Take-Apart Pivot Actually Matter?
Because raw chicken juice gets into the pivot and stays there until you can pull the blades apart and wash both halves. A riveted pair of scissors traps protein and bacteria in the gap between the blades where you cannot reach with a sponge or a brush. Even running them through the dishwasher does not solve it, because dishwasher water flows over surfaces, not through tight pivots.
The takeapart system on the Xinzuo Hezhen 8" detachable scissors is a small lift-and-pull. The two blades separate completely, you wash each one like a small knife, dry them, and click them back together. Total job, 30 seconds. The other pair, our 8" stainless steel kitchen shearers, uses a similar release. After a year of weekly chicken work, the pivot still moves smoothly because there is no buildup grinding against itself.
Reviewed.com's testing made the same point in their 2026 round-up: "shears that come apart are essential. They're easier to clean, and they allow you to sharpen the blades when they dull over time." Sharpenable is the second half of that sentence and it matters. A pair you can pull apart can also go on a whetstone or get touched up with a ceramic rod, which means the same scissors stay sharp for a decade rather than dulling and getting binned.
Worth knowing: If a pair of scissors does not come apart, treat them as poultry-only or vegetable-only. Do not switch between raw meat and ready-to-eat food on a riveted pair. The hidden gap inside the pivot is a cross-contamination risk you cannot inspect.
How Sharp Should Kitchen Scissors Actually Be?
Sharp enough to slice a tomato cleanly off the vine, or to halve a sheet of baking paper in one closing without dragging. That is the working standard. ATK's top pick measured a cutter blade angle of 19 degrees, against the 50 to 70 degrees you'll find on cheap general-purpose scissors. The forged stainless on a quality pair lands somewhere between 18 and 22 degrees per side, so the geometry is in the same family as a German-style chef knife.
That sharpness changes what kitchen scissors can do. A blunt pair is a pry tool, useful only for hacking through bagged frozen peas and butchering ribbon. A sharp pair becomes a precision instrument. You can shell a prawn by sliding the bottom blade under the tail and unzipping the shell along the back. You can trim the silver skin off a backstrap. You can slice spring onions straight into a soup pot, holding the bunch over the steam, without getting a cutting board out at all.
The blade hardness on the Xinzuo Hezhen detachable pair runs at HRC 51 to 53. That is softer than a chef knife, which is the point. Softer steel flexes instead of chipping when you hit a bone, which is exactly what you want from a pair of scissors that will spatchcock a chook one minute and snip through a cardboard wine box the next. A scissors blade is a working tool, not a fine-edge slicer, and the hardness is tuned for that.
Why Are Kitchen Scissors Underrated for Spatchcocking a Chook?
Because a knife forces you to fight bone, while scissors slip alongside the spine and do the job in two cuts. Spatchcocking, butterflying the bird so it lies flat and roasts evenly, is the single best technique for getting crisp skin and breast meat that doesn't go dry by the time the legs are done. With a sharp, heavy-duty pair of scissors you can do it in 90 seconds.
The technique:
- Put the chook breast-down on a board with the legs pointing toward you.
- Find the backbone running down the centre. With kitchen scissors, cut along one side of the spine from tail to neck. Stay close to the bone.
- Cut along the other side of the spine. The whole backbone lifts out in one piece.
- Flip the bird over, breast up. Press down on the breastbone with the heel of your hand until it cracks and the chook lies flat.
That is it. Salt it, oil it, into the oven at 220 degrees for 40 minutes. The reason scissors win this job is use. You are not trying to slice the bone, you are trying to part it from the rib cartilage. Scissors do that with the closing force of your hand, multiplied by the pivot. A knife asks you to push down through bone with no use, which is how people end up with a slipped blade and a cut thumb.
What About Herbs, Packaging, and All the Small Jobs?
Kitchen scissors are the right tool for soft herbs, fish skin, prawns, packaging, kitchen string, and anything fiddly that does not deserve a chef knife and a cutting board. Once you start using a sharp pair, the little wins compound and you stop reaching for the knife block for half the prep work you used to.
