In America, Italian cuisine has been popular for a long time, but over the last 30 years or so, we’ve gotten more familiar with its many regional variations. Early Italian immigrants, many from the southern part of the country, melded traditions and available ingredients, leading us to what many refer to as “red sauce” dishes that don’t really exist in classic Italian cuisine, like spaghetti and meatballs, fettuccine Alfredo, and chicken parmesan. This cooking style gained popularity through the 1940s and ‘50s, and gave way to Italian-American cuisine as we know it today. With the boom of regional Italian restaurants in addition to Italian-American red sauce joints during the ’80s and beyond, many home cooks became curious about bringing a bit of those trattoria flavors into their own kitchens.
Italian cooking is fundamentally regional and seasonal; many Italian food traditions focus on doing things “the long way” and utilize regionally specific ingredients. San Marzano tomatoes are indigenous to the Campania region of Italy, so southern cities like Naples are known for their tomato sauces, such as puttanesca. Sicily is an island, so you won’t find better seafood anywhere in the whole country. Northern regions like Lombardy are near the mountainous border with France and Switzerland, which is a prime environment for dairy cows. Thus, many northern Italian dishes, like risotto, are rich with butter. While you may not have access to the exact species of pepper Italian nonnas have been using for centuries to make a superb penne all’arrabbiata, you can still bring the same spirit (and deliciousness) into your home kitchen with a few key tools and techniques.
The right tools are almost as important as the quality of ingredients in Italian cuisine. (Families will pass down ferrettos, the long wire tools used to form some pasta shapes, over generations.) Yes, there are some hyper-specific tools in Italian cooking, but many you’ve definitely heard of before and might even have in your kitchen right now. Whether you’re upgrading your rolling pin to embark on rolling out sfoglia for your first homemade lasagna or taking the plunge and investing in a home pizza oven for that wood-fired experience at home, this list will guide you through the essential kitchen equipment to make all your favorite Italian recipes and give you the confidence to tackle new ones that will surely be your favorites in the future.
Credit: Amazon
Do you know the old movie trope where one small-town character fills six jobs? When you first meet them, they’re the porter at the train station, the desk clerk at the hotel, a cab driver, a bartender, and the mayor. That’s this Dutch oven. Our Le Creuset cast iron Dutch oven is the one pot we reach for when cooking ragù, risotto, or osso buco, or just boiling pasta.
One of our favorite Dutch ovens, Le Creuset’s enameled cast iron aced our tests. It heated evenly and retained heat well; it seared better than almost any other Dutch oven we tested. Several of our editors own Le Creuset Dutch ovens, and when we took them into our homes for long-term testing, we were impressed by their durability. Though this piece of cookware comes at a high price, it’s an heirloom-quality tool that will last you a lifetime of Sunday red sauces if treated properly.
Credit: Amazon
When making lasagna or many Italian desserts, you need an excellent oven-safe, non-reactive dish to bake in. This porcelain baking dish from Staub was one of our favorites in testing; we found the U-shaped handles easy to grip when moving in or out of the oven. Plus, it comes in a range of stylish colors, so you can easily go from oven to table while maintaining the vibe of your decor.
It’s a great value, and since it’s safe in the dishwasher, oven, broiler, and microwave, you’ll reach for this dish with nearly every recipe. The porcelain is nearly non-stick and easy to clean; our bubbling, cheesy test lasagna was perfectly crispy in the corners and didn’t stick even where the cheese started to brown. However, the slick surface makes this casserole dish slippery — handle it with care so you don’t drop and shatter it.
Credit: Amazon
The Philips Viva completely automates the pasta-making process, from kneading dough to shaping noodles, and it was our favorite extruder-style machine in testing. We couldn’t believe how easy this machine was to use; there are just three buttons, and you don’t even have to get your hands dirty. You just pour in ingredients and the Viva handles the rest, delivering finished noodles in about 18 minutes. Rather than rolling and cutting dough, the extruder pushes it through different dies to make different types of pasta, which enables a much larger range of shapes. (The Viva comes with dies for penne, spaghetti, and fettuccine, and you can buy additional ones for everything from shells to giant lotus shapes.)
Once the noodles were extruded, we were surprised that there was almost no sticking with any of the shapes we tested, which meant we had to spend less time detangling pasta and used less flour for dusting. The controls are very intuitive, and the “extra extrude” button clears the kneading tube for easier cleaning. You do need to plan to make large batches, however; small amounts of dough tended to stuck to the inside and didn’t deliver as much pasta as expected.
Credit: Amazon
Ooni stands out in the world of pizza ovens. We tested 21 of them, and the brand took the top two spots. The Koda 16 was easily the best overall thanks to its unmatched heating capabilities, with a maximum temperature of 950°F and a pre-heat time of 25 minutes. Once it was ready to go, it cooked a pizza evenly from front to back and side to side, in a little over 60 seconds.
