Mesh or Perforated? The Best Chinois Strainer for Sauces

A blender can only take a guajillo sauce so far. It chops the chile skins into smaller flecks, and those flecks are what you feel on your tongue. A chinois gets them out. Pour the blended sauce into the cone, work a ladle around the inside, and what drips from the tip is smooth enough to coat a tortilla evenly. Our explainer on what mole is describes the same step: everything is ground, then pushed through a sieve before it goes into the pot.

The trouble is the word itself. Sellers use chinois, china cap, bouillon strainer and cone sieve almost interchangeably, yet a fine woven cone and a punched steel cone do different jobs. This guide sorts eight cone strainers by the thing that decides how they work, the mesh or holes, and says plainly when a listing leaves that out.

Julia’s earns a commission on purchases made through links on this page, at no cost to you. Recommendations are based on what a restaurant kitchen looks for in a cone strainer, the makers’ own specifications and the details on each Amazon listing.

Quick verdict: which chinois to buy

The table below compares our five standouts. All eight are reviewed in full after it, followed by how to choose one and answers to common questions.

Five cone strainers side by side

One pick for each kind of cook, with the size and mesh each maker or listing states.

Product images from Amazon. Sizes and mesh descriptions are as stated by each maker, listing or foodservice retailer; few makers give a mesh count, so check the listing before you buy.

Our picks for the best chinois strainer

The first thing to decide is mesh or holes. Woven mesh cones give the smoothest result but need a gentle hand. Punched steel cones, which kitchens call china caps, take a pestle and rinse clean more easily, but they let more fine pulp through. Each pick below says which it is, what the maker states, and one honest reason to skip it.

How to pass a chile sauce through a cone

Soak and blend the chiles as usual, with enough liquid that the purée pours from the jar. Set the cone over a deep pot or bowl with the hook or stand holding it steady, and leave a gap under the tip so the sauce can run out freely. Add a ladleful at a time rather than filling the cone, then work the back of the ladle around the wall in small circles. Press toward the sides, not straight down into the tip, where the solids pack in.

When the flow slows, scrape the outside of the cone into the bowl, because some of the best sauce clings there. Discard the dry skins and seeds in the cone, and rinse before the next batch if the mesh has clogged. If the sauce is too thick to pass, loosen it with a splash of the soaking liquid or stock. A tall soup pot or one of our stainless steel mixing bowls gives the cone a stable place to sit.

How to choose a chinois

Mesh or holes. This matters more than anything else. Woven mesh is the true chinois and the one for stock, custard and silky sauces. A punched cone is a china cap and is better for pressing. Listings blur the two, so read the description, and treat a stated hole size as better evidence than the word in the title. For comparison, Rösle publishes 0.11 cm for its mesh, and de Buyer’s perforated cones are listed at 1.5 mm.

Reinforcement. Woven cones with reinforcing bars or frames resist denting when a ladle presses on them, and when the tip touches the bottom of a pot. If you only strain thin stock, a bare cone is fine. If you push purées through, buy the frame.

Size. Eight inches across fits most home pots and handles a blender jar of sauce in a couple of rounds. Go to 10 or 12 inches only if you cook in quantity and have somewhere to keep it. Capacity is rarely stated, so measure your pot before you buy.

Hook, clip or stand. A cone cannot sit on its own, so it has to rest on something. A pan hook or a bowl clip suits a pot, while a stand is the steadiest choice for pestle work. Check that the hook will reach across the pot you actually own.

Handle. Long handles keep your hand away from steam, and a hollow handle stays more comfortable than solid steel. On a big cone, the handle also has to carry real weight, so look for a welded joint.

Cleaning. Woven mesh traps pulp and dried starch. Rinse from the outside in, straight after use, and use a soft brush. Several picks here are stated as dishwasher safe, but rinse first so food does not bake into the holes.

How we chose these eight cone strainers

We started from what a Mexican kitchen pushes through a cone: dried-chile sauces and mole, tomato and tomatillo purées, stock and consommé. We then looked for cone-shaped strainers sold on Amazon in the United States from established kitchen and foodservice makers, checked each one’s stock with Amazon’s product data, and read the maker’s page where we could reach one. Measurements and materials come from the makers, the Amazon listings or foodservice retailer listings, and we say which; where a listing leaves something out we write “not stated”. We have not used these products ourselves.

We did not find a current independent head-to-head of these cones. America’s Test Kitchen’s review of 8-inch fine-mesh strainers favors stiff mesh and wide, curved pot hooks, and we borrowed those priorities, but it covers bowl strainers rather than cones, so its results say nothing about these picks. The ranking here is our reading of the specifications. We left out low-profile Amazon sellers with no independent review, because these strainers touch your food and we want to be able to say who made them. We also left out a tin-plated bouillon strainer so that every pick here is stainless steel, and strainers that were nearly sold out when we checked. We do not cover Matfer Bourgeat products on this site. The Winco, HIC, New Star and RSVP cones in our fine mesh strainer guide are not repeated here.

Chinois questions, answered

What is a chinois?

A chinois is a cone-shaped strainer, traditionally of very fine woven mesh, used to make stocks, sauces and custards smooth. The cone funnels liquid to the tip and gives you a wall to press against with a ladle or pestle. The name is French for “Chinese”.

What is the difference between a chinois and a china cap?

In kitchen usage, a chinois has fine mesh and a china cap is a perforated metal cone with larger holes, so a china cap gives a coarser result. Sellers often use the names interchangeably, so go by the stated mesh or hole size.

Is a bouillon strainer the same as a chinois?

In practice, yes. Foodservice sellers often call a fine woven mesh cone a bouillon strainer, and the Thunder Group pick here is one. It does the job a chinois does, and retailers list it under both names.

Do I need a pestle?

Not for woven mesh, where a ladle is gentler and works well. A wooden pestle suits perforated cones, where you press soft cooked food through the holes. The Fox Run and Weston sets include one.

Can a blender replace a chinois?

Not fully. A strong blender makes a smoother sauce, as our guide to the best blender for salsa explains, but it breaks skins and seeds up rather than removing them. An immersion blender is handy for soups, and straining still matters for a fine sauce.

What size chinois should I buy?

Eight inches if you are buying one, because it suits most home pots and sauce batches. Choose a larger cone only if you regularly make stock or sauce in quantity.

Our final pick for silky sauces

Buy the Thunder Group 8-Inch Reinforced Bouillon Strainer if you want one fine cone for chile sauces and stock. Choose the Rösle Hotel Chinois for published measurements and a larger basket, the de Buyer for hard pressing, the Fox Run set for a complete kit, and the Vollrath if you cook for a crowd.

If you are making sauce to strain, our guide to enchilada sauces explains the main styles, and a good ladle does most of the pressing. For a bowl-shaped strainer to rinse and sift with, see our best fine mesh strainer guide.

And if you would rather someone else strained the sauce tonight, see the menu or call to order.