Our Favorite Kitchen Finds of 2023

Feb 5, 2024 by Chef David

By Chef David

Cooking is more than just food preparation. It can be an expression of creativity, or a rekindling of memories by making family classics. Home chefs continually learn how to prepare dishes, discovering new techniques, recipes, and kitchen tools. We find cooking to be an ever-expanding art, full of surprises, as we experiment with new and non-traditional gadgets and equipment.

In 2023, The Jewish Voice And Opinion Food Team discovered several items we believe should become kitchen essentials. They have become integral to our kitchen, and we can’t imagine operating without them.

Ankarsrum Mixer is a European-designed stand mixer. Unlike American-style mixers whose moving parts spin around in the bowl, the Ankarsrum’s bowl moves. The bowl sits atop a high-torque 600-watt motor that rotates the bowl while the movable stainless-steel arm can be positioned to hold the roller or dough hook in place, allowing the mixer to knead and mix. It is aptly nicknamed “The Workhorse Mixer” because it provides enough power to mix and knead even the heaviest dough without straining or burning out.

Ankarsrum has become a baking game-changer.

Garlic Twister created by NexTrend is a multi-functional kitchen tool that can mince all kinds of ingredients including garlic and ginger, by simply twisting back and forth. It is constructed out of easy-to-clean transparent plastic which is dishwasher-safe.

NexTrend is the first in a line of inventions from Eric Teng, a California entrepreneur. Teng applied crosscutting to create a tool that allows chefs of every age to mince gracefully.

Repour provides the ultimate wine preserver. This is a simple solution for extending the life of wine once the bottle has been opened. Repour, looks like a blue wine stopper, but it is so much more, it eliminates all the oxygen allowing you to keep an open bottle fresh for up to two months.

Repour inventor Tom Lutz, a chemist found the gadgets sold to preserve wine too expensive, complicated, and only partially effective. No other wine preserver can remove dissolved oxygen from liquid wine or do it in such a simple way with almost no effort required.

Our team is always looking for new and better appliances and tools that simplify food preparation and improve the home chef’s ability to create marvelous meals. These three are game changers that reimagine the way we work. They are clever, practical, and durable and were voted by our testers as the best discoveries of the year.

Honorable Mention

In 2023 we also discovered the Magnetic Knife bar, a smart way to store knives (and any metal utensils) without using drawer or counter space. https://thejewishvoiceandopinion.com/raising-the-bar-on-knife-storage/

Our team took a fancy to Asian cuisine, falling head over heels for wok cooking, as a way to stir up delicious dishes.

• https://thejewishvoiceandopinion.com/wok-accessories-kitchen-essentials/
• https://thejewishvoiceandopinion.com/wok-cooking-basics/

Who knows what 2024 will bring? One thing is for sure, our 2023 cooking products will become staples in The Jewish Voice And Opinion test kitchen. Frankly, it is hard to remember preparing meals without them.