The Strategist Guide to Shopping at OXO

Strategist kitchen and dining writer Emma Wartzman named this the best sheet pan for baking largely because of the micro-texture on the bottom, which improves airflow. Kristen Tomlan, the founder and CEO of DŌ Cookie Dough Confections, adds that “the light color of the sheet pan helps slowly transfer heat so the bottoms of your pastries don’t get too brown.”

Wartzman has tested this nonstick frying pan, too, and in the year that she’s been using it, “the surface has held up with no scratches or deterioration,” she says. It’s a standout pan because it’s lightweight enough for her to easily pick it up to toss ingredients like nuts or dishes like stir-fries, and to fully flip it over for a tortilla española. Also a plus: It has a comfortable silicone grip, which is another reason why she named it the best lightweight nonstick skillet.

Nesting bowls are a kitchen necessity because they save you storage space while also providing you with different-size bowls for all your cooking needs. Indeed, so versatile is this set that it has appeared in our guide to making bread and our guide to making ice cream.

Similar in function to the plastic bowls, these stainless-steel mixing bowls are ideal for cooking with kids because they’re “virtually indestructible,” according to Chiara D’Amore-Klaiman, a cheese expert at Murray’s Cheese. Sara Kate Gillingham, a James Beard Award–winning food writer and a co-founder of the Dynamite Shop, a cooking school for kids, uses them, too, and loves that the rubber on the bottom prevents them from slipping around.

We first learned about this small but mighty measuring cup from cookbook author Julia Turshen, who named it an essential item in her kitchen because “it makes measuring small amounts of things really easy, and you can see the amount from above; you don’t have to hold it level to your eye the way you do with normal liquid measuring cups.” Since then, it has appeared in our guides to the best cocktail jiggers and measuring cups. Eby adds that it’s particularly helpful for measuring small amounts of sticky ingredients like honey and peanut butter. Best of all: It’s dishwasher-safe.

There’s also this three-piece measuring-cup set, which features the same diagonal surface that makes the mini measuring cup so handy. Strategist contributor Andrew Parks finds they’re particularly helpful for making bread because “angled measuring cups are easy to read and rarely wrong,” he writes. “In other words, they’re a lifesaver when you start to worry about nerdy things like hydration levels and long-fermentation times.” The set includes three sizes: one-cup, two-cup, and four-cup.

If you’re short on space, you might consider these bendy measuring cups that Strategist contributor Ali Slagle squeezes into nooks and crannies in her camper van. They’re good for more than just measuring too: “They’re heat-resistant, so in addition to measuring things, they can be used as a ladle. We don’t have cups, so we also use them for whiskey and cocktails,” she writes.

Last but not least in the measuring department is this set of stainless-steel measuring cups that I use in my kitchen. It includes all the essential measurements — 1/4 cup, 1/3 cup, 1/2 cup, and 1 cup — and magnetic handles that prevent the cups from getting lost in my cluttered baking drawer. When I’m measuring sticky ingredients like peanut butter or molasses, I always appreciate that I can throw them all in the dishwasher, too.

Given how many cookware essentials OXO does right, it’s no surprise that the retailer also dominates in the kitchen utensil department. First up is our favorite stainless-steel kitchen utensil set. It includes multiple spoons, several different spatulas, tongs, whisk, pie server, can opener, swivel peeler, pizza wheel, and a container to keep it all in one place. Jocelyn Delk Adams, the cookbook author and recipe developer behind Grandbaby Cakes, finds the set is particularly durable, too. “Kitchen utensils take a beating,” she says, “but these have held up great for the last few years I’ve been using them. And I run them through the dishwasher as well.”

But for those not in need of a whole set, I’ll spotlight a few of our favorite items from it, including this nimble fish spatula that’s meant “to keep the beautiful fish from sticking to the pan and falling apart,” according to Alisha Elenz, the executive chef at Chicago’s mfk. and Bar Biscay. Baker and cookbook author Shauna Sever adds that despite this spatula’s name, it’s also great for baking. “Its thin, flexible, vented blade makes it perfect for lifting even the most delicate baked good from a pan or baking sheet,” she says.

