Adding Small Kitchen Appliances to Your Registry? These Are the Best.
Here are picks from our tests and wedding industry experts
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Prior to getting married, my husband and I lived together for five years. Since then, like most cohabiting 30-something couples, we’ve accumulated a host of household essentials: a coffee maker we use daily, a cordless vacuum we swear by, reliable cookware, and much more. So when the time came for us to create a wedding registry, we—small space dwellers with just about every square inch of our apartment accounted for—opted for a honeymoon cash fund instead.
Apparently, we’re not the only ones. According to a Zola survey of close to 6,000 couples getting married this year, 87 percent have at least one cash fund on their registries. But that doesn’t mean they’re eschewing physical gifts entirely. What was once considered a mainstay (think fine china or crystal stemware) has been decidedly replaced by items that cater to a couple’s specific life stage.
Interestingly, small kitchen appliances are among the most sought-after. For Esther Lee, deputy editor at The Knot, they strike the perfect balance between tradition and practicality. “They’re fairly classic wedding gifts that older family members feel satisfied to give, and are potentially more useful for millennial and Gen Z couples, whether moving into their first home or apartment together or looking to upgrade their already shared space.”
To dig deeper into what’s driving these trends, we turned to experts to learn more about the most popular small kitchen appliances on wedding registries today.
A Return to Heritage Brands
An oldie but a goodie is hard to resist, especially when an item is a culinary superstar. “We continue to see classic gifts like a Le Creuset Dutch oven (as breadmaking continues to be à la mode) and Zwiesel Champagne glasses rank high in popularity,” says Allison Cullman, vice president of brand marketing at Zola.
Esther Lee echoes the sentiment noting that similar heritage brands, including KitchenAid, Cuisinart, and Lodge, continue to remain top-of-mind for registry must-haves.
“People are getting married later in life and already have most of the gadgets they need,” says Jung Lee, founder of Jung Lee NY, a home and decor shop. “Many couples are returning to tradition, seeking unique items that they can cherish for a lifetime.”
Le Creuset Traditional Round Dutch Oven
Buying a Le Creuset can feel like a rite of passage for many. The brand has become synonymous with Dutch ovens and is a staple of many kitchens.
This 5.5-quart Le Creuset Signature Dutch oven’s heating speed was top-notch in our tests. It’s a cinch to clean and impresses in overall performance. It weighs 12 pounds, less than most, and has an 8-inch cooking diameter. We found that the loop handles are nice and wide, not always a given on Dutch ovens.
That said, if you’re looking for the very best Dutch oven, the Perfect Pot from Our Place tops our ratings.
Items like the KitchenAid Stand Mixers have been loved for generations, Esther Lee says. “Many couples have grown up with these products in their homes and are eager to bring them into their own.”
KitchenAid’s Artisan Series is a bump up from its classic line. The 10-speed KitchenAid Artisan Series KSM195PSBK comes with the usual attachments, plus a pastry beater, a bowl shield to prevent splatters, and an extra 3-quart bowl for smaller jobs. The standard-issue stainless bowl is 5 quarts. This mixer aces our tests for whipping cream and mixing cookie dough, and is almost as good at kneading bread dough. It works quietly, and our testers find it very convenient to clean and change the beaters. It weighs 21 pounds and has a tilt head, so you’ll need some clearance between your counter and cabinets. Bonus: You have your choice of 10 colors.
What’s more classic than a coffee maker? A traditional drip coffee maker with a modern twist, the Cuisinart DCC-T20 offers slick touchscreen controls and makes plenty of coffee for a full house, thanks to its 14-cup glass carafe. The top-rated drip coffee maker in our ratings, this model hits our tests for brewing performance and convenience out of the park, and it’s better than most when it comes to handling the carafe. It features programming, auto-shutoff, a cleaning indicator, a permanent filter, a water filter, brew-strength control, and a small-batch setting.
Here’s one that combines tradition with a powerful twist. Vitamix blenders, which are considered premium or high-performance, have topped our ratings since we began testing the brand in 2006. When it comes to power, this Vitamix Professional Series 750 is the best for silky purées and perfectly crushed ice.
Small-Space-Friendly Items
Apparently, wedding registries are shrinking. According to the news outlet Axios, rising housing costs combined with the added responsibilities of home ownership have driven couples to move in together earlier and for some, to forego upsizing their living spaces altogether. This, in turn, has had an impact on the items many couples will place on their registries.
But living in tight quarters doesn’t have to mean compromising on the quality of products. “Couples are using their registries to make their homes special, recognizing that while they may live in small spaces now, they want to carry items from their wedding gifts into their future/forever homes,” Jung Lee says.
The hallmark of Smeg appliances is their retro design, and this hand mixer is no exception. We tested the pale green version, but it also comes in red and black and a few other colors. That styling doesn’t come cheap, but the mixer performed well enough to earn our recommendation. Whipping time for heavy cream was top-notch and although this mixer earned only an average score for mixing cookie dough, the end results were fine. Our testers also found the Smeg quiet and convenient to use.
“We’re finding that Zola couples are gravitating toward more space-conscious items [to] create more minimalistic and uncluttered spaces,” Cullman says. “For example, they are adding cookware sets with foldable handles, slim toasters, and blenders designed to have a smaller footprint.”
