Best and Worst Single-Use Kitchen Tools

Price: From $6.95 at Amazon and Walmart

The consensus from our social media results is that we as human beings seem to hate peeling, pitting, and slicing our food and will do anything to escape those chores. I concur. The peeling of garlic, for instance, is one of my least favorite tasks in the kitchen. My go-to technique is slamming the cloves with a knife first and then peeling them by hand. It’s a tiresome process, so much so that on my lazy days, I skip incorporating garlic into a dish just so I don’t have to peel the cloves. 

But that’s also precisely why the Sinnsally Garlic Peeler was such a delight for me to discover. You put cloves in the tube and then roll the tube back and forth. Having never used a peeler like this before, the way the tube spit out the peel after I had rolled it for less than 10 seconds almost felt like magic. It’s easy to use, requiring very little physical exertion, and simple to clean. 

The one thing to keep in mind is to not overcrowd the tube with cloves. Two or three pieces hit the sweet spot, but you can try putting in four if the cloves are smaller. Any more than that and the peeler might not be as effective.

Of all the products I tried, this is definitely the one I’m most likely to buy for myself and incorporate into my day-to-day cooking routine. It gets huge points in my book because it actually makes me excited to peel garlic now, something I never thought I would say in my life.

Price: From $10.98 at Amazon, Michaels, and Walmart

I tried this zester with both lemons and a wedge of Parmesan cheese. Unlike other graters I’ve used, this one created shavings that were particularly fine. The grated cheese especially was light, gossamer-thin, and almost looked like snow. The blades are designed in a way that even when my hand slipped while I was grating the cheese, I didn’t cut myself.

Cleaning-wise, you can put it in the dishwasher or wash it by hand. I washed mine under running water. While it wasn’t difficult to clean the teeth of the grater, I noticed that it was trickier to get to the small shavings of cheese that can get caught between the blade and its frame.

Despite that fact, the zester was the tool that I kept coming back to while I was evaluating these products. I used it frequently to add lemon zest and shaved Parmesan to my avocado salad and buttery lemon pasta dish because I loved both the texture of the shavings and the punch of flavor it provided.

Price: From $7.99 at Amazon, Walmart, and Zulay Kitchen

Growing up, coring an apple was a difficult endeavor. The old-fashioned apple corer that my parents had, which cored and sliced your apple at the same time, wasn’t always easy to use, especially when the apple was too big. 

By contrast, using the Zulay Kitchen Premium Apple Corer was such a breeze. You press the corer down on the center of the apple and the serrated blades allow you to core the fruit in seconds. The handle is designed to give you an easy grip. The process was quick and effective.

The best tools, in my opinion, are the ones that make me feel like I’m employing a secret hack. The Zulay Premium Apple Corer is one of these. (Confession: I cored three apples in a row while trying the tool out, certainly not because I needed to eat three apples in one sitting but because I was too addicted to how satisfying the experience was.)

Price: From $14.99 at Amazon, Oxo, and Williams Sonoma

It was straightforward to use and I relished the snap I heard whenever I successfully pitted the cherries I had. The plastic splatter guard reduces the amount of juice that splashes out.

But there’s a caveat. Almost a third of the time, a cherry wouldn’t be successfully pitted on the first try and would require either a few more attempts or a repositioning. It was still faster to use than pitting a cherry using either my hands or a paring knife.

And while the brand says it can be used for some types of olives, when I tried to pit Castelvetranos with it, the process required much more grip strength, and almost half of the olives I pitted came out squashed in the process. As a cherry pitter, this performs pretty well. As an olive pitter, not so much.

Price: From $19.99 at Amazon

You know that scene in “Sleepless in Seattle” where we hear Tom Hanks describe to his son that one of the things he loved about his late wife was how she would peel apples in one long, curly strip? That could not be me. Whenever I try to peel an apple, the peeler comes dangerously close to peeling my hand instead. A long, unbroken strip isn’t my end goal. I’m lucky if I don’t nick off any skin. 

That’s why going into the evaluation, the apple peeler was one of the tools that I was most excited about. The peeling process of the Tigwin Apple Slicer Peeler Corer itself was super-smooth. All I had to do was push the apple onto the fork of the metal shaft and turn the handle continuously as the blades peeled and pared the apple. You can adjust the blades so that you can peel an apple without coring and paring it at the same time. You can also adjust the peeling blade so that your apple peel can be thinner or thicker. When I used it, the peel was thin and didn’t remove much of the fruit, which was to my liking. 

In terms of assembling and understanding how the tool works, this one was slightly more challenging than the rest. While I could use most of the other products right out of the box, the Tigwin Apple Slicer Peeler Corer required me to first use a screwdriver to attach the handle to the handle arm. It’s also a bit bulkier and takes up more space.

If you’re looking for a simple, effortless way to peel apples and also appreciate a tool that can core and slice them at the same time, though, this one still wins points because of its ease of operation. It’s also pretty simple to clean, though the brand notes that after washing the product, you should dry it by hand and not allow it to air-dry.