This spatula isn’t in the utensil set, but it’s another tool that works harder than its name gives it credit for. It is, in fact, great for scooping warm cookies off a baking sheet, but it’s also fantastic for flipping pancakes and preventing scrambled eggs from sticking to the side of your pan thanks to its bendy silicone material. In the more than five years that I’ve called the spatula a staple in my kitchen, I’ve only had one complaint: OXO should release it in more colors.

Moving back to items in our beloved utensil set, you might consider the swivel peeler that New York Magazine food editor Alan Sytsma has been using “basically forever.” He adds, “Its blade is still sharp, and the handle is still satisfyingly hefty and soft in the way all OXO stuff is.” For those concerned with safety in the kitchen, you’ll be pleased to know that this one is used by pushing the blade away from you, avoiding pinkie fingers and dangerous slippage.

Another tool for baking: this multi-scraper that’s perfect for moving and slicing mounds of dough. For pie masters like Ruth Reichl, the bench scraper’s purpose is multifold. “I have yet to find a better tool for cleaning counters, scraping gook off the oven floor, or scrubbing my pizza steel,” she says.

And finally, an integral pie-making tool. This pastry blender is handy for creating the consistent, smooth pie dough that Emily and Melissa Elsen of Four & Twenty Blackbirds swear by. “There are a lot of styles and makes of handheld pastry blenders out there, but most of them are subpar and fall apart,” they say. “OXO got it right. Comfortable, easy to clean, and lasts forever, so you can make a lifetime of piecrust by hand.”

OXO nails the kitchen basics, but the brand also makes a number of handy kitchen tools you never knew you needed, like a can opener that won’t hurt your hands and a mandoline. Though not the most common kitchen tool, cookie scoops like this one are an essential for many bakers we’ve chatted with, including Dorie Greenspan and Saffitz. The scoop ensures your cookies are evenly sized, which is important if you want them to all cook for the same amount of time. This one holds 1.5 teaspoons of dough, which the experts say is ideal for most cookies.

OXO makes nine can openers, two of which are Strategist-approved. This soft-handled opener is, actually, the best can opener according to our testing. Strategist contributor Julia Skinner sings its praise, writing, “It turns easily, stays sharp, and is easy to clean. The hand crank is comfortable to use, the blades always give a clean and consistent cut, and the opener easily stands up to the task of opening anything from a can of beans to a big can of tomatoes.”

For the tea lovers, there’s a twisting tea ball that Gabriel Sher, a practicing acupuncturist of two decades and the director of acupuncture at ORA, uses when brewing loose-leaf tea. “My favorite infuser is the OXO Twisting Tea Ball,” he says. “It’s not expensive and so necessary for tea drinkers. It scoops out the perfect amount of tea to brew, holds the leaves very well while brewing, and makes it super-easy to remove the leaves once your cup is ready.”

An easy way to make your dishes look more sophisticated is by slicing ingredients with a mandoline, which helps them appear uniform and cook evenly. Eater’s restaurant editor, Hillary Dixler Canavan, added OXO’s to her kitchen after interviewing more than 100 chefs. She says this one is best for beginners because “unlike a typical mandoline, where you hold the bladed component with one hand and your ingredient in the other, this one can stand on its own and has sturdy rubber feet so it won’t slip around as you slice.” It also comes with an ingredient holder that holds ingredients steady and keeps your fingers a bit further from the blade.

In the last six months, this egg poacher has nestled its way into the Strategist canon. Wartzman discovered it after testing eight egg poachers and finding that OXO’s was the only one that actually rendered a poached egg as it should be: with “a delicate but distinct outer layer of soft whites encompassing a fully liquid yolk that streams out beautifully upon contact with your fork,” writes Wartzman.

If you’d like to pair a restaurant-quality salad with those professional-level poached eggs, you’ll do well with OXO’s salad spinner. It’s best used to clean greens — and herbs if you buy the smaller version — but Strategist contributor Rebecca Firkser uses it to wash loads of other fresh produce, including Brussels sprouts, green beans, snap peas, and cherry and grape tomatoes.

