The Best High-End Kitchen Tools for People Who Love to Cook, According to Our Tests

Anova Vacuum Sealer

$123 at Amazon $150 at Target $150 at Williams-Sonoma

While vacuum sealers are incredibly useful, most force you to dedicate a portion of your countertop to reap their rewards. The Anova Vacuum Sealer is sleek and minimalist, making it a beautiful and unobtrusive addition to any collection of cool kitchen gadgets. Featuring multiple seal settings — including vacuum and seal, moist, dry, seal, pulse vacuum, and external pulse vacuum — it offers a wide variety of functions. We particularly love that the instruction booklet is user-friendly and easy to follow, which makes all of these settings simple enough for anyone to learn.

Shun Classic Chef’s 8-Inch

$169 at Amazon $150 at Williams-Sonoma $170 at Sur La Table

Shun is a trusted, high-end brand guaranteed to last. The Classic Blonde, complete with a resin-treated birch wood handle, is designed for comfort in both left and right hands. The sharp, ultra-lightweight blade is deceptively hardy. It’s handcrafted with 34 layers of forged stainless steel on both sides, making it rust-, stain-, and stick-proof. For cooks with an interest in Japanese kitchen brands, or more specifically in collecting Japanese knives, this blade is an effective, beautiful, and sturdy pick that adds style and strength to anyone’s kit.

Breville Bakery Chef Stand Mixer

View on Breville.com $300 at Sur La Table

Buying a stand mixer is a major purchase, making it a decision that requires a lot of research as it's one of the most essential kitchen products for home cooks. But we’ve done all of the work for you. The Breville Bakery Chef Stand Mixer is our best overall pick after testing the Best Stand Mixers of 2023. 

We love its incredible efficiency — it creates stiff peaks in a record 18 seconds! Users will find presets for whipped cream and dough as well as a built-in timer, making simple tasks basically hands-free. It comes with several accessories: a scraper beater, standard flat beater, dough hook, wire whisk, splash guard, pouring shield, 5-quart borosilicate glass bowl, 4-quart stainless steel bowl, and a spatula. It also shows no fingerprints on the outside, ensuring it's pretty enough to hold its place-of-pride on a countertop even with heavy use.

Le Creuset Enameled Cast Iron Round Dutch Oven

$460 at Amazon $260 at Williams-Sonoma $260 at Wayfair

For longevity, utility, and beauty in the realm of cookware, the Le Creuset Enameled Cast Iron Dutch Oven gets the job done in style. We love that it comes in several colors, shapes, and sizes, all of which are as pretty and durable as the last. For any home cook serious about their craft, this is a versatile and lasting choice. Le Creuset’s Dutchies are an investment returned by a lifetime (or three) of reliable use.

Vitamix Professional Series 750 Blender

$629 at Amazon $700 at Target $700 at Williams-Sonoma

This blender is the epitome of a high-end pick. It may not be for the faint of heart (or pocketbook), but there is no better option for those with discerning taste in small kitchen appliances. The Vitamix Professional Series 750 Blender is for serious juicers and puree-ers. It offers 10-speed settings, five preset programs, and a pulse feature that makes it a true all-in-one option. Designed with functionality and versatility in mind, this blender is equipped with a wide blade radius and a 2.2 horsepower motor. No kale stem or ice cube is a match for this tool. Say goodbye to chunky smoothies and hello to perfectly blended soups and sorbets every time.

Butter Pat Industries Heather Cast Iron Skillet

View on Butterpatindustries.com

There are so many beautiful and functional cast iron skillets on the market. The Butter Pat Industries Heather Cast Iron Skillet won as our best splurge pick from an array of top-of-the-line Best Cast Iron Skillets, and for good reason. Scoring a perfect 5 (out of 5) for performance during our testing, it creates a beautiful sear, pours with ease, and cleans without requiring a lot of elbow grease. We love the uniquely textured interior, which eases funneling liquid to the pour spout. Its comfortable grip handle is just a bonus. This skillet is built to last and looks good hanging on a rack in any kitchen.

Breville Joule Sous Vide

$250 at Williams-Sonoma

Thanks to Bluetooth technology, it’s easy to control the Breville Joule Sous Vide via any Android or iOS phone using the Joule App. After testing more than 10 immersion circulators, we found it is one of the lightest models at only 1.28 pounds. It was also, by far, one of the most accurate. Needing no buttons to function thanks to the Joule App and Bluetooth controls, this unit is sleek. We really love how quiet it is, too. Perfect for a more advanced home cook with an interest in technical, modern kitchen tools, this is a sous vide machine built to perform.

Breville Sous Chef Peel & Dice Food Processor

$532 at Amazon $500 at Williams-Sonoma $428 at Walmart

It’s such a pain to find the right food processor, particularly when there are so many options for settings and attachments. The Breville Food Processor is our favorite for its performance and ability to slice, shred, and dice with ease. It also includes a dicing kit, peeling disc, 5 slicing discs, 3 blades, a spatula, 2 mixing bowls, a storage box, and a cleaning brush, leaving us wanting for little save for perhaps a grater attachment. The power, start, pulse, and timer settings make it possible to accomplish nearly any basic processor task with little effort.

Masamoto Santoku Knife

$279 at Amazon

We can’t adequately express how absolutely beautiful this knife is in real life, and we love that its rust resistance means it’ll stay that way. An elegant handle of magnolia wood inlaid with water buffalo horn holds the powdered high-speed steel blade made in the style Masamoto has honed over six generations. This knife’s rounded tip and hollowed blade make it ideal for slicing and dicing even the most delicate of meats and vegetables, and its craftsmanship guarantees a lifetime of multipurpose use with proper care and storage.

Zojirushi Home Bakery Virtuoso Plus Bread Maker

$396 at Amazon $400 at Target $400 at Williams-Sonoma

The Zojirushi Home Bakery Virtuoso Plus Bread Maker is the perfect buy for anybody who will use a bread maker with frequency. We love the soft, even golden crusts it creates on loaves. It easily took the title of best overall bread maker in our testing thanks to its easy-to-read LCD screen, advanced features, and beautifully simplistic design. The two dough blades mix ingredients thoroughly, developing gluten structures for an airy crumb every time. Its programmable cycles and nonstick baking pan are just the cherry on top.