Top: Kuhn-Rikon garlic crusher. Bottom: Vintage mezzaluna blade and wood bowl, with freshly minced garlic.
For years I sought The Perfect Garlic Crusher, and I finally found it: the Kuhn-Rikon model shown in the photo. The swinging-out parts make it easy to insert the garlic, easy to scrape it from the holes, and easy to clean afterwards. The handles have the necessary heft, so you don’t have to bruise your hand in squeezing them. It’s a great piece of kit.
Of course, there will always be kitchen purists that disdain gadgets as unneeded: just put a knife and a board in front of them, and that’s all they’ll ever need. If your knives are always sharp and ideal for the task at hand, and you have a good block such as those made of Japanese paulownia wood, then I can see that. For instance, I don’t actually need a six-cherry cherry pitter, because I devised an excellent and fast procedure for getting the pits out while keeping the fruits whole (one summer when I made a few cherry pies). But the pitter does come in handy, especially if you literally just want to bang your fruit pies out. That said, a lot of gadgets are really about novelty and niftiness rather than lasting benefit. I would exempt garlic crushers from that category but I would also say that I don’t really need one. And that’s because I inherited a mezzaluna knife and the wooden bowl that goes with it.
What I like about the blade-bowl is threefold: the blade chops really finely, the bits don’t generally go jumping out of the bowl, and the blade is even easier to clean than the garlic crusher. (The mezzaluna also works really well with herbs. The trick with herbs is to bunch them together in the bowl with one hand and then punch at the bunch with the blade.) So, though it’s true that I’m not going to give away my crusher any time soon, I’m more likely these days just to reach for the blade and bowl.