Best Whisk
After more than 10 hours of combing through whisks of all shapes and sizes, and whipping or stirring our way through bowl after bowl of cream, custard, béchamel, and egg whites, we think the OXO Good Grips 11-Inch Balloon Whisk is the best whisk for most people. It’s a great all-purpose whisk, equally efficient at whipping cream or stirring a pot of sauce. It’s flexible but sturdy, and its cushy, rubbery handle was the most comfortable we tried.
The springy, plentiful wires of the OXO Good Grips 11-Inch Balloon Whisk give it plenty of whipping power, and the bulbous, grippy handle fits more comfortably in your hand than any straight, metal handle. The whisk is narrow enough to scrape the corners of a pot when you’re making a sauce, but still wide enough to quickly aerate a bowl of cream. It’s also dishwasher safe, and well-constructed overall. But it does have one weakness: The handle isn’t heatproof, and will melt if you rest it on the edge of a hot pot for too long. If you plan to use your whisk mostly over heat, you might want to get our runner-up.
Best Mixing Bowls
After scooping 200 cookies, cracking over 60 eggs, and tossing many boxes of cereal in 13 mixing bowl sets, we think the Cuisinart CTG-00-SMB Stainless Steel Mixing Bowls with Lids are the best for most whisking, folding, and mixing needs. If you want a durable glass set, the Pyrex Smart Essentials 8-Piece Mixing Bowl Set is great for simple baking projects and serving.
The Cuisinart Stainless Steel Mixing Bowls with Lids are sturdy, well-made, and the best option of all our picks if you use a hand mixer. That’s because they’re deep set and effectively keep splashes in the bowl (not all over your counters). They also have snug-fitting lids for storing leftovers or taking food to potlucks. In our tests, we found the Cuisinart’s brushed stainless exteriors and rolled-edge lips provided ample traction and grip to hold and maneuver the bowls with one hand. But the Cuisinart bowls are sold as a set and are pretty small (1½, 3, and 5 quarts). If you frequently cook in large batches and need more capacity, consider our also-great pick, the Thunder Group mixing bowls.
Small Saucepan
A small saucepan is a workhorse—a pan you can use for everything from boiling pasta water to whipping up a bechamel for lasagna. We recommend the Tramontina Gourmet Tri-ply Clad 2-Quart Covered Saucepan because it heats evenly, pours cleanly, and has the most comfortable handle of any pan we tested.
We prefer the Tramontina Tri-ply Clad 2-Quart Covered Saucepan for its quality construction and even heat distribution. This pan showed no hot spots in our tests and has rounded corners that are easy to reach when stirring sauces or scraping a pan clean. It’s also part of the same line as the cookware set we recommend, although the set includes only a 1½- and 3-quart saucepan.
Because of its wider, rounder shape, we think the All-Clad Stainless 3-Quart Saucier is worth the investment if you want the most versatile saucepan for making everything from sauces and pastry cream to boiling water. A curved saucier will let you reach every bit of food when you’re stirring and help you reduce liquids more quickly than with a straight-walled pan
