A pair of kitchen shears comprises a pair of blade members having respective handle portions at their proximal end regions and respective cutting edges at their distal end regions, and a coupling mechanism for coupling the blade members for pivoting movement with respect to each other about a pivot axis generally perpendicular to the blade members so that the cutting edges can be pivoted towards and away from each other about said axis. The coupling mechanism is manually operable to selectively decouple the blade members from each other. At least one of the blade members has a knife edge along its distal end region so it can function as a paring knife when separated from the other blade member.