Here at Epicurious we love cooking gear. Throughout the year, our test kitchen and home kitchens alike are filled with literal piles of cast iron pans, chef’s knives, and vegetable peelers. Our basements are home to rows of rice cookers and air fryers. Our backyards are dotted with grills and smokers. We test hundreds of cooking and cleaning products over the course of a year. Some of them have become the top picks in our rigorously tested product reviews, some haven’t, but have taken up permanent residence in our kitchens anyway because they do something specific and special for us. And that’s what this list, Epicurious’ first annual Kitchen MVP Awards, represents.
Jump to the winners
All-Clad G5 Cookware
Vermicular Oven-Safe Skillet
Breville Bakery Chef Stand Mixer
Nama J2 Juicer
Breville Control Freak Induction Burner
Ooni Volt Indoor Pizza Oven
Nutribullet Ultra
Wusthof Double Serrated Bread Knife
Horl2 Knife Sharpening System
Combustion Predictive Thermometer
Black Rain Pepper Mill
Spinn Coffee Maker
Fellow Opus Coffee Grinder
Kamado Joe Konnected Kamado
Traeger Flatrock Flat Top Grill
Oyster Tempo Cooler
Weber Premium Grill Gloves
Tineco S7 Pro Mop Vac
Dawn Powerwash Dish Spray
Duralex Picardie Glasses
What are the Kitchen MVP Awards?
The Kitchen MVPs are our way of singling out the most exciting, useful, and innovative items that came across our desks this year. Some of them, like Spinn’s coffee maker, use entirely new technology. Some, like Weber’s grill gloves, are incredibly simple, but just better than anything similar we tried to use. Everything that ends up a winner here will not necessarily have launched in 2023, that’s because, for as diligent as we are, sometimes it takes us a little while to get a hold of a product and put it through the ringer enough to get a complete understanding of its performance. But what we have are tools and equipment that newly made their way to us this year.
Cookware
All-Clad G5 Cookware
All-Clad is one of two or three names out there that has become its own shorthand for excellent cookware. Its stainless steel skillets, saucepans, and stockpots have long reigned supreme in our product tests. One of the hallmarks of their quality, though, was their weight. But in 2023 All-Clad came out with its G5 line, which has a graphite core instead of an aluminum one. What does that mean? It’s about 20% lighter than All-Clad’s beloved D5 line. This is cookware that is incredibly easy to move around the stove. It also heats up and cools down extremely quickly, but still has the same consistent, even heating you’d expect from an All-Clad pan. On top of all that, this was the easiest-to-clean stainless steel we’ve used. All-Clad’s VP of product development and technology Bill Groll explained that’s because pans that heat more evenly, like these, clean more easily; they don’t have hot spots that burn through the oils or other liquids produced when cooking that help keep a layer of lubrication on the pan.
Read more about All-Clad G5
Vermicular Oven-Safe Skillet
There are so many good reasons to cook on a cast-iron skillet, and almost as many reasons you might not want to. At the top of the cons list would be “maintenance,” since uncoated cast iron requires fastidious cleaning and regular seasoning. Then there’s the weight issue; cast iron is just plain heavy. But this Japanese-made Vermicular cast iron skillet is neither high-maintenance nor (in keeping with the theme of the All-Clad G5 up above) heavy. It’s less than half the weight of similarly sized cast-iron pans from Staub, Lodge, and Le Creuset, and made out of a comparatively thin compacted graphite cast iron, which according to the company, is durable enough that it won’t crack under thermal shock. A textured black enamel means this skillet still browns foods beautifully—but perhaps more importantly, it makes the pan dishwasher safe.
Read more about the Vermicular Oven-Safe Skillet
Appliances
Breville Bakery Chef Stand Mixer
This was the year an icon was dethroned in our product testing. Breville’s Bakery Chef stand mixer supplanted KitchenAid’s classic tilt head mixer not only for its power—its 550 watts are not commercial mixer-level, but they’re enough to make short work of your mixing needs—but also for a number ofsmall but brilliant little design choices. The head of the mixer, for example, locks into place when tipped up, which means it won’t clunk down while you’re scraping the bowl or removing the beater. And a built-in timer helps you keep track of just how long that bread dough has been kneaded or how long that butter and sugar have been creamed.
