The Ferrari of the pasta machine world, this model was a little more expensive than the others, but it sure was a pleasure to handle. It sported both the widest and the narrowest thickness settings in our lineup; we barely had to roll dough out to fit it through the machine, and we could effortlessly dial the machine down to produce gossamer-thin sheets. Its laser-sharp noodle attachment produced perfect fettuccine and angel hair every time.
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This pin capably handled dough for pie, cookies, pizza, and yeasted rolls, with gentle weight and a slightly textured surface that holds a dusting of flour for less sticking. Its long, straight shape made achieving even dough thickness and rolling out larger disks easy.
The deeply beveled edge of this scraper cut through pizza and bread dough quickly and scraped the work surface effectively. The textured polypropylene handle was easy to hold on to, even with greasy or floury hands, and was thinner than other scrapers’ handles, helping us hold it flat to the work surface for easier, more effective scooping and scraping.
This server’s small perforations drained water without losing pasta; its long teeth grabbed and held long strands with ease (their slightly wide placement meant smaller pasta sometimes slipped out, but this was a minor issue). Its long handle with comfortable silicone grip kept hands a safe distance from hot water, and the gently angled head was just right for easy control.
Our top-rated sharpener had the winning combination of producing truly exceptional and consistent results quickly, neatly, and efficiently. The manual clearly outlined a few specific steps that must be followed each time, and it took about 2 minutes from start to finish to get a polished, razor-sharp edge. Narrow, spring-loaded slots made it easy and unambiguous to maintain a consistent angle as we moved the knife through the three slots. It rapidly removed a notch we cut in the blade and easily sharpened both our everyday chef’s knife and pricey carbon-steel chef’s knife. We subtracted half a point because the slots left very light cosmetic scratches along the sides of our knives.
This slightly simplified, more compact version of our top-rated sharpener has one fewer sharpening slot, with the same medium-abrasive diamond abrasive of our winner for shaping, and a flexible stropping disk to polish the edge. As a result, this sharpener created an edge with two reinforcing bevels, as opposed to the three created by the top-rated Trizor model. We noticed only a minor difference in cutting performances between the knife we sharpened in this model and the knife we sharpened in the Trizor, but knives sharpened in this model may require slightly more frequent sharpening to maintain their edges. Like the Trizor, the spring-loaded guides left light cosmetic scratches along the side of our blades.
Our favorite outdoor pizza oven offers the convenience of propane and the ability to cook pizzas up to 16 inches in diameter. It has a powerful L-shaped burner located along the left and rear of the oven, which heats both the stone and the air in the oven effectively. We consistently produced pizzas that were perfectly cooked on top and had beautiful char and spotting on their undersides. Because the back left corner gets hotter than the rest of the oven, it’s important to rotate the pizzas so that they cook evenly. The oven is impressively sleek, and its legs fold so that it’s fairly compact in storage or transit, but it’s bulkier and about twice as heavy as the Ooni Koda 12.
This compact, portable gas-fired oven is our recommendation for home cooks who want to cook excellent 12-inch pizzas outdoors quickly and easily. A gas flame located at the rear of the oven heated up the baking stone relatively evenly while also heating the inside of the oven. An angled heat deflector on the roof of the oven helped direct heat to the tops of the pizzas as they baked. It was easy to ignite the flame and adjust the heat using a dial located at the rear of the oven. As with most of the models, you’ll need to rotate pizzas as they bake to ensure an even cook.
A good grill has gotten even better. The Weber Spirit II E-310 put a crisp, brown crust on burgers and steaks and rendered tender pulled pork with real smoky flavor. Weber kept the heavy-duty cookbox of thick cast aluminum and enameled steel with just one narrow vent across the back, which makes it easy to maintain steady heat and distribute smoke. The angle of the lid when open helped channel smoke away from our faces. Among the changes: The burner design was tweaked to increase the evenness of heating from front to back on the grill surface, and Weber now offers a 10-year warranty on the ignition system. One side table now folds down for easier storage, an open cart with a handy shelf replaces the cabinet, the grease tray is easier to access, and the grill rolls on two larger wheels rather than the previous model’s four smaller ones. The control knobs now have a red line indicating their position, making them more intuitive, and notches in the Flavorizer bars give a view of the flames. More on this test
Our favorite flat-top grill was great to cook on, easy to use, and simple to clean. It made evenly cooked and thoroughly browned food and had the second largest cooktop of the grills we tested, which easily accommodated enough food to feed a crowd. The grill had distinct hotter and cooler zones, making it possible to successfully sear burgers and gently toast burger buns at the same time. It also had four wheels for easy transport, two well-positioned side tables that made it convenient to transfer food to and from the cooktop, and a large opening and drip cup at the back of the grill that made for easy cleanup. Two of the wheels can be locked to ensure that the grill stays in place while it’s being used. While it did emerge from its packaging covered in a sticky factory coating, this came off easily as we seasoned the cooktop.
This attractive, compact pizza oven has simple, easy-to-use controls and produces outstanding pizza. You can operate it using preprogrammed pizza settings or change it to a manual mode and dial in the temperatures of the top and bottom heating elements. The oven comes with a carbon-steel baking pan, which we used to make terrific pan pizza. Roughly the size of a toaster oven, the pizza oven is heavy but will likely fit in most kitchens. Due to its compact size, it has a slightly smaller, round pizza stone. It accommodates roughly 11-inch pizzas and requires a bit of finesse when launching and rotating them, though that gets easier with practice. This model is available in both silver and black; the exterior of the silver version discolored significantly after only a few uses, but the black version didn’t change nearly as much.