If you crave a return to the basics, consider a humble food mill. Strategist contributor Joseph Truini describes it best: “It’s a simple, hand-cranked tool that’s used to mill (or crush) various fruits and vegetables for creating velvety-smooth sauces, soups, preserves, and purées.” This one comes with three interchangeable milling discs that determine how fine or coarse you’d like to mill your food. Truini sees their purposes as such: The fine-mesh disc is best for making tomato-based sauces, the medium-coarse disc can be used to make baby food, and the coarsest blade is ideal for ricing potatoes.

Though I included a lot of pie-baking tools above that come recommended by pie-making experts, this tool is meant for pie novices, like former Strategist editor Maxine Builder. She added this rolling bag to her repertoire after finding it impossible to nail her piecrusts. With printed guidelines and a nonstick silicone interior, the gizmo is easy to use and minimizes the mess in the process. “I just lightly flour the inside, pop the chilled pie dough into the bag, zip it up, then roll it out,” writes Builder.

Strategist contributor Maria Yagoda defines a good garlic press as such: It “should push out thoroughly and evenly minced garlic with little effort, and it should extract the most possible bits of garlic out of the clove without unpressed chunks getting lodged anywhere.” While OXO’s does this all, it also happens to be very comfortable to use, earning it a spot in our guide to the best garlic presses.

Here’s another Best-in-Class winner, this time in our guide to the best pepper mills. Edy Massih, caterer and owner of Edy’s Grocery, calls the grinder “the best bang for your buck” and notes that adjusting the ceramic grinding mechanism is particularly easy with this mill. It’s also durable: “I have my pepper mill right by my stovetop. I want to make sure that it is heatproof and will not melt or crack,” he says. This one passes the test.

I couldn’t write an article about OXO without mentioning one of my favorite tools the brand makes: a corn peeler. As someone raised in the Midwest, I can never pass up some sweet summer corn, but I hate eating corn on the cob. As a result, this corn peeler, which easily strips corn off the cob without the hazards associated with a knife, was a beloved tool in my childhood home.

If you’re planning on whipping up some cocktails to go with all of the food you’ve made with your OXO tools, guess what: OXO still has you covered. A muddler, best used for extracting aromatics and oils from your cocktail ingredients, is essential for perfecting drinks like mojitos, mint juleps, and hot toddies. OXO’s comes recommended by Jordan Deis, bar manager at the wine bar Saint-Germain in New Orleans. “It’s an affordable yet durable option with a comfortable grip handle, and its textured surface provides efficient muddling without damaging delicate ingredients,” he says.

When stocking your bar cart, you can’t forget about a cocktail strainer, which will only allow small ice chips and liquid to enter your cocktail glass. “Most strainers have a long handle, which might make them easier to pick up than this one, but the robust coil and ergonomically genius rubber tab at the center of the device are winners in my book,” Strategist contributor John deBary writes about the cocktail strainer he discovered while working at Momofuku Ssäm Bar.

This grinder is for the coffee snobs out there. If you’re serious enough about your coffee to buy the beans and grind them yourself, something tells me you might be serious enough to weigh your beans before you grind them, too. The weighing is made possible by the integrated scale in our favorite coffee grinder of its kind. After selecting one of 15 grind sizes, you’ll set the machine to weigh the ground coffee one of three ways: manually, by grams, or by the number of cups of water you brew in a standard electric maker. Wartzman preferred the latter during her testing, but adds that if you don’t need an integrated scale, recipe developer and cookbook author Samah Dada recommends this model, which costs $150 less.

This cold-brew maker isn’t actually electric, but I’m including it here anyway because it functions similarly to a small appliance, doing the hard work for us for hours at a time. Wartzman crowned it the best cold-brew coffee maker after learning about it from Dennis Ngo, co-owner and chef of Brooklyn restaurant Di an Di. “I got hooked on the smoothness and low acidity of cold-brewed coffee,” says Ngo. “It lets me tinker with different beans and concentrations. It also stacks for storage, which is an absolute requirement for my tiny New York apartment.”

