The best kitchen gadgets of 2018 (Photo: Reviewed)— Our editors review and recommend products to help you buy the stuff you need. If you make a purchase by clicking one of our links, we may earn a sma| Techie World
— Our editors review and recommend products to help you buy the stuff you need. If you make a purchase by clicking one of our links, we may earn a small share of the revenue. However, our picks and opinions are independent from USA Today’s newsroom and any business incentives.
There are many reasons to upgrade your cooking tools and kitchen gear. Maybe you’re trying to cook more, or eat healthier. Or maybe you’re just tired of using the same warped frying pan that you’ve had since college.
It doesn’t matter what the reason is, but the start of a new year is a perfect time to upgrade your kitchen-ware. The challenge is finding the right tools for you, and that’s where we at Reviewed come in. We’ve compiled a list of 30 of our top-ranked items that were tested by our kitchen and cooking experts which you can pick and choose from to suit your needs.
Whether it’s some inexpensive measuring spoons, or a big-time stand mixer, from the time you start chopping onions until you box your casserole up and store it in the fridge, we’ve got you covered, chef.
The Totally Bamboo Kauai Cutting Board has the best feel and balance of all the cutting boards we tested. It’s heavy enough to pass our stability and balance tests, but light enough to easily maneuver and clean. Plus, its 14.5 x 11.5-inch size makes it a perfect choice for most household cutting tasks.
The Totally Bamboo board also looks beautiful, thanks to a two-tone bamboo color scheme. Bamboo looks like wood, but it isn’t. It’s a hard grass that grows very quickly, making it a sustainable, renewable resource. Some say that bamboo is too hard and can dull your knives, but we didn’t measure any noticeable dulling during our tests.
Get the Totally Bamboo Kauai cutting board on Amazon for $19.95
You don’t need every knife in the block to prepare dinner, but this set gives you everything you’ll need at a great value—especially considering that it comes with eight really nice steak knives and a killer set of kitchen shears. The chef’s knife (the one you’ll probably use most often) is lightweight and easy to wield while also being one of the sharper knives in our test group of the best knife sets. The paring knife fits perfectly in our hands for off-the-cutting-board activities like peeling apples, and the serrated bread knife made quick work at slicing crusty baguettes as the whole set earned an Editors’ Choice award.
Get the Zwilling J. A. Henckels Knife Set on amazon for $279.99
The Cuisipro Stainless Steel Measuring Spoon Set was one of the least expensive sets on our list, so we were thrilled when it came out as our best measuring cups and spoons set. These unbendable stainless-steel spoons have a sleek, tapered look with etched-on measurements that won’t fade in the dishwasher over time. The handles are tapered so each spoon stands flat on the countertop, which is a nice (and, sadly, uncommon) feature.
The elongated, oval-sized spoons fit in most common spice jars and are held together by an easy-to-remove band for storage purposes. They come in all the common sizes, but also include the super-precise 1/8 teaspoon measurement.
Get the Cuisipro Stainless Steel Measuring Spoon Set on Amazon for $10.65
The OXO Good Grips 5-Quart Stainless-Steel Colander passed every test we threw at it with flying colors. Covered from rim to base with perfectly sized holes, this stainless steel colander features an easy-to-grip rim and non-skid feet that stayed put as we tossed food into it. It was well-shaped to funnel water out of the perforated sides, and never clogged with pasta or rice. It was the most expensive colander we tested at just under $30 but it also aced all of our tests, earning it our pick for best overall.
Get the OXO Good Grips Stainless-Steel Colander on Amazon for $29.99
Unlike traditional stamped-style models, the blades for this grater are etched into the metal using a chemical process that creates super-sharp edges. That allowed this grater to perform above-average on all four sides. The fine holes resulted in beautifully zested lemons and a pile of airy, fluffy Parmesan, whereas the coarse holes gave us long strands of mozzarella and potato shreds that made the best latkes in the group.
It wasn’t just about performance, either. It was the small features that made this model go above and beyond. The fine blade panel is removable for ease of cleaning, and the wide design makes the rest of this dishwasher-safe grater simple to clean, too. The feet stayed out of the way of shreds, allowing the contents to happily pile up underneath the grater without clogging up the mechanisms. As an added bonus, all the blades are made in the U. S. A. Put that all together, and this grater was a shoo-in for our choice of best overall.
Get the Microplane box grater on Amazon for $29.95
We were hesitant when we spied an “As Seen on TV” label on this product, but the truth is, it beats out the competition by a long shot. It’s intuitive to use: Simply stick your vegetable in one of two ends, depending on your preferred “noodle” thickness, and twist for long, continuous ribbons. It is the only model that has an effective food holder cap that, when our vegetable was close to the end, allowed us to safely grind it down to the smallest of nubs.
The Veggetti comes with a little brush for easy cleaning and it feels more sturdy and better constructed than the similar Zoodle Slicer and Kitchen Supreme. Plus, at under $10, it’s a no-brainer.
Get the Veggetti on Amazon for $9.99
A potato rice is the gadget you need to make fluffy, airy mashed potatoes. We loved the way our top potato ricer effortlessly pushed the potatoes through the hopper, thanks to a gear-powered mechanism that requires less arm strength to use. It was the only ricer we tested that we could use one-handed with a whole potato (with the others we tested, we had to chop the potatoes up into small pieces to achieve one-handed pressing). The comfortable handle is made from a heavy-duty plastic, but the hopper itself is stainless steel, which is easier to clean and should last a long time. The simple two-construction design allows you to take the stainless steel basket out, making it both easy to fill and a breeze to clean.
Get the Chef’n FreshForce Potato Ricer on Amazon for $55.26
With its bulky, lab-style body, the KD-8000 stands out from the smaller, sleeker scales in our lineup. But if you have the counter space in your kitchen, this weighing machine won’t disappoint.
In testing, the KD-8000 proved to be the most accurate of the bunch, displaying the correct weights even when we added and removed objects from its platform. We liked the backlit screen, which displays an icon to indicate when a measurement is stable, as well as the cover that helps protect buttons from errant flour. In addition to measuring in grams, kilograms, ounces, and pounds, the scale also offers a baker’s percentage mode, allowing you to easily weigh out (for example) a mixture that’s two parts oats and one part sugar.
Get the My Weigh KD-8000 on Amazon for $36.47
While it’s significantly less expensive than electric pasta machines, the Marcato Atlas Pasta Machine was the most expensive manual pasta maker we tested. In this case, the adage “You get what you pay for” is certainly true. As we fed the dough into the rollers, we effortlessly held the sheet in one hand while cranking the handle with the other. It was the only pasta machine we tested that had a “0” setting, which was so wide that we barely had to flatten our dough to fit it through the rollers. In between rolls, the easy-to-operate knob could be adjusted with one hand, so we didn’t have to put the dough down (a serious time saver!). To cut the sheet, all you have to do is clip on the included fettuccine and spaghetti attachment, which created restaurant-quality pasta every time.
