OXO Good Grips Salad Dressing Shaker

At home, many of us use a lidded jar to mix and emulsify vinaigrette—often with messy results because the seal isn’t good. But the kitchenware market abounds with funny-looking salad dressing shakers and mixers that promise to emulsify, dispense, and store vinaigrette more easily than that repurposed jar. To find out whether these gadgets were worth buying, we pitted seven BPA-free plastic dressing shakers and mixers, priced from about $10.00 to $16.00, against a 2-cup Ball jar with its lid. We wanted to see how well they emulsified, contained, and poured two dressings with different ingredients and volumes (our Make-Ahead and Foolproof Vinaigrettes); whether or not they stained or retained odors; how easy they were to fill and clean; and how durable they were.

Our favorite shaker has a short, wide, 1 1/2-cup canister that makes it a breeze to fill, clean, and whisk sticky ingredients by hand if necessary. It made large- and small-scale emulsions that were comparable in quality to those made by the Ball jar, and in about the same amount of time. The shaker has one significant advantage over the jar: It’s much tidier, featuring a pour spout that dispensed dressing without a drip and sealing tightly so that no dressing flew out while shaking. If you make salad dressing regularly, the OXO Good Grips Salad Dressing Shaker is a good investment.

Built like a cocktail shaker, this container was just the right size, easily emulsifying both small and large volumes of dressing. The wide mouth of the canister facilitates filling, whisking, and cleaning; the top screws on easily, creating a tight seal. Best of all, its pour spout dispenses vinaigrette with a nice even flow. And after we put it through 10 dishwasher cycles and disassembled and reassembled it 50 times, the shaker was still as good as new.

* OBJECTIVITY FIRST, LAST, AND ALWAYS.

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