11 Kitchen Gadgets for Serious Home Cooks

Many “unitasker” kitchen gadgets are just not worth the money, like egg yolk separators and salad cutters. But the pineapple slicer is an exception: This sleek gadget extracts all the juicy flesh of pineapple with no fuss.

Elevate home-cook knife skills to restaurant-quality cuts by using this gadget, a chef favorite. It is one of the essential tools in restaurant kitchens for slicing things quickly and consistently. Endo even uses a mandoline to make perfect-for-a-burger pickles.

Endo and Sam Mason, the owner of Oddfellows Ice Cream, tested this affordable ice cream machine against two others at a higher price point and confirmed that this — the cheapest gadget out of the three — is the best.

This small food processor is one of the most-used gadgets in Endo’s home kitchen. It’s much easier to operate than the big, bulky versions — and it’s simpler to clean. Below, watch as Endo uses the Mini Chop to make queso.

Making a simple soup shouldn’t be difficult, but sometimes it feels like a lot of work. With this gadget, you can blend right in the pot. How easy is that?

The Instant Pot is one of the hottest gadgets this year, because it does it all — pressure cooking, slow cooking, steaming, etc. — and does it easily. Most home cooks use it for its programmable pressure-cooker feature, which drastically speeds up the cook time of a vast array of favorite dishes.

This handy machine makes fresh whipped cream with ease — but it can also create the ideal burger pickle in just two minutes.

Having a food dehydrator means home cooks can make all kinds of seemingly impossible things in their kitchens, like jerky and fruit leather. And it turns leftover waffles into crispy waffle-battered fried chicken.

This high-tech gadget bills itself as “the first countertop centrifuge made for cooking.” It’s fast, and can be used for making things like no-churn butter and herb oils. Yes, the Spinzall is pricey, but as Endo points out, this machine is worth every dollar for any modern restaurant or cocktail bar. 

Sous-vide cooking refers to any kind of cooking done in a temperature-controlled water bath. And immersion circulators, one kind of sous-vide cooker, circulate water to keep that temperature consistent. The PolyScience is one of the best out there — Endo used it to make restaurant-quality, juicy medium-rare steaks — but its hefty price tag won’t be worth it for more casual home cooks. At $150, the Anova sous-vide machine is a great bet for burgers, foolproof poached eggs, chicken-fried steak, and more.

Induction burners heat the pan directly, so they create a lot less heat than other burners — and they’re fast. This temperature-controlled induction cooktop’s speed heat-up setting takes only a few minutes to get a pot of water boiling. After testing the gadget, culinary technologist Dave Arnold says, “There is a reason why it’s so expensive.” But for serious cooks, it’s worth it.