Forget What You Know About Garlic Presses—This $15 Tool Is Much Easier to Use

I love garlic. And lots of it. I even grow a hard-neck variety with cloves so big each could be a store-bought head. When a recipe calls for a garlic clove, do I use one of these giants? You betcha.

Still, the appeal of garlic presses baffles me. Every model I’ve tried—and there have been plenty—produces a gooey mess. Half of it seems to squirt up around the plunger and get trapped in the hinge. I also have to fish out pieces between cloves, whether I peeled the garlic or not. When finished, I struggle to clean the press, even if it has a built-in scraper or dedicated cleaning tool. I’ll try everything—paring knife tip, toothpick, bamboo skewer—and eventually resort to picking out sticky, smelly bits with my fingertips.

Cleanup alone takes so long that I’ve never figured out why people think of a garlic press as a time saver. That is, until I discovered the Joseph Joseph Garlic Rocker.

Joseph Joseph Garlic Rocker

This little tool looks nothing like the typical two-handled garlic press. There’s no complex mechanical design and no hinges to gum up or plungers to jam. Instead, the Joseph Joseph Garlic Rocker is simple and sleek: The single stainless steel piece has no moving parts, and its low profile fits in any utensil drawer.

With a standard two-handled press, you’re using one hand to forcibly squeeze garlic through a basket. Large, dense cloves can challenge even those without arthritic fingers or limited wrist mobility. In contrast, this model’s rocker style divides that pressure between both hands, which pushes it against a firm work surface as you tip the rocker like a teeter-totter.

Even when I press clove after clove of my largest, freshest, and firmest homegrown garlic through this rocker, my hands never feel tired or cramped. Over three years of use, I’ve never once worried I might break it. (The company also makes a more colorful model with a stainless core that sits in a plastic frame, but I can’t speak to its durability.)

Then there’s the breezy cleanup. A couple of taps on a cutting board knocks almost every stuck piece from the honeycomb-shaped opening, and hot water rinses out anything left. I wash it by hand, but the tool is dishwasher-safe, too.

This rocker has larger holes than other presses, which I applaud, since small holes cause more damage to garlic’s cell walls and release more of its pungent compounds. The large holes also make the rocker highly versatile: When pressed through them, soft, roasted garlic becomes a delicious creamy paste. On the other end of the scale, the tool is sturdy enough to tackle tough tasks like raw peeled shallots and even gingerroot.

I also find this tool ideal for mincing foods I’d rather not smear across my fingers, like oily, fishy anchovies and chipotle chilies in adobo sauce with their eye-burning capsaicin. Just for fun, I tried pressing the rocker down on a hard-boiled egg yolk. It emerges through the holes in springy curls that mix effortlessly into a smooth filling for pickled deviled eggs.

Whether you’re looking for an addition to your own kitchen or for an affordable gift, I highly recommend the Joseph Joseph Garlic Rocker. But it’s not the only style out there—consider these other designs that roll, twist, and yes, even squeeze and press.

Chef’n GarlicZoom Garlic Chopper

Dreamfarm Garject Self-Cleaning Garlic Press with Peel Eject

Oye Stainless Steel Garlic Press

NexTrend 4th Generation Clear Garlic Twister

Rösle Garlic Press with Scraper