The jobs I now do with scissors instead of a knife:
- Soft herbs over a bowl. Hold a bunch of parsley, basil, chives or coriander over the salad and snip directly in. The cut is clean rather than crushed, so the herbs stay green for hours instead of going black at the edges. This is the same principle that makes a sharp knife outperform a dull one on basil. A clean cut breaks fewer cell walls.
- Spring onions and chives into hot pans. Snip them straight off the bunch into the wok or the soup. No board, no chopping, no rinsing.
- Vacuum packs and plastic film. The micro-serrations bite into slippery plastic where a knife slides off. Open a wine bag, a coffee bag, a cryovac of bacon.
- Prawn shells. Slide the bottom blade under the shell along the back of the prawn and snip from tail to head. The shell unzips, the dark vein lifts out, the prawn stays whole.
- Trimming fat from steak and chops. Far easier than a knife for pulling a thin layer of silver skin off a backstrap or trimming the tail off a scotch fillet.
- Cardboard, twine, kitchen string, parchment. The non-food jobs that ruin a knife edge. Use scissors and the chef knife stays sharp.
Why Do Korean BBQ Restaurants Use Scissors at the Table?
Because scissors are faster, safer, and more precise than a knife when you are working over an open grill. Walk into any Korean BBQ joint in Sydney or Melbourne and the staff will hand you tongs and scissors. They cut the bulgogi or the samgyupsal directly on the grill into bite-sized pieces while the meat is still cooking. No board, no knife, no leaving the table.
This is a relatively modern practice. The Korean food press traces it to the 1970s, when restaurants started using scissors to cut cold buckwheat noodles (naengmyeon) at the table because the long strands were difficult to manage with chopsticks. The trick spread to grilled meat and stuck. Scissors at the table are now a defining feature of Korean dining.
The wider point for home kitchens: there are more jobs that scissors do better than a knife than most Australians realise. We grew up with the idea that scissors were a kid's tool and a knife was a serious tool. Korean kitchens treat both as serious tools and use whichever one suits the job. A good pair of kitchen scissors lives next to your knife block and gets reached for half as often as the chef knife. That ratio surprised me when I started tracking it.
Should You Get Kitchen Scissors and a Chef Knife, or Just a Knife?
Both, and the scissors will pay for themselves in the first month. A good chef knife at $150 to $300 is the workhorse, but it is the wrong tool for around 30 percent of small kitchen jobs. Trying to spatchcock a chook with a chef knife forces you into bone with no use. Trying to open a vacuum-packed bag of bacon with a chef knife dulls the edge fast. Trying to snip chives over a salad with a chef knife crushes them.
A $30 pair of scissors picks up all those jobs. Our top sellers in kitchen scissors and shears at xinzuo.com.au sit at $29.95 and $34.95. That is roughly the cost of two takeaway dinners. After a year of weekly use, the scissors have absorbed jobs that would otherwise have worn out the chef knife edge, which means the chef knife stays sharp longer and gets sharpened less often. The maths works in scissors' favour every time.
For people setting up a kitchen from scratch, my standard recommendation is a chef knife, a paring knife, kitchen scissors, and a honing rod. Four tools that handle everything below the level of butchery. Scissors are the cheapest item in that set and one of the two you will reach for daily.
Which Kitchen Scissors Should You Buy?
If you want one pair, pick the Xinzuo Hezhen 8" Heavy Duty Detachable Kitchen Scissors at $34.95. Forged stainless blades at HRC 51 to 53, full take-apart pivot, micro-serrated bottom blade, metal-core handle with a rubberised grip. The detachable design is the feature you will use weekly, because it lets you wash the blades like a small knife after raw chicken work and put them straight back together.
If you want a slightly lighter pair for vegetable and herb work, the Xinzuo 8" Stainless Steel Heavy Duty Kitchen Shearers at $29.95 is the sister product. Same 8-inch length, same forged blades, slightly less weight in the hand. I keep this one in the BBQ kit because the rubberised handle wipes clean of marinade and smoke without complaint.
What I'd buy if I was starting again: The detachable pair as my main, then the lighter pair as a second after about six months. Two pairs is not overkill once you start treating scissors as a primary kitchen tool. One stays in the knife block, one in the BBQ kit, and you stop hunting for them.
