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The Best Oil Misters

Using vegetable oil spray is easy but has its downsides. Could we find a good refillable oil mister?

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Last Updated Mar. 21, 2024. Appears in America's Test Kitchen TV Season 13: Ultimate Grilled Turkey Burgers

The Best Oil Misters
Update, March 2024

After receiving complaints about our top-rated oil mister, we investigated it and tested two more models to see if we could find a better alternative. Currently, we don’t fully recommend any oil mister, as none of the models we tested were as effective as our recommended cooking sprays.

What You Need To Know

Coating a muffin tin, a skillet, or a baking sheet with a spritz of our winning cooking spray, PAM Original, is quick and easy. But cooking spray costs more per ounce and relies on liquid propellants and additives to produce that fine, even mist. Refillable, manual-pump oil misters present an alternative for those who would like to avoid aerosol and additives, and you can fill them with whatever type of oil you like.

Like aerosol sprays, a good oil mister should dispense oil in a steady, fine stream that provides even coverage. We gathered a variety of models and put them to the test. Most models featured a manual pumping mechanism to build the pressure that forces the oil out. One pump-free model looked like a bottle of cologne: a tall, thin glass cylinder with a button that dispensed a single, directed spray, no pumping required. We also included a continuous-stream spray bottle—a type of bottle that uses an innovative system to produce a long, steady spray.

We started by timing the duration and noting the quality of a single spray when each mister was full (or filled according to the manufacturer’s directions), half full, and one-third full. We then tested the misters by using them to grease our winning 12-inch skillet and 12-cup muffin tin. Next, to better understand each mister’s spray, we traced a skillet onto brown butcher paper and sprayed the misters vertically and horizontally onto the outline, mimicking the ways we might use them in the kitchen. For comparison, we sprayed PAM alongside the misters in each test. What did we find out?

We quickly determined that the quality of the spray was much more important than its duration. Some misters could sustain a long spray—up to 20 seconds—but that spray was too thick and heavy. Other models produced sprays that looked like abstract oil paintings; the squiggles, blotches, and irregular patterns were fun to look at, but they didn’t represent the even coverage we were after. The cologne-style model’s spray was a quick, direct burst, so it directed a lot of oil into one space with poor coverage (and required 13 pumps to grease the muffin tin).

For a simple tool, the misters sure took some tinkering. Some dripped and dribbled or were hard to fill. Most pump-style models gave a specific number of pumps required for a single spray, but we found that they all sprayed better if we pumped until we felt significant resistance—up to 18 pumps for some models.

These ups and downs made us wonder why the nonaerosol misters couldn’t match PAM’s perfect, even spray. Our science editor explained that the higher pressure of an aerosol spray breaks the oil into finer droplets, making the oil ...

Everything We Tested

Good : 3 stars out of 3.Fair : 2 stars out of 3.Poor : 1 stars out of 3.
*All products reviewed by America’s Test Kitchen are independently chosen, researched, and reviewed by our editors. We buy products for testing at retail locations and do not accept unsolicited samples for testing. We list suggested sources for recommended products as a convenience to our readers but do not endorse specific retailers. When you choose to purchase our editorial recommendations from the links we provide, we may earn an affiliate commission. Prices are subject to change.
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The mission of America’s Test Kitchen Reviews is to find the best equipment and ingredients for the home cook through rigorous, hands-on testing. We stand behind our winners so much that we even put our seal of approval on them.

Sawyer Phillips

Sawyer Phillips

Sawyer is an assistant digital editor for ATK Reviews. She enjoys baking, collecting Prince records, and all things Toni Morrison.

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