The Best Garlic Presses

Our former winner, which is made from stainless steel, again worked seamlessly from start to finish. Its comfortable handles opened wide, allowing us to easily load cloves. It produced a uniform mince, handled unpeeled cloves well, and quickly rinsed clean. Two minor issues: We pinched our fingers between the handles a couple of times, and garlic sometimes squished up and around the plunger if we minced multiple cloves at once. But overall we loved this sleek, easy-to-use press.

This press was easy to use and to clean and produced a mince that was slightly larger than most of the lineup, owing to its larger, square perforations. However, testers didn’t love its wedge-shaped hopper, which had an open side that let garlic slip out. The hinged arms also seemed loose, as they swung around during clove placement and cleaning.

This press was comfortable to hold, thanks to its rubberized handles with rounded edges. Its hopper was too small to handle multiple garlic cloves at a time, but it minced single cloves uniformly. Similar to the other OXO model we tested, its arms felt loose and swung around while inserting cloves and cleaning.

One of the lightest models in the lineup, this press was easy to use and produced a nice uniform mince; it even handled unpeeled cloves with relative ease. However, the built-in cleaning tool—which latched onto the handle—was easy to knock out during use, so we kept having to retrieve and reinsert it. This model’s coating also showed scratches from the paring knife (which we used to remove minced garlic from its face). Finally, we had to repeatedly reposition the plunger because it didn’t always shift into the proper position on its own.

This press was straightforward and comfortable to use when mincing peeled cloves, and it minced unpeeled cloves fairly well—albeit with some discomfort. Cleanup was a pain, though, as garlic remnants got stuck in this press’s 1/8-inch-long nubs and took extra time and attention to excavate. Testers also noted that the hopper was small, barely able to fit one large clove.

This pricey press had a large hopper that handled multiple cloves with ease. It was the heaviest of the models we tested, so it was tiring to hold during prolonged use. It had two enticing features a scraper for cleaning off minced garlic and an ejector that released garlic bits from the hopper. Unfortunately, neither worked well, and the scraper got in the way during cleaning.

This press required us to squeeze really hard even when mincing a single unpeeled garlic clove. Its handles have two metal loops, presumably so that you can hang the tool on a hook. Unfortunately, they make it uncomfortable to grab the end of the handles, where you can get the most leverage. The press yielded a uniform mince with peeled garlic, but with unpeeled cloves, a lot of garlic was left behind in the hopper, increasing waste and tacking on extra time for cleanup.

This press was lightweight and flimsy, a concerning trait for a tool that requires a lot of force to use. The plunger didn’t align with the hopper well, making it hard to mince multiple cloves of garlic consistently. It also had a feature for slicing garlic, but the same problem applied–it was too hard to get the plunger to align properly. When mincing both peeled and unpeeled cloves, some garlic was left behind in the hopper, adding time to cleanup.

We didn’t like this model’s flimsy construction—the plastic handles seemed to bend when we tried to mince garlic cloves—and the hinge didn’t allow the press to open very wide, so it was difficult to place cloves in the hopper. Mincing also wasn’t smooth: We often got lots of garlic juice first, followed by a sudden burst of minced garlic later on.

Testers had mixed feelings about this ring-shaped metal model with a plastic handle on one side and a curved, perforated face on the other. Users had to press down on a garlic clove and then rock the press back and forth—almost like using an iron with a curved surface. We liked the mince uniformity and consistency, but we often had to use our full body weight to get a good mince, which strained our shoulders and wrists. Also, garlic cloves sometimes slipped out from underneath the curved face, and it was much harder to mince multiple cloves at once.

Though this press is supposedly designed to be used one-handed, testers frequently had to use two hands and their full body strength to operate it. It sometimes slipped on the counter, and it hurt our wrists because we had to push down so hard. There were three parts to this press, and minced garlic wound up in all of them, making garlic retrieval confusing and time-consuming. The hopper basket where you place the garlic is intended to be removable, but it sometimes got stuck, forcing us to jiggle it a few times to remove it.

This press’s cube-shaped design was unique but ultimately worthless because, as one tester noted, it gave us “little columns of garlic,” like a julienne, instead of minced garlic because it forced each peeled clove through a metal grate. This press also occasionally pinched our skin when we closed the lid, drawing blood and making us overly cautious when using it. As if that weren’t bad enough, it had six parts—all of which had to be disassembled, cleaned, and reassembled after every use.

This model, which looked and felt cheap, was rife with issues. It didn’t efficiently mince the entire clove, which created a lot of waste. It also wasn’t clear where to place the cloves, and the press took a lot of strength to operate. The “ejector” tool, which is like the release mechanism of a portion scoop, created two additional problems: It trapped some of the garlic underneath, making the press impossible to fully clean, and what wasn’t trapped was ejected toward the user—landing on one tester’s shirt.