Nonstick Whisks

The most efficient, comfortable nonstick whisk we tested, this model whipped cream to stiff peaks in 1 minute, 18 seconds—a full minute faster than its nearest rival, and it did so surprisingly effortlessly. With eight moderately flexible, silicone-coated wires set at widely varying lengths, its design offered many points of engagement with any ingredients we wanted to blend, at any angle we needed, without scratching cookware. Testers found its lightly grippy handle (made of thermoplastic rubber) to be very comfortable; its rounded, neutral shape let us easily shift our grasp as needed.

Easy to hold, with its bulb-shaped handle and no hand-poking hanging loop, this whisk looked clunky but kept surprising us. Long enough to keep our hands far from the heat, it had plenty of space between the longest and shortest loop on the whisk tip, helping its eight moderately flexible, silicone-coated wire loops engage quickly and efficiently with food. While it wasn’t quite as fast as others at whipping cream, it was so comfortable that we didn’t mind.

One of the faster whisks in the lineup when it came to whipping cream and turning it into butter, our former winner is light, fairly comfortable, and still a great choice, but newer models surpassed its performance, especially when we were whisking roux, and its five loops—three fewer than our new favorite—struggled to break up lumps. The loop at the end of its steel handle also tended to poke our palms during use. As we blended salad dressing and whisked teriyaki sauce, it clearly didn’t engage with the food as fully as our top-ranked whisk.

While this whisk did an acceptable job at blending roux, we found that as steam rose from the hot pan, the thin, round steel handle became slick, uncomfortable, and hard to manage. It whipped cream fairly quickly, but using it was more tiring than other models, and its slightly too-stiff silicone-coated wire loops tended to splash cream and salad dressing around as we whisked them.

The maker of this “better batter tool” claimed that it can also function as a nonstick whisk, and it did surprisingly well. Its spherical head, which is made of five wide silicone bands, was good for mixing and scraping, and the long, wand-like handle was comfortable for both short and longer whisking tasks—it came in handy as we whisked roux in a Dutch oven, though its head struggled a bit more than traditional whisks to break up floury lumps. It took more than 3½ minutes to whip cream, which was on the slower end of the spectrum, but it did the job and was very comfortable to use and easy to control. If you only want a whisk, there are better choices, but if you want a multipurpose tool, it’s acceptable.

This lightweight whisk always felt a little too stiff and short in our hands, and our hands became uncomfortably hot as we whisked the steamy roux; its five loops also struggled to break up floury roux’s lumps. With only a small gap at the tip between the longest and shortest loops, we had to work harder and angle the whisk lower to position the loops fully in the food. We found it tiring to whip cream; it took 4 minutes and 17 seconds to achieve stiff peaks, plus 4 more minutes of labor to turn the cream into butter.

This whisk was doing fine, whisking fairly efficiently and feeling reasonably comfortable in our hands, albeit with a thin steel handle—until the longest wire loop detached from the handle while we were whisking cream into soft butter, ruining the whisk (we could not reattach it). We need our tools to be more durable.

This whisk has a design that seemed clever, where twisting a knob on the end of the handle switches the wire loops from a flat whisk to a round balloon whisk for two tools in one. We were intrigued, but it arrived with the knob broken both times we ordered it, from two separate retailers. We held it together manually and put it through testing, but its loops were stiff and unwieldy, and the complicated nesting pieces that made up the handle trapped water.