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Smart design makes this spinner a must-have tool for your kitchen.

The OXO Salad Spinner has been a staple in the test kitchen since it beat out competing models in our first spinner tests way back in 1999. Seventeen years later, we discovered that OXO had made a good thing even better.

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How we tested salad spinners:

We put eight salad spinners through their paces by drying romaine hearts for our Caesar salad recipe and washing delicate herbs to check for bruising. We took each spinner apart to compare the ease of cleaning and storage.

All salad spinners share the same basic design: a perforated basket that balances on a plastic point in the center of a larger bowl. The lid houses the mechanism that grabs the basket and makes it spin. Centrifugal force created by the spinning basket propels the contents of the spinner away from the center; greens are trapped while water passes through the perforations and collects in the outer bowl.

SPINNING MECHANISMS

Differences in the design of the spinning mechanisms affect how the spinners work.

✕ Retractable Cords
Pulling the string away from the spinner can bring the lid with it. And if the string becomes wet or soiled, bacteria can grow.

✕ Crank
Tricky to get started, and because the direction of the force being applied by the user is the same as the direction in which the basket spins, the salad spinner is prone to jump around on the counter.

✕ Ratchet
Clearly designed for the right hand and proved awkward for lefties in our tests.

✕ Lever
The force being applied is slightly off to one side, so the spinner can become unstable.

✓ Pump action
A simple up-and-down motion takes little effort, and since it’s set in the center, the spinner won’t dance around on the counter.

CAPACITY

We made a Caesar salad recipe that calls for 2 pounds of romaine hearts cut into pieces. We recorded how many batches it took the spinner to dry the lettuce: two for the best performers, four for the worst.

DRYING ABILITY

We weighed the greens before and after washing and spinning. One salad spinner threw off about a tablespoon more water than any of the others. The worst performer trapped water on the greens.

HERB-FRIENDLY

Concerned that violent spinning might bruise delicate herbs, we washed and dried a bunch of cilantro in each spinner and examined how well each spinner removed sandy soil. Every spinner got high marks, though long sprigs of cilantro did not fit comfortably in all models.

EASY TO CLEAN

Green baskets obscured trapped greens when we were washing up—we preferred clear or white baskets. Complicated lids were harder to clean; one spinner comes apart for thorough washing and drying.

America’s Test Kitchen is the most-watched cooking show on public television—up to 2 million viewers watch each episode. The show is filmed in the test kitchen of Cook’s Illustrated magazine, located just outside Boston.

Each episode features recipes we’ve carefully developed to make sure they work every time. The test cooks solve everyday cooking problems, test equipment so you never have to waste money on things that don’t work, and taste supermarket ingredients to save you time in the store. It’s a common-sense, practical approach you won’t find on other cooking shows.

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