The season of holiday cookies and family recipes you either dearly love or deeply despise is around the corner. We’ve scoured the internet for Black Friday kitchen deals that may be of interest if you’re looking for gifts—or feeling woefully unprepared with the tools you have in your kitchen. Whether it’s a new countertop appliance, the KitchenAid of your dreams, or a better coffee machine to survive your in-laws being in town, these are the best kitchen sales for you to shop this Black Friday.
WIRED tests products year-round and handpicked these deals based on the actual discounts, not just the discounts retailers claim to offer. Products that are sold out or no longer discounted as of publishing will be crossed out. We’ll update this guide through Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Be sure to check out our best Black Friday Deals.
Kitchen Appliance Deals
This is an all-around great air fryer. It offers more than you’ll find in other air fryer models with 12-in-1 functionality, which includes cooking modes that range from searing and sautéing to baking and roasting. It can make one-pot meals, too, and comes with a recipe booklet to get you started.
The quiet, undisputed king of rice cookers, the Zojirushi uses “fuzzy logic technology” with a microcomputer (hence the abbreviation “micom” in the product name) to make tiny adjustments in heat placement, ensuring that your grains are perfectly done, with minimal effort and no burned or wet spots. We have seen this one dip about $15 lower, but this is the lowest price we’ve seen in the last six months.
This was the only appliance on WIRED reviews editor Julian Chokkattu’s wedding registry—he uses it to make stale bread fresh again, but you can also use it to reheat pretty much anything. The Balmuda Toaster (8/10, WIRED Recommends) is a mini steam toaster, so you pour a tiny bit of water with the included (and equally cute) tiny cup into the top area. There are time recommendations for things like pizza, a croissant, or sandwich bread.
It might look like a coffee maker, but the Ninja Creami (6/10, WIRED Review) makes ice cream. It isn’t an essential tool, obviously, but it’s fun if you’re interested in experimenting with your own sorbets and ice cream recipes. Ninja also has a $17 Ninja Creami recipe book if you want ideas on where to start (though we wish it was included, rather than a separate purchase).
The motor isn’t quite as powerful as on the more expensive Artisan model, but this mixer is beefy enough for all but the thickest, stickiest of doughs, and it still has 10 speeds and a couple of included attachments. KitchenAid stand mixers have a reputation for being durable, so while it is an initial investment, you can expect it to last for many years. You can also get the smaller 4.5-quart size on sale, too.
Are you dreaming of a better blender? Breville’s Super Q (8/10, WIRED Reviews) is a high-end blender that excels in making smoothies, nut butters, and frozen margaritas. It’s a splurge, though, even with a sale.
This is one of the steepest discounts we’ve ever seen on the ever-popular, ever-convenient Instant Pot. If you don’t have one, this is a good time to invest. It’s hard to make cooking easier than this. Plug one in, the pressure builds, and it makes all of your slow-cooker favorites—chili, ribs, mac and cheese, broths, and braises—in a relative heartbeat.
This powerful blender has just two switches and a dial, but it excels at blending smoothies, lassis, frozen margaritas, salad dressings, and even mole adobo. It’s impressive how much this blender can do, which is why we recommend it for home cooks.
Hand blenders are, ahem, handy, for those times when you need to blend a small amount of something without getting your big blender dirty. They’re great for blending soups in the pot, whipping up a small plate of hummus, and you can even smoothies in a stainless steel mug if you’re careful with the speed dial. The KitchenAid’s detachable head is dishwasher safe making it easy to clean up when you’re done.
Everybody needs a little music and weather in their kitchen. The Echo Show 5 is typically overpriced at $90, but the deal price of $40 matches the best we have tracked. Just keep in mind that it goes on sale quite frequently. We prefer the Echo Show 10 for its larger size, but the smaller footprint of the Echo Show 5 is good for a small kitchen. If you prefer Google Assistant, well, the Nest Hub is also on sale for $50 ($50 off).
Cookware Deals
The enameled Dutch oven does away with bare cast iron’s needy tendencies. You can scrub away at the interior and exterior of this Lodge with all the dish soap you like and never have to wipe it down with vegetable oil to keep it from rusting overnight. The nonstick, nonreactive surface is perfect for slow-cooking stews, oysters, and practically anything else on the stovetop for long periods.
We generally don’t suggest cookware sets, you’re better off with the right pans than a set. That said, it’s hard to go wrong with All-Clad. While we prefer All-Clad’s D5 collection, the D3 collection is similar, and this is a great price for a seven-piece set. The D3 collection has only three bonded layers within it, so it heats faster but doesn’t cook quite as evenly as the D5.
Coffee Machine Deals
The justly popular Aeropress’s genius isn’t so much that makes great coffee (it does), but that it makes it really difficult to make bad coffee. I’ve yet to have bad coffee from an Aeropress, which is something I can’t really say for any other coffee brewer. If you’re looking for a simple, fool-proof way to make a cup, this is the tool you need. We have seen the price get a little lower, but this is the lowest we’ve seen it in six months.
If you want to make better coffee or bake better pastries, nothing will help like a scale. Do you need a $185 kitchen scale? No, but the Tally Pro is the MacBook Pro of kitchen scales. It’s solid, hefty, made of metal and glass, and the OLED screen is really nice. There are also plenty of smart tools—like the brew assist mode to help you time your pour-over just right.
This coffee maker (8/10, WIRED Recommends) is more advanced than you’d think at first glance. It uses a pair of boilers and three different brewing speeds to make excellent coffee. It looks like the 8-cup brewer on steroids, and it has three different brew sizes it can do: small brews (2 to 4 cups), medium brews (5 to 8 cups), and large brews (9 to 12 cups).
This Mr. Coffee machine is one of our favorite latte and cappuccino makers because it’s easy to use, can automatically mix in milk for you, and is still affordable. You can choose between a latte or cappuccino with the press of a button, and there’s a manual mode that will keep foaming or extracting espresso until you tell it to stop.
Low on caffeine and counter space? The K-Express is a mere 6.5 inches wide and 12 inches deep, yet its removable reservoir holds 36 fluid ounces—enough water to make a round of coffee for you and your friends without having to constantly refill it. Just do the planet a solid and make sure to use Keurig Reusable Pods, to cut down on single-use plastic waste.
