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The Best Garlic Presses

Sure, you can mince garlic with a knife, but a good garlic press makes the job faster and easier.

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Last Updated Jan. 30, 2023. Appears in America's Test Kitchen TV Season 8: Italian-American Classics

The Best Garlic Presses
Update, January 2023

We recently tested four additional garlic presses. We can’t fully recommend any of them. The Kuhn Rikon Epicurean Garlic Press remains our winner.

See Everything We Tested

What You Need To Know

The Quick Version

A great garlic press promises to make quick work of mincing garlic. Our winner is the Kuhn Rikon Epicurean Garlic Press and has been for years. It minces evenly and efficiently and is comfortable to hold and easy to clean. 

What You Need to Know

A garlic press is meant to be a convenient alternative to a chef’s knife, giving you minced garlic in seconds—no knife skills required. This small everyday tool is usually quite simple: The traditional design consists of a hopper or perforated basket that holds garlic cloves, a plunger that presses garlic through the perforations, and a lever mechanism or handles that force the plunger down on the cloves. 

What to Look For

  • Uniform, Small Mince: Most garlic presses gave us an even, paste-like mince, which is important because the more consistent the texture of the garlic, the more consistently it will cook. The presses we tested produced minced garlic that was acceptably sized and uniform, so there were no noticeable flavor or texture differences in our infused oils or pasta dishes. 
  • Requires Minimal Strength: Our winner and other highly rated presses made it slightly easier to force garlic through the perforation, though the process still required some effort. 
  • Simple Design: Our favorite products were intuitive and easy to use, with simple, streamlined designs and few parts, making cleanup a breeze.
  • Flat, Smooth Plunger: We liked presses that had smooth, flat plungers, with no protrusions to clean afterward. 
  • Wide Openings: We preferred models that opened wide enough for us to load garlic easily. 


Nice to Have

  • Swing-Out Hopper: Some presses had a hopper that swung out from the hinge, making it easy to remove clove remnants after we’d finished mincing, facilitating cleaning.


What to Avoid

  • Large Mince: Two presses produced a mince with slightly larger pieces, but one model had drastically different results than the rest: It created little columns of garlic, like a julienne. 
  • Requires Too Much Force: Two presses required our full body weight, straining our shoulders and wrists. 
  • Too Many Parts: Two models had multiple parts—one as many as six pieces. They required disassembly prior to washing. This meant we had to keep track of the parts and put everything back together after each use, which is totally impractical for a tool that’s all about convenience. 
  • Special Features: Some models had additional elements that were useless or even hindered performance. One product’s handle had an attached cleaning brush that kept popping out mid-mince. Another model’s “ejector,” which operates much like a portion scoop’s release mechanism, inadverte...

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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Reviews you can trust

Reviews you can trust

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.

Sarah Sandler

Sarah Sandler

Sarah is an assistant editor for ATK Reviews who is deeply passionate about anchovies and sourdough bread.

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