This immersion circulator has all the features we loved in previous incarnations. It is durable and easy to attach to a wide range of vessels. Its powerful motor heats water quickly and to exactly the temperature we selected every time. And, while it’s an inch taller than its predecessor, it’s still lightweight and easy to store. With no controls on the unit itself, you must rely on its app to program time and temperature. Fortunately, its app is one of the best we’ve used, with a clear, user-friendly interface and lots of built-in recipes. The jury’s still out on the machine’s new “turbo” function, however. While this function did allow us to cook steak and pork chops to our desired doneness in a fraction of the time we’d need for conventional sous vide recipes, it currently works only with a relatively small selection of preset recipes by Breville—mostly different types of steak. Moreover, we’ve never found speed to be a priority when cooking sous vide conventionally; if anything, the texture and flavor of most foods improves over the longer, slower cook.
The Weber Smokey Mountain, or WSM, has been around for 40 years, and for good reason: It’s a durable, well-designed charcoal smoker that makes great-tasting, competition-worthy barbecue. Like most charcoal models, this cylindrical bullet smoker does have a learning curve: You’ll need to monitor the temperature inside and periodically adjust the air intake vents in order to get the heat level you want. (A port built into the side of the smoker makes it especially easy to insert a probe for monitoring those temperatures, and a large water pan helps keep those temperatures steady once you’ve achieved them.) A generously sized charcoal basket lets you smoke for long periods without having to replenish your fuel or wood—we were able to cook for 10 hours easily. If you do need to add briquettes or wood, the process is simple: Just open a door in the body of the smoker and chuck them in. We wish the door sealed more tightly, as smoke and heat escaped easily around its edges, making us burn through briquettes and wood faster. While disposing of charcoal is messy, the smoker separates into three parts to make it easier to access those ashes for disposal. The WSM comes in three sizes. The 22-inch model we tested is the largest. With two grates arranged one over the other, it can smoke multiple racks of ribs, many pork butts, and at least two spatchcocked turkeys at a time. It’s easy to assemble and comes with a warranty that covers different parts for two to 10 years.
Gorgeous and formidable, this molcajete and tejolote set excelled at every task. The volcanic rock that both parts are made from is quite coarse-textured and porous, so this set is exceptionally good at breaking down ingredients, making perfect sauces and pastes and easily grinding spices to the exact fineness we required. It’s quite large and heavy, so it holds a lot of food and won’t budge at all during use. (It can be a little daunting to lift for cleaning, though.) We found the tejolote just a tad short, but it’s otherwise easy to grip and control.
True to its name, this Goliath of a mortar and pestle was one of the biggest, heaviest, and best we tested. Weighing just under 11 pounds, the granite mortar sat rooted to the counter; its coarse-textured interior allowed us to grind dry spices to fine powders and wet ingredients to smooth pastes more quickly than any other model. Its pestle—also one of the heaviest we tested—did a fantastic job of smashing garlic and reducing whole spices to smithereens. One tiny gripe: The pestle could be a smidge longer; our hands sometimes hit the rim of the mortar while pounding ingredients.
The Challenger Bread Pan produced gorgeous loaves of bread with moist crumbs and blistered, deeply caramelized crusts. Its base was big and broad enough to accommodate large kilogram–weight boules and batards. While its heavy weight made it a bear to lift, it also ensured great heat retention and quick baking. And it was otherwise a pleasure to work with. We loved that it came with two sets of handles—one set for transporting it into and out of the oven and another set on the lid that made it particularly easy to lift or lower. While it’s not cheap, this sturdy, well-designed oven will reward you with wonderful bread for years to come.
Our favorite lame is inexpensive and ingenious. A simple screw system makes it easy to attach blades in either curved or straight configurations. This innovation allows you to have the best of two worlds, slicing dramatic ears when the blade is curved and making more intricate designs when the blade is straight. Its handle is a single continuous piece of metal, so we were able to grip it securely and change hand positions readily. And we loved that it came with its own case, making it easy to store safely. Our one tiny quibble? Because the body of the lame is made of solid metal, it’s a bit heavy, so scoring doesn’t always feel as effortless as with other lames.
This attractive and lightweight flat bottom–style model made delicious, full-bodied coffee. It has horizontal ridges on its interior and three small drainage holes, which allow water to flow through the coffee bed at a steady and not-too-slow speed, preventing overextraction that results in bitterness. The flat-bottom design also creates a shallow coffee bed, which mitigates the risk of water saturating grounds unevenly. Those three design features work together to make the brewing experience more consistent and forgiving, appealing to pour-over novices. In our testing, we determined that it’s best used with the Kalita proprietary filter paper, which has wavy edges and fits snugly inside the cup.
The best adjustable kettles are fully customizable and convenient, and this model excelled. It consistently boiled water in less than 3 minutes, besting every other kettle in the lineup by at least a minute. Its easily visible capacity line and single-knob controls made filling and operating a breeze, and its comfortable, grippy handle and lightweight construction made it easy to hold and steadily pour water for a perfect pour-over coffee. It was also the most accurate option: It hit every custom-selected temperature within 1 degree and held it for 30 minutes.
Weber’s versatile, well-designed kettle grill is one of our longtime favorites for good reason, allowing you to make great grilled, roasted, and barbecued foods with ease. It was one of the fastest and easiest models to assemble and move and has proved relatively sturdy and durable over the years as well. Its well-positioned vents are easy to adjust, making for great heat control. Its large enclosed ash catcher makes cleanup a breeze, and its cooking grate is spacious, with a hinge that makes it simple to add charcoal during long cooks. (We wish the hinged portion was a tad larger, but this is a minor flaw.) Its lid hooks neatly onto the side of the base of the grill during cooking. You won’t find a better performer for the price; if you want extra features, however, you might want to consider our upgrade pick or other highly recommended models.