Read more about the Breville Bakery Chef
Nama J2 Juicer
As far as we’re concerned, juicers typically suffer from at least one of two main problems: They are hell to clean or they require so much prep work to use, you suddenly don’t feel that$10.50 is an absurd amount to pay for a green juice. Nama’s J2 juicer solves for both of those problems and it’s a joy to use (something we’d never thought we’d say about a juicer). It’s huge hopper and cutting blade can accommodate halved apples or oranges, or sizable stalks of celery, all of which can you can preload (i.e. there is no annoying feed process). Everything comes apart, so even though it isn’t dishwasher safe, it’s as easy to clean up as any juicer we’ve tested. The headline of contributor Lukas Volger’s J2 review says it best: “I always hated juicers, until I tried this one.”
Read more about the Nama J2
Breville Control Freak Induction Burner
Staff writer Emily Farris made the switch from gas to induction last year and has not looked back once. Induction cooking is safer, more even, and more consistent than cooking over fire, and it uses less energy too. But until she was testing portable induction cooktops for a review and had the chance to try The Control Freak by Breville, she had no idea that induction cooking could also be as precise as sous vide cooking. The Control Freak gives you complete control over the temperature—which you can set to the exact degree from 25°C/77°F to 250°C/482°F. And once you set your target temp, The Control Freak will do all the work to get either the cooking vessel or what’s inside (your choice) there at a slow, medium, or fast pace (also your choice) then do all the work to maintain it. For up to 72 hours.
Read more about the Breville Control Freak
Ooni Volt Indoor Pizza Oven
The Volt is the latest launch from Ooni, a company whose name is almost synonymous with home pizza ovens at this point. It’s big, it’s heavy, and it’s pricey—but it consistently churns out pro-level pies that’ll have you feeling like a top-tier pizzaiolo. And unlike Ooni’s outdoor ovens that heat from the back, this one heats from the top and bottom, which means you don’t need to constantly turn your pizzas to avoid burning them. The Volt also does something countertop ovens, even the ones that claim to produce good pizza, don’t: It gets hot. Really hot. It can hit 850 °F, which is as high as Ooni’s outdoor ovens and the kind of inferno-level heat you need for those bubbling, blistered, puffy-crusted pies people associate with dedicated pizza ovens. It’s also an absolute blast to use, the kind of appliance you’ll want to incorporate into your weekly dinner routine simply because of the novelty and joy it brings to home cooking. Just turn it on, adjust the temperature dial, wait for it to heat, and launch your creation onto the cordierite baking stone. In 90 seconds, you’ll be rewarded with a pizza so beautiful you’ll be shocked you made it yourself.
Read more about the Ooni Volt
Nutribullet Ultra
We’ve tested a lot of blenders big and small and have been decidedly meh on personal blenders in general. Most are leaky, underpowered, and generally disappointing. The Nutribullet Ultra makes several key improvements in the personal blender category, though. First, it features a thick-rimmed lid that clicks into the machine’s base easily, and, unlike other personal blenders, is both spill-proof and easy to unscrew, even when you’ve blended warm liquids. This new Nutribullet also features a sleek light-up interface and has strong suction cups on the bottom of the base that adhere the blender to your countertop, offering greater stability. Finally, it features stronger, sharper blades, and beat other top performers in the personal blender category admirably in an ice crushing and smoothie blending competition. If you make smoothies and soups in smaller quantities, but still want the power of an impressive full-size blender, we recommend this one.
Read more about the Nutribullet Ultra
Cooking Tools
Wusthof Double Serrated Bread Knife
Serrated knives famously resist sharpening; you can’t use a standard knife sharpener or whetstone the way you can with a straight edge knife. That means that once a bread knife’s teeth start to lose their bite, you’re going to want to consider replacing it (yes, you can sharpen some serrated knives, but it is challenging and best done by a professional). Wusthof’s double serrated knife not only performed better in all our cutting tests, but because of its unique design, is more durable than your standard bread knife. In terms of performance this knife is also unrivaled: We were able to cut quarter-inch slices off of a crusty loaf of bread, perfectly intact.