There’s also this larger scale that Dominique Ansel says he can’t live without. Like the five-pound scale above, this one also has a pullout display that lights up, which Ansel appreciates when he’s using a larger bowl that might obstruct the view of the display or when he finds himself in a darker kitchen. Also, since the metric system is more precise than our imperial system, Ansel says, “The great thing about the scale is that you can convert from U.S. measurements to metrics in case you have to use both.”

Since OXO makes so many superior cooking gadgets and gizmos, it only makes sense that the brand would make a few things to help with storage and organization. Whether you place this in your fridge or your cabinet, it’ll help you keep track of everything you use on a daily basis. “You know how things muck up the bottom of your shelf? This is like a shelf liner that moves,” Faith Roberson of Organize with Faith says. “The lazy Susan really allows you to have stuff within a space that you don’t have to find, because you’re seeing them around a circle.”

A simple yet integral organizational tool for a kitchen is a paper-towel holder. It prevents you from endlessly searching around the kitchen for your roll du jour while simultaneously preventing you from having multiple rolls milling about. Strategist writer Ambar Pardilla marked this one the best overall paper-towel holder because of its spring-powered tension arm that keeps the roll rolled.

If you’ve taken up fridgescaping, you might be interested in OXO’s transparent egg holder, which chef JJ Johnson uses in his fridge. “You no longer have the carton in there, so you can see all your eggs,” he says. “There are plenty of times in the past where I would reach in my fridge and there’d be one egg left, and I was like, Who did this?”

Food-storage containers are nothing without an effective lid. But for these glass containers, the winning feature is a click-lock lid. “It’s really satisfying to hear that snap when they lock on,” says food writer Cathy Erway, who adds that she can throw these into her purse without the threat of leakage. Julia Turshen, the cookbook author who gave us the founding recommendation for these containers, agrees. “If it turned over in my car while I was driving, I wouldn’t worry about it,” she says.

Now, to clean all these kitchen utensils, we’ll need some good dishwashing tools — and some effective drying racks. Enter this simple folding dish rack from OXO, which is actually MoMA-approved. “The collapsible nature of this one means it can be tidied away when not in use, which is an improvement on the Rubbermaid wire rack I’d been using previously,” Strategist writer Katherine Gillespie says. She adds, “This thing is solid and sturdy, with the grooves on the top rack perfectly spaced to hold my on-the-chunkier-side stoneware plates and bowls.”

Those with a fear of their dirty kitchen sponge will appreciate this small OXO brush with an easy grip.

If you’re reviled by your sponge’s appearance rather than its potential for holding bacteria, you might consider this handsome sponge holder that longtime professional home organizer Diane Lowy uses. A much better-looking option than classic plastic sponge holders, this aluminum one gets added to Lowy’s clients’ homes in a pair. “One each for gentle and abrasive sponges. This saves valuable counter space and keeps that area around the sink cleaner, too.”

For heavy-duty grime, there’s this laptop cleaner that’s fitted with a microfiber pad that can remove smudges, along with a brush that can handle keyboard crumbs.

Moving from technology to pets, you’ll want to use this lint roller for removing pet hair from your couch. “This is really easy to use and effective,” says Jisu Kim, co-founder and CEO of dog-apparel company Little Beast. He adds that the brush results in less waste because there are no peel-off sticky pieces required.

As with dish-drying racks, OXO also makes a dependable clothing-drying rack for sweaters (though this one isn’t MoMA-approved). Laundry experts — including Strategist senior editors Winnie Yang and Jen Trolio — stress the importance of drying a sweater flat, and a drying rack like this one makes that possible. It’s made of breathable mesh and thus “better for airflow than laying it out on a towel or a bed,” Trolio says.

Last but not least is OXO’s travel potty (and our favorite of its kind). You might consider buying one if you’re potty training and nervous about being unprepared for the bathroom while out and about. Plus, Strategist writer Lauren Ro finds that it’s versatile: “It has foldable legs that, when engaged, make it usable as a stand-alone potty. When you fold the legs flat, it converts into a seat that can sit atop a regular toilet seat,” she writes.