Free AU shipping kicks in at $100, so picking up a pair alongside any other knife or accessory lands the whole order at your door for the listed price. Both pairs are covered by lifetime warranty on the blade and pivot. If yours ever splits at the join or the blade goes soft, send it back. Australian Consumer Law applies on top of that.
How Do You Sharpen Kitchen Scissors Without Wrecking Them?
Pull them apart, treat each blade like a small knife, and run it across a 1000-grit whetstone at the existing angle. Two or three passes per side is usually enough to bring the edge back to working sharpness. The reason a take-apart pair is worth buying is exactly this: with the blades separate you can see the bevel, match the angle, and put a clean edge back on each one. With a riveted pair, you cannot.
For day-to-day touch-ups, a ceramic rod works on the smooth top blade. Hold the blade flat against the rod, draw it from heel to tip, three or four light passes. Skip the bottom blade with the micro-serration, because the serrations are doing their own job and dragging a rod through them dulls them. If you keep up the touch-ups, you'll only need a whetstone once a year. The same approach applies to most kitchen knives, and our daily knife maintenance guide covers the routine in more detail.
One thing to avoid: pull-through sharpeners. The plastic ones with the V-shaped slots wreck a scissors blade because they grind both sides of the bevel at once and cannot match the existing angle. A whetstone or a ceramic rod is the only sensible option. If you are not comfortable freehanding a stone yet, a workshop or a knife shop will do the job for $10 or $15 and the scissors will come back as good as new.
What Else Goes With a Good Pair of Kitchen Scissors?
A magnetic knife rack so the scissors live next to the knives instead of in a drawer. A small ceramic honing rod for daily touch-ups. A 1000 and 3000 grit whetstone for once-a-year sharpening on the scissors and the knives at the same time. If you cook for other people often, the chef gift guide walks through the rest of the kit I'd give a working professional.
Frequently Asked Questions
Are kitchen scissors worth buying separately from a knife set?
Yes. A good pair of kitchen scissors handles around 30 percent of small kitchen jobs that a chef knife is the wrong tool for, including spatchcocking a chook, opening packaging, snipping herbs, and shelling prawns. At $30 to $40 a pair, scissors are the cheapest single upgrade in a working kitchen. Most knife sets include scissors, but the quality varies wildly, so a forged standalone pair is usually the better buy.
Can you put kitchen scissors in the dishwasher?
Avoid it, even on a take-apart pair. The high heat and abrasive detergent dull the edge fast and corrode the pivot screw, and water cannot fully reach the gap between the blades on a riveted pair, which leaves residue inside. Pull the blades apart, hand wash each half like a small knife, dry immediately, and click them back together. The whole job takes 30 seconds.
What is the difference between kitchen scissors and kitchen shears?
The two terms are used interchangeably in Australian retail, but kitchen shears traditionally describes the heavier-duty pair built for poultry and bone work, while kitchen scissors describes a lighter pair for herbs and packaging. The Xinzuo 8" detachable pair we sell is heavy enough for both jobs, so the distinction is mostly marketing. Look at blade thickness and forging rather than the label on the box.
What is the best blade angle for kitchen scissors?
Around 18 to 22 degrees per side, which is in the same range as a German-style chef knife. America's Test Kitchen measured 19 degrees on their top-rated pair, against 50 to 70 degrees on cheap general-purpose scissors. The acute angle is what makes the difference between a tool that slices a tomato cleanly and a tool that crushes it. Forged stainless blades hold this angle, stamped blades do not.
Can you use kitchen scissors to spatchcock a chicken?
Yes, and they're the right tool for the job. Sharp 8-inch kitchen scissors cut alongside the backbone in two passes, removing the spine cleanly while you press down on the breastbone to flatten the bird. A heavy-duty pair with forged blades and a take-apart pivot will do the job in 90 seconds. A chef knife forces you into the bone with no use, which is slower and more dangerous.
How long should good kitchen scissors last?
Ten years or longer with a forged stainless pair, take-apart pivot, and reasonable care. The blades are sharpenable on a whetstone, the pivot stays smooth because you can clean it, and the metal-cored handles do not crack at the finger holes. A stamped or moulded plastic pair generally lasts 12 to 24 months before the blade folds over or the handle cracks at a stress point.