Ethan Walker 
Meal prep lives or dies on the knife work, and the best food processors for meal prep are the machines that turn a Sunday of hand-dicing into an hour of setup. After running ten of the most popular processors through the same prep tasks — mirepoix batches, hard-vegetable slicing, cheese shredding, dough, purées and cleanup … Read more
The Anova Culinary Precision Cooker Nano 2.0 is the best sous vide cooker for beginners. It holds temperature within 0.2 degrees Fahrenheit, clamps to almost any pot, and stows in a drawer between cooks. Nothing else on this list gets a first-timer to a good steak with less fuss. Sous vide sounds technical, and the … Read more
If you have a countertop but no full stove, an induction cooktop is the fastest upgrade you can make. The best induction cooktops for countertops come in two shapes: a plug-in portable induction burner that sits on the surface and runs on a normal 120V outlet, or a drop-in built-in cooktop that drops into a … Read more
Backyard movie nights fail for one reason more than any other: the projector is too dim. We have carried enough of these units out to the patio, aimed them at a sheet on the fence, and watched a beautiful image dissolve the minute the sun started going down. That is why this guide for the … Read more
The best laser projectors under 2000 dollars right now are the Valerion StreamMaster Plus2 for 4K picture and gaming, the AWOL VISION LTV-3000 Pro for a wall-replacement home theater, and the NEBULA Capsule 3 Laser for anyone who wants a projector that fits in a backpack. All three clear the bar that matters at this … Read more
A wet stone is a slippery object by design. The moment water hits the surface, the grit starts turning to slurry, and that slurry turns the counter into a skating rink. I have watched a 1000-grit waterstone skate a full foot across a granite countertop mid-stroke, which is exactly the kind of event that ruins … Read more
A dull knife slips instead of biting, so you push harder and lose control. That is how most kitchen knife accidents happen, and it is why we treat sharpening as maintenance rather than an upgrade. For most home cooks, the best knife sharpener under fifty dollars is a fixed-angle manual pull-through with two stages. It … Read more
Rolling knife sharpeners are genuinely good. The blade locks against a magnetic base set to a fixed angle and a diamond-coated disc rolls along the edge, so you remove very little steel and get a repeatable bevel without freehand technique. That makes a rolling knife sharpener the most practical sharpening tool most home cooks will … Read more
A belt sharpener is the right answer for most hunters who own more than one blade. It runs a replaceable abrasive belt past an angle guide, so you draw the blade across a moving surface instead of pushing it through a narrow slot. That matters because a hunting knife wants a 25 degree per side … Read more
A 1000 grit whetstone is the workhorse of kitchen knife sharpening. It sits in the middle of the grit range, where the abrasive is fine enough to leave a clean, usable edge but still coarse enough to strip away a dull finish in a few minutes rather than an evening. If you own one good … Read more