Cue this personal blender from Beast. The 3-cup, 1,000-watt model packs a punch, acing CR’s icy drinks and puréeing tests. It’s not the best at crushing ice, but it’s easy to use and incredibly durable. It comes with a travel-ready drinking vessel and cap, so you can take your morning smoothie on the go.
The Nespresso Essenza Mini is our top-rated single-serve coffee maker and has the ability to brew three types of coffee—lungo (an Italian-style coffee), espresso, and ristretto (a more concentrated espresso). It’s one of the most compact we’ve tested, too. It stands out with an excellent rating for first-cup speed, repeat-cup speed, and cup-size consistency, as well as for brewing range, which means you have plenty of control over the strength of your brew. It has a removable water reservoir, a height-adjustable drip tray, and an auto-off function. Like other Nespresso models, it requires Nespresso capsules, which the company recycles at no charge.
The Oxo Brew Conical tops CR’s list of burr coffee grinders, thanks to its consistent grind performance. It performs above average for coarse, medium, and fine grinds in our tests, and it’s very easy to clean. It has 15 grind settings that are easy to understand and use, plus it features one of the largest bean hoppers, with a 12-ounce capacity. You’ll also find a timer and an auto-stop feature.
Börner V5 PowerLine Mandoline
This culinary tool is a must-have and a versatile one at that. The intuitive-to-use Börner V5 mandoline has two julienne blades that safely tuck into a storage sheath and a large, round handguard that holds food securely without mangling it. It’s easy to adjust, swap out blades, and clean. Unlike many other models we evaluated, the handguard did not completely smush our food. There are four notches on the underside of the mandoline that allow you to nest the slicer over bowls of several sizes. There’s a “safe” setting on the blade that tucks away the blade’s edge and a case for the attachments that hooks onto the underside of the mandoline for storage.
Kitchen Upgrades
Consider this the perfect time to enhance your culinary repertoire and make some small changes while you’re at it. “This is the moment when couples realize their cookware is all scratched, or their silverware doesn’t match, so they seek out trusted, high-quality brands,” Cullman says. A new cookware set or that coffee machine you’ve been holding out on is a great start.
“Of course, registries are also influenced by of-the-moment trends,” says Cullman, nodding to the rise in popularity of ceramic cookware on registries due to couples gravitating towards sustainability and clean, nontoxic materials.
An internet sensation, this Caraway Ceramic-Coated cookware set turned out to be a sensation in our tests, too, rising to the top of our ratings for nonstick sets. It comes with 14 pieces, but only half of them are pots or lids. The rest are various racks, hooks, trivets, and things you might not want or have space for. But if this is your first cookware set—and you have the storage space—why not? It excels in all four of our key cooking tests (cooking evenness, simmering, nonstick food release, and speed of heating), and its nonstick coating proved durable, though others were more so. We also found that the handles are sturdy and stay cool to the touch during cooking. It comes in six colors, including the Terracotta set shown here.
The nifty Oxo Mira Tri-Ply would be a worthy addition to anyone’s kitchen. While stainless steel pans like this one require some lubricant (butter or oil) to keep food from sticking, we found it very easy to clean. Plus, its cooking evenness is superb. The handles are comfortable and very sturdy, and they don’t get too hot as you cook. Like all stainless pans, the Mira Tri-Ply can be used on an induction cooktop.
Ooni Karu 12 Multi-Fuel Pizza Oven
The Ooni Karu is a perfect pizza oven if you’re looking to make small coal- or wood-fired pies. Many of the smaller pizza ovens we’ve seen feel cheap or flimsy, but the Ooni Karu is clearly built to last more than one or two summers. It has heft, weighing in at just over 26 pounds, making it pretty heavy for a small oven. It’s light enough to take camping or tailgating but heavy enough to feel sturdy when you’re cooking. The folding legs help with transport.
You control the heat in the Karu by adjusting the size of your fire—a bigger fire burns hotter—but this model also has a damper, which the others don’t. Open it up all the way if you want your fire to burn hotter or close it a bit to restrict airflow, which causes the oven to cook at lower temperatures. A solid, well-built oven door helps hold in the heat.
For more: Best Outdoor Pizza Ovens
Few things in life say luxury quite like a nugget icemaker. The GE Profile Opal 2.0 is the top-rated countertop nugget icemaker in our ratings. It produces the nugget type of ice and does it faster than all other models, which earned it the only top score for speed. It also has the highest water capacity and features a large, removable plastic water reservoir, which means fewer refills. It’s also among the quieter icemakers we tried.
This slick-looking model, which comes in stainless steel and black stainless steel, is the only one that opens like a drawer. A handy hook keeps the drawer in place while open and prevents it from sliding out completely, so the user does not have to use a second hand to hold it while scooping ice.
Whynter ICM-201SB Ice Cream Maker
If you have the space for it, an ice cream maker is not to be missed. The Whynter ice cream maker is simple to operate and made the smoothest sorbet and ice cream of all the units we evaluated. The ice cream, especially, was well aerated and, unlike the product made by some other machines, stayed that way even after being stored in the freezer overnight.
The Whynter also comes with a few very handy modes. One cools the unit and your mix before production so that it’s the right temperature to yield the proper consistency. Another lets you keep ice cream cold in the machine after making it. And it will keep the paddle churning to maintain the same smooth consistency and ultracreamy texture you get right when the machine has finished producing a batch, even when you scoop later. Lastly, the wide basin shape makes it easy to scoop out your ice cream once it’s ready.