Price: From $12.99 at Amazon, Walmart, and Zulay Kitchen

Let’s start with the good stuff. The crushed garlic and garlic paste I was able to get out of the garlic press was some of the strongest I’ve ever tasted when I added it to a dish. The press comes in seven colors, and the copper-colored one that I had was beautiful to look at. It was also nice to hold, with the metal cool to the touch and the grip fitting comfortably in my hand.

Once I had to use it, though, it was a different story, beautiful as it was. As someone who has weaker grip strength, I found myself audibly straining every time I tried to press the garlic out. It’s also a messier process than I had envisioned. Parts of the garlic escaped from the top of the chamber while I was pressing down the handles, and I would have to stop to reposition the garlic and squeeze it back in.

Even my husband, who has better grip strength than me, didn’t enjoy using the product. His biggest gripe was how tedious it was to clean, even with the cleaning brush provided. You have to take time running water through the crusher to make sure you get the garlic out of all the small chamber holes and pressing studs. 

For all these reasons I’m giving it a pass, despite how delicious the crushed garlic was. If you have better grip strength and don’t mind taking the time to clean the garlic press, this might be still worth your while. 

Price: From $11.94 at Amazon, Crate and Barrel, Oxo, and Target

Once upon a time, I bought this exact slicer myself. Once upon a time, I was among the ones enthralled.

Back when I was starting to eat avocados more, I found the action of pitting one to be terrifying. I couldn’t get the pit out with my bare hands without making a mess. But when I tried the knife technique, which involves whacking the pit with a knife and twisting the pit out, I was afraid I would slip and stab my own hand.

If I’m going to be honest, while I enjoy the Oxo Good Grips 3-in-1 Avocado Slicer, I’ve used it less than five times since purchasing it. The slicer offers three functions: You can halve, pit, and slice an avocado into strips using different parts of the tool. I’ve found the pitting component to be the most useful. All it requires is for you to push the steel pitter against the slicer and gently twist the pit out.

The slicing function is the one I find to be the least satisfactory. Whenever I scooped the avocado out with the slicer, there would sometimes be small portions that were still left on the skin. And when the avocado was more on the riper side, the slices would come out mushier than if I had just cut it with a knife on a cutting board. 

And why did I stop using it? Ironically, the few times I did use the Oxo Good Grips 3-in-1 Avocado Slicer gave me enough familiarity with cutting and pitting an avocado that I eventually graduated from the tool and started using a knife, the method I once was so afraid of. 

Considering the fact that the slicer now sits in a kitchen drawer and hasn’t been touched for a year before this evaluation, I don’t think it’s a must-have, strictly speaking, though it’s probably a stopgap measure for people who have a hard time pitting an avocado, as I once did.

Price: From $9.99 at Amazon, Michaels, and Walmart

The Farberware Professional Heat Resistant Nylon Meat and Potato Masher is designed to mix, mash, and chop up your food quickly. Although it was easy to use, the one thought that kept popping up in my mind while I was mashing ground pork was, is this really necessary?

For me, it seems like a no. I found myself longing for another tool in the kitchen that has already been doing this same task for me for a long time: my handy wooden spatula. I also found the meat and potato masher to be slightly cumbersome, because bits of raw ground pork kept on getting stuck between the masher’s blades and I would have to pause in my cooking to dislodge them.

Is it a bad tool? I wouldn’t call it that exactly, but I didn’t find it to be more efficient for mixing and mashing ground meat than the spatula I already have. And even though the product is made out of nylon that, according to the company, is heat-resistant up to 450° F, it might be safer to choose a tool that’s made out of wood or stainless steel if you want to reduce your exposure to the chemicals in plastic.

Price: From $2.99 at Amazon, Gourmac, and Pastry Chef Central

Some kitchen products make you go, wow, that’s clever; I never knew I needed this in my life. Some make you go, why? 

The Hutzler Banana Slicer is the latter. I was skeptical when I heard that this was a product that existed. Now that I’ve used it several times, my skepticism remains unchallenged.

It’s not that it’s hard to use. In fact, it’s incredibly easy. And if you’re looking to have your banana cut into uniform slices, this will do the job. All you have to do is press the slicer down a banana and voila! You have all your slices at once. But if it’s speed that you crave, it’s not that much faster than chopping up bananas the old-fashioned way on a cutting board with a knife. After I used the slicer, I had to push out each slice one by one because they were still lodged between the blades of the product. It’s not a sensation I particularly relish, having to put my fingers against the mushy texture of a banana again and again.

The problem for me is that banana slicing isn’t a particularly time-consuming task to begin with, so I can’t see a scenario where anyone is in dire need of this product. There’s a line between a novelty item and an essential tool, and unfortunately, the banana slicer doesn’t cross that line. It’s easy but ultimately unnecessary.