Read more about the Wusthof Double Serrated Bread Knife
Horl2 Knife Sharpening System
Sharpening knives with a whetstone is standard operating procedure for professional chefs, but it requires real practice and precision to use one effectively. Horl’s novel rolling design doesn’t quite get a blade as sharp as an experienced hand could with a stone, but it does an impressive job, while offering more control than you get with a simple pull-through sharpener or electric sharpener. With this system, even a novice can get either a perfect 15 degree or 20 degree angle to the blade.
Read more about the Horl2 Knife Sharpening System
Combustion Predictive Thermometer
Are smart kitchen appliances and tools really worth investing in? If they’re as smart as the Combustion Predictive Thermometer they are. The Combustion thermometer and its eight temperature probes can tell you, with hours to spare, when something like a turkey will be perfectly roasted. It can let you know, based on the internal temperature, when you should flip a chicken breast. And it’s getting smarter every day. Its creator Chris Young, formerly of Modernist Cuisine and Chefsteps, is currently working to be able to accurately predict a few key variables: the “stall” on large, fatty cuts of meat—that agonizing period during a low and slow cook when it the internal temperature of your food won’t move—and the right resting times after a cook is over.
Read more about the Combustion Predictive Thermometer
Black Rain Pepper Mill
Freshly ground pepper is not a luxury, it’s a necessity for well-seasoned food—and the Black Rain pepper mill is a guaranteed way to make sure you always have lots of it at the ready. It is able to grind more pepper more quickly than any other pepper grinder we’re aware of. You could, if you needed to, grind half a cup of pepper in less than a minute. Now, that is not something you need if you’re just sprinkling some pepper on top of your eggs, but if you’re working on a larger project–roasts or huge pots of soup, say—you will find yourself in need of mass amounts of pepper and the Black Rain is the most effective way to get it.
Read more about the Black Rain Pepper Mill
Coffee
Spinn Coffee Maker
Different coffee brewing methods have different parameters. A shot of espresso, for example, is two ounces of coffee made in about 30 seconds using water around 200℉ at around 9 bars of pressure. Different methods have wildly different time and temperature needs. The Spinn coffee maker doesn’t produce espresso, and pour-over, and cold brew as much as it does one of the most convincing impressions of each. It uses a centrifuge to control the extraction process in a way that’s unlike any other automatic coffee maker on the market. Thanks to that process and the use of freshly ground coffee beans from the built-in burr grinder, the results, which happen with the press of a single button, put to shame almost every other single serve coffee maker we’ve tried.
Read more about the Spinn Coffee Maker
Fellow Opus Coffee Grinder
We like Fellow’s coffee gear a lot around here, but when the company released the Opus grinder in 2023 it’s like they had been taking notes on all the little issues we’d noted about their equipment over the years. First of all, this is, pound for pound, one of the most affordable pieces of Fellow brewing equipment the’ve ever released. That’s thanks in part to some less expensive finishes—plastic instead of metal—but it remains of the quality we’ve come to expect. But it is also supremely versatile, able to grind coffee for every brewing method from espresso all the way up to cold brew. That’s something Fellow’s previous grinder, the Ode, could not. That kind of range is also something more broadly lots of coffee grinders don’t have. And we also have to note this last little touch: It’s so clean. Even a number of high end espresso grinders don’t have a good way to avoid finely ground coffee flying all over the kitchen. The cup on the Opus is designed to fit precisely over an espresso brew basket, keeping everything nice and tidy. Unless someone wants to spend upwards of $600 or $700, this is as close to a perfect coffee grinder as we think you can get.
Read more about the Fellow Opus
Outdoor Cooking
Kamado Joe Konnected Kamado
Low-and-slow kamado cooking is a lot like having a new baby: Even if it doesn’t actively keep you up all night, you’ll probably wake at least a few times just to make sure it’s breathing okay and not getting too hot or too cold. That’s why tech-savvy kamado grill enthusiasts often outfit their Kamado Joes and Big Green Eggs with aftermarket temperature-regulating gadgets. But earlier this year, Kamado Joe disrupted the kamado grill category when they introduced the Konnected Kamado, an 18-inch, fully-automatic kamado grill and smoker that makes maintaining ideal smoking conditions as easy as pushing a button. The Konnected Kamado has the same high-quality ceramic body as the brand’s Classic Joe, but with a fully integrated temperature regulation system that can even be monitored and manipulated remotely. There’s also a built-in electric firestarter so you can light your coals without a chimney. As our Test Kitchen director Chris Morocco said, “This has the potential to do for outdoor cooking what the Instant Pot did for indoor cooking.”
