Reviews you can trust.

See why.

The Best Ginger Graters

Which grater is greatest? We find one that's fast, efficient, and easy to clean.

By

Last Updated July 5, 2022. Appears in America's Test Kitchen TV Season 19: Dumplings and Noodles

The Best Ginger Graters
See Everything We Tested

What You Need To Know

Freshly grated ginger is a common component of recipes both sweet and savory, lending its distinctive aroma to cookies, cakes, and chutneys as well as stir-fries, glazes, sauces, and soups. To get the fine puree we want, we usually reach for our favorite rasp-style grater, the Microplane Premium Classic Zester/Grater ($14.95), or we use the smallest holes on our favorite box grater, the Microplane Specialty Series 4-Sided Box Grater ($34.95). But we've often wondered whether there might be a better option, especially because there exist a number of gadgets specifically intended for grating ginger.

To find the best tool for the job, we rounded up 10 graters priced from $8.00 to $35.64. These tools encompassed a range of sizes, shapes, materials, and grating styles: Some had rasp-style “etched” holes, some had puckered “stamped” holes punched out by a machine, and others—traditional Japanese oroshigane—had either metal teeth or ceramic nubs. Pitting these tools against our winning rasp-style and box graters, we grated a whopping 6 pounds of ginger.

Does Grater Style Really Matter?

With such a range of styles, it was no surprise that the tools produced purees with different textures—some were coarser or more fibrous, some finer, and one made flat shavings of ginger instead of puree. But in practice, these differences didn't matter: Tasters found ginger of every texture acceptable and very similar when eaten raw (added to soy sauce as a dip for tofu). When sautéed in oil as if for a stir-fry, different ginger samples cooked evenly and in roughly the same amount of time, and their flavor and texture were nearly indistinguishable from sample to sample.

That said, grater style did matter when it came to speed, efficiency, and ease of use. Models with etched or stamped holes made quicker work of grating than did those with “crowns” (bigger, ragged-edged etched holes), teeth, or nubs, taking less than a minute to produce 1 tablespoon of puree. Our two favorites were the fastest, producing 1 tablespoon of puree in just 15 seconds; both had etched holes. The worst model, with metal teeth, took more than 4 minutes. To a lesser degree, the size of the grating surface also helped determine speed: The larger the area, the more ground we could cover before starting a new stroke or before the ginger clogged the holes. The best models had at least 5 square inches of surface area.

Models with small etched holes were also less wasteful than the other types, pulverizing and pushing through more puree from a standardized piece of ginger (1 inch long and weighing 14 grams), leaving just 1 to 3 unusable grams of fibrous pulp on the grater face. When...

Everything We Tested

Good : 3 stars out of 3.Fair : 2 stars out of 3.Poor : 1 stars out of 3.
*All products reviewed by America’s Test Kitchen are independently chosen, researched, and reviewed by our editors. We buy products for testing at retail locations and do not accept unsolicited samples for testing. We list suggested sources for recommended products as a convenience to our readers but do not endorse specific retailers. When you choose to purchase our editorial recommendations from the links we provide, we may earn an affiliate commission. Prices are subject to change.
accolades badge

Reviews you can trust

Reviews you can trust

The mission of America’s Test Kitchen Reviews is to find the best equipment and ingredients for the home cook through rigorous, hands-on testing. We stand behind our winners so much that we even put our seal of approval on them.

Miye Bromberg

Miye Bromberg

Miye is a senior editor for ATK Reviews. She covers booze, blades, and gadgets of questionable value.

0 Comments