Our Favorite Garlic Press

The garlic press gets a bad rap—sometimes for a good reason. Plastic models break easily. Others don't so much crush garlic as juice it. And the tiny grates are hard to clean. But as we discovered while testing garlic recipes for our story The Glories of Garlic, a good press can be a boon, smashing the allium's cell walls handily and maximizing the interaction of the compounds and enzymes that give garlic its flavor. Our favorite is the Oxo Garlic Press. Its ample cup holds several cloves at once, and the sturdy steel-and-zinc handles exert the force to yield a fine, even mince. After pressing, a built-in grate cleaner pushes leftover bits of garlic free of the tool.