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with the holidays behind us, these next few months are the perfect time to relax at home and take some time to reset. What better way to unwind than by cooking up delicious, cozy meals or baking some delicious treats? Whether you’re a novice cook who wants to take up a hobby or a seasoned chef in need of some new equipment, we’ve gathered great deals on a bunch of kitchen essentials, including stand mixers, food processors, and pans.
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Stand Mixer Deals
Smeg’s retro stand mixer comes with a 4.8-liter bowl, wire whisk, dough hook, and flat beater, along with a front port for swapping out attachments. It also packs an 800-watt direct-drive motor and up to 10 variable speeds. It’s a powerful mixer that’s great for loose mixtures, but we found the appliance wobbled too much when mixing stiff ingredients like dough and hard butter. We recommend it for baking sweet treats like cake, because the flat beater does an excellent job mixing softer ingredients. This discount applies only to the pink model, but the pastel blue version is also on sale for $385 ($152 off).
This deal is available for Amazon Prime subscribers only. Aucma;s stand mixer isn’t the most meticulously designed, especially when compared to the more well-known brands. But WIRED contributor Emily Peck says it’s an “excellent value and thoughtfully made,” with a lot of helpful features. There’s a splash guard that connects to the tilt head instead of on top of the bowl and a speed dial that lights up, and the appliance is easy to control thanks to the lever and speed controls sitting near each other. It also comes with two bowls (6.2 liters and 5 liters), six speeds, a pulse function, an impressive 1,400-watt copper motor, and three attachments (a whisk, dough hook, and beater). It has dipped to this price before, but this is the lowest we’ve tracked.
Food Processor, Blender, and Juicer Deals
This is our favorite 3-in-1 versatile option in our Best Food Processors guide. With interchangeable cups and blades, it can be used to make both soups and smoothies. It comes with various accessories, including a 2.1-liter jug (which works well with the chopping/crushing blade and the dough blade) and a 400-milliliter bowl (with a hybrid edge blade). The blender also comes with Ninja’s Auto-iQ feature, giving you access to seven preset programs for food processing, chopping, smoothies, extractions, bowls, spreads, and dough. Coming in at 1,200 watts, it’s also powerful—pulling down ingredients so you don’t have to shake the jug to process every last bit.
KitchenAid’s food processor holds the title of Best All Around in our aforementioned buying guide. The 9-cup model makes it a great size for a standard-sized kitchen and a family of four. With a multipurpose four-blade, it’s plenty capable of a variety of tasks including chopping raw carrots, blending salsa, mincing meat, and more. You’ll also get a whisk accessory, and dough blade, along with slicing and julienne discs. When it’s not in use, you can store the blades and discs directly in the bowl, and the integrated cord wrap fits in the base.
This high-end juicer is versatile and quiet, and it has a great aesthetic—complete with a borosilicate-glass juice jug and a stainless-steel pulp jug. The motor is powerful, at 240 watts, but also runs at a gentle rpm, so it’s powerful enough to take on tougher ingredients like carrots and nuts but also softer ones like strawberries and bananas. It comes with a wide, 82-mm feed chute (great for bulkier ingredients) along with a trapdoor system. You also get four screen strainers, including a fine screen, coarse screen, sorbet screen, and smoothie screen.
An immersion blender is great if you don’t have room for a countertop blender or if you only need to blend smaller batches of certain recipes. You can use it to puree soups and vegetables, blend batters, make sauces, and more. This one from Braun has a variable-speed trigger that’s easy to squeeze and a ski-pole style that’s super comfortable to hold. And rest assured, the blades won’t leave any lumps with whatever you’re blending.
Pots and Pan Deals
Photograph: Amazon
Le Creuset’s Dutch oven is perfect for winter. You can use it to cook up cozy one-pot meals like braises, stews, and soups. It’s expensive, but it’ll also last you a long time—as long as you treat it well (don’t put it in the dishwasher or use metal utensils with it). It’s available in multiple sizes, but we suggest this larger one for cooking up big meals for family and friends.
This 4-quart saute pan has a large surface area to cook in as well as tall sides to help avoid accidental splattering (like while sautéing vegetables). The sides are flat too, which can make it easier to flip the food with a spatula. You’ll need to provide an email address to see the sale.
For searing, browning, or pan-frying, All-Clad’s 12-inch stainless fry pan is great to have in the kitchen. The three-ply bonded stainless steel helps to deliver even heat; the flat bottom and flared sides make it easy to toss food; and the riveted stainless steel handle stays cool while you cook. This isn’t a nonstick pan, so any grease or oil will have to be hot before you throw your food into it. You’ll need to provide an email address to see the sale.
Knife and Cutting Board Deals
This was once our top pick in our Best Chef’s Knives guide, and it’s still a great choice. It has a plastic handle, so it’s not as high-quality as the Ninja 8-inch Chef’s Knife (which now holds our top spot), but it has a nearly nonstick finish, so hardly anything will stick to this blade.
This is a wonderful entry-level blade for those looking to explore the world of Japanese knives. It has a Western-style handle and holds an edge super well (especially for its price). WIRED senior writer Scott Gilbertson says it’s the closest he has seen a stainless steel knife come to matching the benefits of a carbon steel blade.
If you have a small kitchen that lacks counter space for meal prep, we highly recommend this cutting board. It’s designed to fit over your sink, and it’s made of solid maple, which will be less harsh on your knife blades.
In addition to a chef’s knife, the mandoline is an essential kitchen tool (especially if you’re overwhelmed by larger knives). It’s a quick, precise, and easy way to slice vegetables like cucumbers, tomatoes, cabbage, and more. This one comes with five blades, including a slicer, shredder, grater, wavy blade, and coarse shredder, as well as a blade box to store them in. This is the lowest price we’ve tracked so far.
