Kitchen-Gadgets

Kitchen shears are one of those tools you dont realize you need until you have a good pair. Then suddenly youre using them for everything cutting open packaging, snipping herbs, spatchcocking chicken, trimming pizza, opening stubborn jar seals. But theres a big difference between cheap shears that rust after three washes and a well-made pair that stays sharp for years. I tested seven pairs over two months on everything from chicken bones to rosemary stems to find the ones worth buying. ...

Opening a bottle of wine should take about fifteen seconds. With a manual corkscrew — foil cutter, screw insertion, leverage, repeated pulling, gasping cork crumbles — it takes closer to ninety, and there’s a chance you wind up fishing cork bits out of your Cabernet. Electric wine openers solve this. Press it on the bottle, push a button, and the cork slides out. Push another button and it ejects. Total time: less than ten seconds. Some also work as wine preservers — pull the air out of a partial bottle and your wine stays drinkable for another week instead of turning to vinegar by Tuesday. ...

Salad spinners occupy an odd spot in the kitchen gadget world. They are bulky, single-purpose, and take up cabinet space. And they are also one of the few tools that actually change how food turns out. Dressing slides off wet lettuce. Herbs turn brown in damp paper towels. And if you have ever tried to pat dry a pound of spinach with paper towels one leaf at a time, you know the frustration. ...

Opening cans and jars should be the least memorable part of cooking. But if you’ve ever wrestled with a stuck lid or a can opener that skips halfway around, you know a bad one can turn a two-second task into a 30-second frustration. For anyone with arthritis, reduced grip strength, or just bad luck with lids, it’s even worse. We tested 6 electric can openers and jar openers — fully automatic can openers that cut around the side, traditional electric can openers, under-cabinet mounted units, and universal jar-gripping tools. ...

Fresh pasta is one of those things that tastes dramatically better than store-bought but people assume is too much work. The reality is, with a good pasta machine, you can go from flour and eggs to fresh fettuccine on the table in about 30 minutes — and half of that is resting the dough. But which machine should you buy? Manual crank machines are cheap and durable but take some arm work. Stand mixer attachments are convenient if you already own a KitchenAid. Electric extruders handle the whole process start to finish — just dump in the ingredients and walk away. We tested 6 of the best options across all three categories to find the right one for different kitchens, budgets, and pasta styles. ...

A mandoline slicer is the fastest way to turn a pile of zucchini into uniform rounds or a bag of onions into paper-thin slices for caramelizing. An electric food chopper is the fastest way to chop a head of garlic, a block of cheese, or a cup of nuts without pulling out a full food processor. Both tools save you knife time. Both tools can save your knuckles if you pick the right one. ...

I bought my first soda maker because I was spending $40 a month on LaCroix and felt ridiculous about it. Six years and three machines later, I can tell you two things. The upfront cost pays for itself in about six months. And not all soda makers are worth your money. Some carbonate well and keep fizz for days. Others go flat in hours or feel like they’re going to explode when you twist the bottle off. ...

I used to measure flour by volume until I made three different batches of bread dough in one afternoon and got three different textures. Same recipe, same scoop, wildly different results. That’s when I bought a kitchen scale and found out my “cup” of flour varied by as much as 30 grams depending on how I scooped. A good digital kitchen scale fixes that. It’s also the gadget I reach for more than anything else — for coffee brewing, portion control, and following recipes that come from countries where they don’t measure in cups. We tested 7 digital kitchen scales in 2025 across different price points and use cases, from $15 basics to precision lab-grade models. ...

I love pizza, but I was skeptical about countertop pizza ovens. My regular oven with a pizza stone seemed fine. Then I spent an afternoon at a friend’s house watching his Breville Pizzaiolo crank out a Neapolitan pie in three minutes. The crust had leopard spotting. The cheese was bubbling. It was pizza, in a kitchen, on a weekday. Countertop pizza ovens work because they get much hotter than a regular oven. Your home oven maxes out around 500-550°F. These things hit 750-800°F. That’s the difference between a decent pizza and a really good one. We tested 7 models in 2025 to find which ones deliver. ...

Pull a steak off the grill too early and you’re eating cold, sad meat. Leave a chicken in the oven five minutes too long and you’re eating dry, sad chicken. The line between perfect and ruined is a matter of degrees, and humans are terrible at guessing internal temperature by sight. A good meat thermometer eliminates the guesswork. We tested six digital meat thermometers — instant-read, probe-style with leave-in cables, and Bluetooth/WiFi-connected smart models — to find which ones give reliable readings and which ones waste your time. ...