moHA! Foldable Potato Masher
Standard potato mashers are often too bulky and always end up crammed in our kitchen drawers, but this one folds flat so it doesn’t take up nearly any space! The oval-shaped blade grid make quick work of even the most unruly spuds and even other types of food. It’s constructed from sturdy stainless steel, so it will hold up to frequent use, and the silicone-coated, ergonomic handle makes it easy to use. Plus, the masher end is edged in silicone to protect the surface of your pot or pan while using the tool.
Cuisipro Box Grater
This box grater features four cutting sides—coarse grate, medium grate, fine grate and slice—all made from etched metal, which increases each blade’s sharpness and durability, and they won’t buckle under pressure. And unlike other brands, which often have a thick frame of metal or plastic between each cutting surface, Cuisipro extends each of their grater's cutting surfaces to the edge: more area means easier slicing, quicker grating and less work, so you can tackle soft foods like certain cheeses and sturdy veggies like carrots with ease. Plus, there aren’t any extra nooks and crannies for bits of food to get stuck in, making for easier cleanup. Its ergonomic top handle is coated in comfortable, nonslip rubber, and the grater has a rubberized detachable base that holds it steady, measures volume and collects the gratings. You can simply grate, measure, remove and dump directly into your pan without extra fuss.
Cuisipro Baking Sheet
Made with a double layer of premium nonstick, PFOA-free coating, these carbon steel baking sheets release baked foods easily. The wavy texture on the surface of the pan is more than just decorative, promoting even airflow to ensure consistent browning and baking (no hot spots here!). Our testers found that even without the nonstick spray, parchment paper, or foil, foods baked on these pans—including cookies, sticky broiled chicken thighs, and crispy, skin-on salmon—slid right off. And any stuck-on sauce or melted chocolate sprayed right off when cleaning. The best part? The sheet heats up to 500°F (260°C), significantly above the heat tolerance of most baking sheets, with minimal warping and zero sticking. Plus, the sheets’ 1-inch-tall sides are easy to grip when removing from the oven—and when cleaning. Available in small, medium, and large sizes.
Vain Vanilla Original Baker's Blend Pure Vanilla Extract
This small-batch vanilla extract from Kansas-based Vain Vanilla is prepared completely by hand using only the best ingredients. The Original Baker's Blend is made with top-shelf rum that emphasizes vanilla's sweet characteristics and adds its own cane-sugar dimension. We especially love that Vain Vanilla leaves its vanilla pods in the bottle, which has two benefits. First, over time the extract will continue to deepen in color and become more complex as the pods release more flavor compounds. Second, when you're done with the vanilla extract, you can still slice open the pods and use the beans themselves in your desserts.
Milk Street Garlic Confit
The worst recipe ingredient is, “4 cloves garlic, minced.” You know that it is going to be hard to do, it will make a mess, and you will end up with garlic all over your cutting board and knife. Jarred supermarket garlics are, well, awful! They often taste bitter and harsh or lack flavor altogether. Our solution to this problem is to create a garlic confit—mellow but full-flavored and enhanced with a few nice touches, including bay leaves, Aleppo pepper, ghee, olive oil and a hint of lemon. You will never have to mince garlic again!
Blake Hill Preserves Pumpkin Maple Butter
This Pumpkin Maple Butter is the perfect, understated addition to your autumn pantry. Made with pumpkins, Vermont maple syrup, apple cider vinegar and spices, the resulting butter is creamy and smooth—and refreshingly restrained compared to most pumpkin spice products. With its soft, silky texture and delicate spice, the pumpkin butter is perfect for stirring into oatmeal or porridge, fall soups like butternut squash, and holiday desserts (we also love it right out of the jar). This jam is nut-free and gluten-free.
Milk Street Kitchin-tan™ Japanese-Style Utility Knife
When a chef’s knife is too big, and a paring knife is too small, the Milk Street Kitchin-tan is the perfect pinch hitter. We borrowed elements from our favorite Western- and Japanese-style knives to create this all-purpose utility knife. From making sandwiches to chopping herbs, dicing shallots and cutting fruit, this 5½-inch blade will become the go-to knife for all of your between jobs. It has a comfortable grip, cuts like a dream and has a curved sheepsfoot tip, which makes the knife safer to use.
KL Keller Herb Bundles (Farcellets) — Set of 6
These herb bundles from northern Spain are a bouquet garni with a Spanish twist: thyme, oregano and savory wrapped in a bay leaf and tied by hand. Farcellets are a versatile and easy-to-use selection of aromatic herbs for cooking. They are wonderful to have on hand in the dark winter months when fresh herbs are not as abundant. In Spain you will see farcellets pre-packaged with simple vegetables for one-stop soup supplies. They are fantastic in a pot of beans or stew. Place one or two in the cavity of a hen before roasting to flavor from the inside out.
Little Apple Treats Original Apple Cider Vinegar
Produced from hand-picked apples, not the low-grade and windfall apples most companies use, and aged in oak barrels for two years before bottling, Little Apple Treats cider is bright and sharp, with a bold apple flavor and subtle caramel tones contributed by the barrel aging. This is the best American apple cider vinegar we’ve tasted, every bit on par with the fancy, expensive French stuff from Normandy.
Cuisipro Measuring Cups
Because of their robust construction and fine machining, Cuisipro’s award-winning precision tools are elevated kitchen essentials and a pleasure to use. These stainless steel measuring cups are our favorite brand because their perfectly flat rims make it easier for leveling off ingredients with a knife, while their elongated elliptical shape can fit into narrower containers. We found that the longer handles are useful for scooping ingredients—with these cups, you won’t need to stick your hand deep into a bag of flour each time you bake. These cups are also visually appealing; both the eyelet hole at the end of the cup and the handle shape have contours that echo the clever oval design.
Dreamfarm Flisk 3 in 1 Whisk
We know it’s easy to be skeptical of the infamous kitchen multitool, but believe us when we say the Flisk is not a gimmick. Our kitchen team was blown away by the quality. This nifty tool didn’t win a Red Dot design award for nothing. It seamlessly shifts between three different shapes with a simple click of the knob located at the end of the handle. The first setting is a classic balloon whisk, perfect for beating egg whites into stiff peaks or making a quick batch of homemade whipped cream, and another half-opened setting (it’s narrowly X shaped when looked at from above) is ideal for stirring sauces, as it can also sneak into the edges of pans to make sure everything’s evenly mixed. Lastly, it folds completely flat, which does wonders for deglazing a pan and also for easy, tangle-free storage. We found the durable plastic of the ergonomic handle to stand up to a good amount of wear and tear and so can the Flisk’s 10 wires. They’re made from high-vibration spring steel to give you maximum aeration efficiency with (this means fluffy frostings in a flash) and are hygienically sealed within the handle.
Cortez Milling Co. Navajo Maize Blue Cornmeal
Blue cornmeal is used in traditional Native American cooking and prized for its nutty flavor and hearty texture.This beautiful purple-hued variety from Cortez Milling Co. in Southwest Colorado keeps it’s amazing deep lavender color, even when cooked. And while most other blue cornmeal tends to cook up gray and have a bitter, harsh or musky flavor, this Navajo Maize Blue Cornmeal’s flavor was sweet and earthy with an intense corn essence. Perfect for tortillas, chips, muffins, cornbread and Navajo mush, a breakfast made of roasted blue corn, juniper ash and water—similar to Cream of Wheat but much more flavorful.
