OXO Good Grips Kitchen and Herb Scissors
Since university, I’ve bought about a dozen pairs of kitchen scissors ranging from budget and store brands to ostensibly premium ...
Since university, I’ve bought about a dozen pairs of kitchen scissors ranging from budget and store brands to ostensibly premium “Swiss designed” models. They’ve all had at least one fatal flaw that led to their disposal: didn’t come apart for cleaning, separated during use, jammed or couldn’t cut, painfully unergonomic, rusted, broke, etc.
There are of course plentiful recommendations for esoteric models that supposedly address these issues (Cool Tools itself features the 8” Wiss Kitchen Shears) but they rarely do. For example, the aforementioned Wiss scissors have uncomfortable handles and require a screwdriver for disassembly- the latter is a definite deal-breaker for me.
Enter the OXO Kitchen And Herb Scissors. Right off the bat, there’s a reassuring but not overly heavy heft. The tension between the blades is excellent (read: no jamming), and there’s an oddly satisfying grinding sound as the micro-serrations do their work. I can get four fingers into the padded handles for extended sessions (NB: if you have large hands you may only get three). The angle of the pivot precludes the blades separating during normal use but they’re nonetheless amenable to quick and easy disassembly, sans screwdriver.
Apart from an herb stripper feature, which I don’t use, there’s nothing extraneous to maintain or break. Leave jar-opening to a jar opener and bottle-opening to a bottle opener- — a jack of all trades is a master of none, after all.
After two years of constant use, I have yet to find anything in the kitchen they can’t cut. There’s no rust, loss of blade tension, or wear & tear on the rubber handle coating. I’ve recommended these scissors to friends under “just buy this, thank me later” and gifted a pair to my mom. No complaints and quite a few accolades from both.
Very simply these are high-performance, well-designed scissors that make daily chores in the kitchen so much more pleasant, and for that, they absolutely qualify as a Cool Tool.
[See also: Finding the best kitchen shears]
09/22/20
