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. ...
A food dehydrator is one of those appliances you don’t realize you need until you taste homemade beef jerky or apple rings dried at the perfect temperature. Store-bought jerky costs a small fortune per pound, dried fruit is loaded with added sugar, and herb drying takes weeks in open air. A good dehydrator pays for itself inside a year. The problem: most people pick a dehydrator based on price and end up with one that dries unevenly, takes 18 hours for a batch of jerky, or sounds like a helicopter taking off. We tested 7 models — stackable round units, shelf-style boxes, and high-end stainless steel machines — to find which ones actually dry food evenly without driving you out of the kitchen. ...
A panini press sounds like a single-purpose gadget. One thing: pressing sandwiches. But the good ones — the ones worth owning — do a lot more. They grill chicken breasts while the top plate sears the other side. They cook burgers indoors when the weather won’t cooperate. They griddle pancakes on one half and fry eggs on the other. We tested 7 models, from basic sandwich presses to full-function griddles that could replace your stove for most meals. ...
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. ...
A cast iron skillet is the longest-lasting piece of cookware you’ll ever buy. It’s also the hardest to get wrong — Lodge makes a perfectly usable pan for forty bucks, and it’ll outlive you. But there’s a range between “usable” and “this is the pan I reach for every single time” that matters more than you’d think. Weight distribution, handle angle, surface smoothness, how the seasoning takes — these details determine whether you use the skillet daily or it sits on the bottom shelf gathering rust. I tested six cast iron skillets spanning the full spectrum from budget workhorses to enameled French imports, comparing how they heat, how they handle, and how they feel after a year of use. ...
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. ...
Sous vide cooking went from restaurant-only technique to home kitchen staple faster than almost any cooking method in recent memory. The idea is simple: seal food in a bag, submerge it in a precisely heated water bath, and cook it at exactly the right temperature for exactly the right amount of time. The result — perfectly cooked steak edge-to-edge without a gray band — is something you just can’t get with a pan or oven. ...
A good knife set won’t make you a better cook. It will make prep faster, safer, and less frustrating — you’re less likely to cut yourself on a sharp blade than a dull one you’re forcing through a tomato. A decent chef’s knife, a utility knife, and a paring knife cover 95% of kitchen tasks. Beyond that, you’re paying for convenience. We tested 6 knife sets from $40 to $500 — German forged, Japanese precision, budget stainless, and everything in between. ...
Electric pressure cookers have taken over a lot of kitchens because they do one thing well that other kitchen appliances don’t: cook a tough cut of beef from rock-hard to fall-apart tender in 45 minutes. The same pot can also work as a slow cooker, rice cooker, steamer, saute pan, and yogurt maker. A good multi-cooker can pull double or triple duty and free up counter space by replacing three other appliances. ...