Read more about the Konnected Kamado
Traeger Flatrock Flat Top Grill
A common feature of many of these MVP winners are fairly small design innovations that actually make a huge difference. In the case of Traeger’s flat top griddle, its first non-pellet grill offering, that little design choice is in the shape of its burners. They’re U-shaped, rather than straight, which made this one of the most evenly heated pieces of outdoor cooking equipment we’ve tried. You could do a fajita spread for an entire family reunion on this thing and feel confident you won’t hit any hot or cold spots. But taking a bigger picture view, Traeger’s flat top could make all you propane heads out there trade in your gas grills. It’s actually even easier to use than a gas grill (no grates to lose your food in between) and that undesirable propane taste that can sneak into food is nowhere to be found because whatever you’re cooking has a thick layer of carbon steel between it and the actual fire.
Read more about the Traeger Flatrock
Oyster Tempo Cooler
A refrigerator without electricity, that’s the best way to describe what we experienced when we were testing the Oyster Tempo cooler. Armed with nothing but a couple of specially designed ice packs, the Oyster Cooler uses vacuum insulation–similar to what you have in your fancy water bottle—and aluminum construction that it found conducted thermal energy 308 times better than the plastic in a rotomolded cooler. The result is that it dropped the temperature of liquid kept inside by more than 30 degrees Fahrenheit and held it at refrigerator-level temperatures for 36 hours with no ice at all. Also working in the Oyster’s favor? Its cool retro style.
Read more about the Oyster Tempo Cooler
Weber Premium Grill Gloves
Emily Farris made a compelling case that everyone who uses a grill needs a pair of grill gloves and after trying many different pairs we think the pair you need are these from Weber. There isn’t anything fancy about Weber’s grill gloves. The company actually said they really are just cotton gloves with a bit of silicone on the outside. But simple as they may be they are a necessity for comfortable grilling. They withstood the heat of a 600℉ cast-iron pan while being flexible enough to wear while chopping and shredding a pork shoulder.
Read more about Weber’s Premium Grill Gloves
Cleaning
Tineco S7 Pro Mop Vac
The mop vac is a truly life-changing appliance that reduces floor cleaning time by more than half by sucking up debris and effectively mopping the floor at the same time. We tested more than ten models and nothing could compete with the Tineco Floor One S5 Combo. That is, until this year when the brand released the Floor One S7 Pro, which has a wet roller brush that goes to both edges of the motorhead. It might not sound like a big deal, but most mop vac roller brushes go to only one edge, if they go to an edge at all. The Floor One S7 Pro’s edge-to-edge cleaning capability means you can mop almost right up to my baseboards, and especially if you have kids and pets, that little change makes a huge difference.
Read more about the Tineco S7 Pro.
Dawn Powerwash Dish Spray
Dawn Powerwash is good for so much more than dishes: Use it to clean spills on the rug, sneakers, crusty stovetops, the list goes on. But, of course, it’s a powerful tool for dishes—especially the ones you can’t get to right away. A quick spray of this stuff makes cleaning later so much easier.
Read more about Dawn Powerwash
Tableware
Duralex Picardie Glasses
Picardie glasses are nothing new; Duralex has been manufacturing these iconic tumblers in France for decades. But it was only recently that Emily Farris brought them into her home when testing glassware for Epi’s best drinking glasses review and she thinks they’re the best thing she added to her kitchen all year. Not only are they timeless, versatile, and stackable—they’re so durable she regularly serves her toddler his juice in the 12.5-ounce size. He’s dropped them a few times and they haven’t chipped or broken a single glass yet! Because the heat-safe tempered glass is thick, I even use the 8.75-ounce glass for my morning latte. And if you want something a little less neutral than clear, they come in a handful of fun colors.
Read more about the Duralex Picardie glasses