Some pizza ovens can have small openings or feel cramped inside, making it hard to launch and maneuver your pies; not the Ooni Koda 16. There was plenty of room for us to move our pizza around, and the oven’s large front opening gave ample space for turning, control, and, ultimately, crust consistency. For a heavy-duty tabletop model, this one was surprisingly easy for one person to move, which is just another plus.
As with all pizza ovens, it can take a few tries to really nail down the technique with the Koda 16. The intense heat is key to true pizza flavor, but you’ll also need to monitor the pie closely during the rapid baking process. It’s intimidating at first, but using a high-temperature pizza oven is a skill that’s absolutely worth picking up.
Credit: Dough-Joe
How could it be that our top-rated pizza stone is not actually made of stone? This 16-pound slab of seasoned carbon steel heated evenly and retained that heat without any burnt hot spots or uneven browning in all our tests. It exceeded expectations and surpassed its stone counterparts in every test. Our pizzas had a crusty exterior and chewy center, and it’s safe to say the Dough-Joe would do the same for sourdough or any other bread recipe. There’s no risk of cracking or shattering, and it can be used for more than just baking; a sheet pan of roasted veggies will get impossibly browned on top of this steel.
The stone comes pre-seasoned and can accommodate up to a 12-inch pie or several small flatbreads or pitas. The manufacturer recommends you not wash the Dough-Joe, though if you must, you can reseason it with flaxseed oil to ensure its longevity.
Credit: Made In
A good skillet is essential for tossing pasta, frying artichokes, and searing sausages, among many other parts of cooking classic Italian dishes. The Made In pan is our favorite stainless steel skillet, largely due to its incredible versatility. It can stand up to anything: high heat, metal utensils, acidic sauces — you name it. We even bashed it with a cinderblock to test its durability, and it still performed well.
Cinderblock resistance aside, this stainless steel clad frying pan showed excellent heat distribution and retention, which equaled even browning, quick simmering, and no hot or cool spots in our tests. It’s got a comfortable handle, which, when coupled with the flared sides and curled lip, made our pouring test easy and not messy. This pan does carry a high price tag, but considering the cooking properties and longevity, we say it’s justified.
Credit: Teakhaus
A good carving board is essential for slicing porchetta or carving some braised beef; the channels on the sides accumulate the meat juices as you slice, keeping them contained and off the countertop. Our tested favorite for large projects, the Teakhaus lots of space for just that. It’s also pretty handy for keeping crumbs contained when cutting a loaf of crusty Italian bread. Flip it over and you’ve got a larger flat surface for chopping and slicing vegetables, kneading pasta dough, stretching pizza, or other jobs that involve flour that you’d like to keep to a limited area. This board is an inch and a half of solid teak, so while it’s stable and has nice height, it’s also heavy and bulky to move and clean.
Credit: Amazon
We chose the J.K. Adams our favorite rolling pin for lots of reasons. It’s all one width — a consistent 2-inch cylinder — and wide enough to roll even the largest pasta sheets. There are no fussy spaces for flour or dough to hide or moving parts to wear down over time. At 19 inches long and 1.6 pounds, it’s heavy-duty and can handle even the toughest doughs without excess strain on your hands and arms. The surface is unfinished wood, which wicks moisture away from the dough surface and prevents sticking. However, the porous wood can warp or crack if it gets saturated with water: Avoid submerging it or holding it under the faucet while washing.
Credit: King Arthur Baking
If you’re serious about pizza making, especially in dedicated pizza ovens, you’ll likely outgrow your wheel-style pizza cutter. Cheese, sauce, and other ingredients stick to the roller’s blade, making the toppings of an otherwise beautiful pie slide along with the cutter. This mezzaluna (half-moon) cutter is our favorite rocker-style pizza cutter because it resolves most of those issues. You place it across the middle of the pizza, and rock back and forth to cut cleanly, without ruining the landscape of browned cheese and perfectly cupped pepperoni.
During testing, this cutter easily sailed through our pizzas and felt sturdy and safe despite its large blade — since you hold it on top with both hands, there’s no chance of slicing an errant finger. There was a slight amount of cheese-sticking, which was expected, but we didn’t observe any drag, and all our toppings were fully intact after cutting. This cutter is large, which is excellent for family-sized pizzas, but combined with its sharp blade, it is a bit difficult to clean.
Our Expertise
Greg Baker is an award-winning chef, restaurateur, and food writer with four decades of experience in the food industry. His written work appears in Food & Wine, Food Republic, Serious Eats, Tasting Table, and other publications.