America's Test Kitchen

This Microplane grabbed the top spot thanks to its great performance and its soft, grippy rubber handle that was slightly more comfortable and secure than that of our old winner. Otherwise, their grating surfaces are identical, so they both shredded cheese, zested lemons, and grated nutmeg, garlic, and ginger with ease. The Premium Classic came sharp, stayed sharp, and looked as good as new after testing. We do wish it had a wider surface so it didn’t form a trench in our cheese while grating, but it’s still the best option out there.

With a large area of sharp etched holes, our favorite rasp-style grater got the job of grating ginger done—just somewhat more slowly and a touch more wastefully than our top models. Its long, narrow shape was less ideal for handling bigger pieces of ginger and forced us to aim more carefully when grating. It was also harder to clean, since its curved edges trapped pockets of puree underneath.

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TechGearLab

"No matter what kind of grater you have, you also need to have a Microplane in your kitchen," one of our testers exclaimed during zesting testing. The Microplane Premium Classic Zester is the Kleenex of zesters, for a good reason. The hot-knife-through-cold-butter saying is very much applicable here when grating parmesan. It's almost effortless to carve a perfect microplane-shaped chunk out of a block of parm, rendering a fluffy pile of cheese, ready to infuse every nook and cranny of your salad or pasta with flavor. For zesting, the Microplane's razor-sharp teeth shaves off just the right amount of peel without carving too deep into the pith &#40;the bitter part of the citrus&#41;, like some duller models we tested.
This one &#40;or two&#41; trick pony is what it is. Besides zesting, hard cheeses, and ginger, there's not much else it can do, hence the need for a more versatile model to complement the Microplane. No other in our test group had a zesting surface that can compare to this one, making the Microplane a necessity for serious chefs.

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This Microplane has sharp teeth and a narrower face so you reach every nook and cranny on a lemon or a cheese rind.

Our winner has a grippy, good-size handle and excels at zesting citrus of all kinds. And with a sharp channel knife set at a good distance from the handle, it was a real pleasure to use, making the best cuts and consistently producing long, clean-looking ribbons of lemon with very little pith. (Orange ribbons had a tiny bit more pith than we preferred.)

Zester Comparison