diff --git a/CHANGELOG.md b/CHANGELOG.md
index e095091a3..664bc8faa 100644
--- a/CHANGELOG.md
+++ b/CHANGELOG.md
@@ -33,6 +33,8 @@ BUG FIXES:
   - provisioners/ansible: fix SSH settings to support more than 5 ssh keys [GH-5017]
   - provisioners/ansible: increase ansible connection timeout to 30 seconds [GH-5018]
   - provisioners/docker: Only add docker user to group if exists. [GH-5315]
+  - provisioners/chef: Use `command -v` to check for binary instead of
+      `which` since that doesn't exist on some systems. [GH-5170]
   - provisioners/chef-zero: support more chef-zero/local mode attributes [GH-5339]
   - provisioners/docker: use docker.com instead of docker.io [GH-5216]
   - pushes/atlas: send additional box metadata [GH-5283]
diff --git a/plugins/provisioners/chef/provisioner/base.rb b/plugins/provisioners/chef/provisioner/base.rb
index 8d8ee7d02..54b5f4e85 100644
--- a/plugins/provisioners/chef/provisioner/base.rb
+++ b/plugins/provisioners/chef/provisioner/base.rb
@@ -38,7 +38,7 @@ module VagrantPlugins
           # Checks for the existence of chef binary and error if it
           # doesn't exist.
           @machine.communicate.sudo(
-            "which #{binary}",
+            "sh -c 'which #{binary}'",
             error_class: ChefError,
             error_key: :chef_not_detected,
             binary: binary,