How This Crazy-Looking Whisk Improves on the Traditional Balloon Whisk Design

While we’ll never tell you get rid of your trusty balloon whisk, we were super interested to learn about a new whisk from Kuhn Rikon and Christopher Kimball. It’s got a funky design that has three great features, making it a worthy addition to your current tool collection.

Christopher Kimball for Kuhn Rikon Traverse Power Whisk, $24 at Sur la Table

1. It’s speedy: The traverse power whisk is primarily designed to make it faster to aerate or emulsify liquids. The corners allow you to reach every part of the bowl or saucepan, making it more efficient. (It’s also more energy-efficient, which is important when the power is all coming from you, not a mixer!) The design is also halfway between a flat whisk and a balloon whisk, meaning you could use it in a pinch for making gravies and sauces in flat pans as well as whisking up batters and eggs.
2. It’s easy to clean: It can be difficult to get a sponge in every nook and cranny of a balloon whisk. The flat design of the traverse whisk, however, makes it easy to hand-wash quickly.
3. It’s easy to store: Balloon whisks aren’t terribly space-efficient. This version has the added benefit of sitting almost completely flat in drawers and taking up less space in your utensil caddy.

In addition to the traverse whisk, Christopher Kimball has released an entire collection of kitchen goods with Kuhn Rikon — plus pressure cookers from Durotherm and knives from J.A. Henckles. The entire line is inspired by Kimball’s latest enterprise, Milk Street Kitchen, and is designed to “deliver exactly what the home cook really needs.”

Founded in 2016 after Kimball’s departure from America’s Test Kitchen, Milk Street is designed around his concept of “new home cooking,” that is “simpler and smarter, yet familiar.” Since its founding, Milk Street has grown to include a magazine, TV show, and radio show. The cookbook, aptly named Christoper Kimball’s Milk Street, was released last fall.