It's all-ium in the handle when it comes to using this excellent Mannkitchen garlic press. (Lisa Schweitzer/Yahoo)(Lisa Schweitzer/Yahoo)
A recipe that features lots of minced garlic will taste great, sure, but it won't be easy work if you've been doing it by hand. While some pros and home cooks will say all you need is a great chef's knife, as a culinary school grad and busy mom of two, I embrace this single-use tool. The best garlic press can slash prep time, not to mention free you of lingering garlic-scented hands.
What I know from my professional culinary training, restaurant work and experience writing about food and cooking is that a drawerful of a million kitchen tools is unnecessary (though we always love Ina Garten's picks). The key is finding items that make sense for your specific needs. Maybe it's a garlic press that can go in the dishwasher or one with an ergonomic grip that saves your hands from increased pressure. Or maybe it's one that doesn't make too much of a dent in your wallet. After sifting through dozens of options and spending hours reading reviews, I narrowed my testing pool to eight popular picks, all $50 and under. They include top-rated traditional models, a "self-cleaning" garlic press, one that minces and a garlic rocker. I evaluated each one on its efficiency and ease of use, and only two came out on top. My picks for the best garlic presses for 2025 will make meal prep faster and more enjoyable.
Update, June 23, 2025: We checked all product prices and availability. Our number one pick for best garlic press remains unchanged.
After using these garlic presses repeatedly in my own home and reading hundreds of reviews to learn about what features shoppers love most, I came up with this list of the most important factors you'll want to keep in mind.
Type: A traditional press is the most common type, but if you have grip strength issues or arthritis, you may want a rocker (you press down on it with both hands) like the Joseph Joseph one above, or one that you twist with your hands like the NextTrend Garlic Twister.
Output: Presses with larger holes will produce a coarser mince, and ones with smaller holes will produce a finer mince and perhaps some pulp and juice. It's up to you what you prefer!
Ease of cleaning: We recommend buying a dishwasher-safe press that you can also hand-wash easily. Though an included cleaning tool is nice to have, it may get lost in the junk drawer.
Price: The answer to how much to spend on any kitchen gadget lies in how often you'll use the item. If you adore garlic and use minced garlic daily, it may be worth spending more to get a tool that's the easiest to use and clean. If you use it on occasion, you can get away with a less expensive press that may have more drawbacks.
As I tried the gadgets, I noted how difficult it was to press the garlic, how much garlic fit in the hopper and how easy it was to clean the entire press after use. To rank on our list, the garlic press had to excel in the following:
The "naked" test: I placed two peeled cloves of garlic in the chamber and pressed them, checking the quality and size of the mince.
The "clothed" test: I placed two unpeeled cloves of garlic in the chamber and pressed them. Here, I wanted to assess how messy the process was and how powerful the press was. If the press could easily and cleanly mince garlic, even with the peel on, it moved up in my ranking.
The "squeeze spectrum": I evaluated how much you had to manipulate or squeeze each press to mince the garlic. If a gadget fell too far on the hard-to-squeeze end of the spectrum, I knocked it out of the running.
Dreamfarm Garject 2-in-1 Peeler, Press and Mincer ($50): This was one of the most expensive presses I tried, and though it was innovative, it weighed a lot (13.7 ounces) and was not as impressive as its features would suggest. It's a complicated tool that presses garlic cloves and then automatically wipes the excess off the tool with a spring-loaded scraper ... but the scraper doesn't get all the garlic, so you still have to wipe some off with the back of a knife or your finger. It also boasts an ejector for the garlic peel left inside, but that, too, isn't foolproof and requires assistance.
Zyliss Susi 3 Garlic Press ($30): While researching garlic presses, I learned that Karl Zysset, founder of Zyliss, invented the original garlic press in 1948. And Julia Child was a fan of an earlier iteration of the Susi garlic press! The Susi 3 is lightweight but fairly hard to squeeze and the output was on the finer side of minced. The gadget features a built-in plastic cleaning tool that you can pop out when needed.
Zulay Kitchen 2-in-1 Garlic Press & Mincer ($15): A true multitasker, this Zulay gadget is a garlic mincer and slicer and it comes with a tiny brush, a pop-out cleaning tool and a silicone garlic peeler. The press itself felt a bit flimsy and was about average on the "hard-to-squeeze" spectrum. It did produce both minced and sliced garlic with little waste, but it's not dishwasher-safe. It's a good budget-friendly choice if you like the idea of slicing and mincing in one.
Oxo Good Grips Stainless Steel Garlic Press ($12): With about average effort, I minced peeled garlic cloves and cleaned the Oxo press under running water. This press could not handle unpeeled cloves at all. It has soft, grippy handles, a medium-sized capacity hopper and it's dishwasher-safe.
Orblue Stainless Steel Garlic Press ($15): Though the Orblue press took medium effort to squeeze and produced a fine mince on both peeled and unpeeled cloves, I was pretty annoyed at how hard it was to clean. It seemed to have more nooks and crannies in which garlic skin and bits got stuck than the other presses.
Kuhn Rikon Easy Clean Garlic Press ($24): I found this press to be both flimsy and the toughest to squeeze of the bunch. It was so frustrating, I ultimately gave up on it.
Most of the presses I tried are dishwasher-safe, but I cleaned all of them under running water and was able to dislodge bits of garlic with a sponge or brush. Some presses come with a tiny cleaning tool/brush, but they are small and may get lost easily in a drawer with lots of other kitchen tools.
We received complimentary samples of some products and purchased others ourselves, but we reviewed all products using the same objective criteria.