The 39 Best Food and Kitchen Gifts for Cooks, Dinner Party Enthusiasts, and Everybody Else Who Loves Food
Finding the best food and kitchen gifts for the holidays is always a little bit tricky. This isn’t a wedding registry, after all—you’re likely not buying your friends their first chef’s knife or sauté pan. So this year, we're recommending gifts that will be beautiful, special additions to any kitchen (and ingredients so delicious you’ll buy a second helping for yourself).
A good platter is hard to find. Which is why we were so excited to happen upon this French porcelain beauty in mustard—sorry, moutarde. We love the sleek, minimalist look of this platter, whose unglazed edges reveal a strip of raw black clay. And good news—it's microwave, oven, and dishwasher safe, which means you can go ahead and reheat that whole pan of lasagna at once.
Our go-to move when we need a quick present for a food-obsessed friend? A beautiful jar of something that will add a punch to whatever they’re into cooking. Enter Chile Crunch, a crispy, spicy, oil-laced condiment that’s perfect on sandwiches, salads, toast, or drizzled onto dips. Consider that stocking stuffed—and spiced, too.
These linen napkins, made from stonewashed French flax, have the worn-in feel of a favorite pair of jeans, while making any dinner table look a little more put together. Pick up a few four-packs for yourself if your napkins are looking a little sad, or keep a stash of them as hostess gifts.
A tortilla press is one of the greatest single-use kitchen tools you can get, mostly because homemade tortillas are leaps and bounds better than store-bought, especially when you’re making tacos. This cast-iron number comes with a napkin to keep your tortillas warm, and the deep red color will brighten up any kitchen counter.
Burlap & Barrel works with small farms and growers to source super-special spices that you can’t find at your local Whole Foods. We love making customized sets as gifts, depending on who—or what cuisine—we’re buying for. We especially suggest the Ground Black Lime and the Black Urfa Chile.
Quick-cooling a bottle of wine is always stressful: your guests are here, and they’re ready to drink, and that low-sulfite white from Sardinia is wallowing at room temperature. But these coolers make the situation a whole lot easier: stash them in the freezer, slide them around your bottle, and they’ll cool it in 15 minutes. Plus, this set is pretty enough to put out on the dinner table.
You don’t have to be an aspiring outdoorsman to warrant a handsome, expertly-crafted folding knife. They come in handy for everything from opening a package to slicing an apple. And we love this one from Kanekoma, which features a blue steel blade with a versatile edge that means it’s great for lefties and righties alike.
These lotions can soothe even the crankiest of dry, washed-too-many-dishes hands. Weleda Skin Food is thick but not goopy and absorbs quickly; our cleaning correspondent ranked it highest among all other hand lotions. The bottle is small enough to sit comfortably on your kitchen counter or sink. And we love the gentle, herbal scent that comes from a mixture of rosemary and chamomile.
For a more luxe stocking stuffer, go for Goe Oil. Free of all the dicey ingredients that often come standard in lotion, it’s derived from plant-based oils. You only need the tiniest amount to hydrate your hands for an extended period of time.
Unless you’ve been living under a very large cast iron skillet these past few years, you know that Yotam Ottolenghi’s cookbooks are the sort of thing that will make you look like dinner party royalty, even when you identify as more of a couch potato. Now, two of them, Plenty More and Ottolenghi Simple are boxed together in a beautiful, limited-edition set.
Think of this as the Cadillac of sponges. Sure, it’s technically designed to wash vegetables, and it does a great job of that, but it’ll very quickly replace your sad yellow sponges as well. This set of three means you can dedicate a couple to dishes and one to vegetable scrubbing. Plus, it’s the perfect thing to clean your cast iron: gentle enough not to scratch it, but serious enough to get those stubborn bits out.
This pocket watch-sized kitchen thermometer takes the guesswork out of cooking large (read: expensive!) cuts of meat. The cord that connects its probe to its display is heatproof, meaning you can keep it plugged into your rack of lamb while it cooks, and it’ll tell you when your roast hits the exact right temperature. No more fretting over overcooked game hens or undercooked ribeyes! We call it a braising game-changer.
We love these serpentine and evil eye cocktail skewers for the attitude they add to any at-home cocktail. Because we all know that garnishes are what set apart ho-hum, Tuesday-night manhattans from the sort of nicely-garnished drink that all your guests will still be talking about next week. Pick up a pair for the aspiring bartender in your life, and if you’re feeling generous, pair it with a great bottle of liquor.
Design studio HAY has become wildly popular in the past few years, thanks to its simple and thoughtful Danish-inspired designs and its moderate price tag. (A win-win, if you ask us.) This lightweight jug, designed by glass artist Jochen Holz, is the perfect thing to hold a batch of iced tea or a bouquet of flowers.
If you still haven’t added a cast iron skillet to your kitchen arsenal, now’s the time. This pan from Lodge commemorates their founder’s first foundry, established in 1896. And its 12-inch diameter means it's big enough to make dinner for a crowd, but small enough to feel like your own personal pan when you want a fried egg or a few sautéed vegetables for lunch.
Chiles can too often be an afterthought: you probably have a few bags of dried whole chiles or chile flakes knocking around in your pantry, and they’ve probably been there for who-knows-how-long. Which makes these heirloom chiles, grown in Andhra Pradesh, India, so special. They lend heat, fire, and a bit of fruitiness to any curry, or you can grind them into DIY Chile flakes.
The internet will never fully replace cookbooks, and we don’t want it to. This cookbook and tablet stand accommodates the happy medium where most of us live: cooking from books sometimes, and from our devices at others. This way, you can prop up your tablet to swipe through ingredient lists, and hold open your copy of COOK90—all on the same stand.
These wine glasses are cultishly beloved by sommeliers in some of the country’s top restaurants for their lightweight feel and elegant shape. (Our editors are big fans, too.) Think of them as investment pieces for the wine lover in your life (which might be you!). These light, thin glasses mean that you get more wine, and less glass, in each sip—we find that they make our pinots and pét-nats taste even better. And they’re a lot more handsome than drinking out of recycled ball jars.
A nice trivet is an opportunity to turn something functional into a piece of decor. We love these inventive twists on the form: sculptural ceramic, minimalist metal, and a homey, wall-hangable wooden fish. Plus, they all make for another excuse to show off your nicest casserole dishes and cast iron pans—or invest in some new ones.
We love this large, shallow bowl for serving salads and side dishes, or as a pretty way to serve citrus this winter. The two-toned, textured effect comes from two glazes, sprayed by hand. The maker layers a sand glaze over a dark gray glaze and when the piece is fired, the glazes mix and interact, creating a range of colors and textures that differs in each bowl. No one bowl is exactly the same as another and that's why we love it.
Nothing adds warmth and a bit of sparkle to a holiday table like some elegant, unscented taper candles. We love these sets from Food52 from their bold-but-not-too-bold colors, and the fact that they’re formulated to burn without dripping on that vintage linen tablecloth you salvaged from an estate sale. Because your dinner party should be all vibes and no spills.
Nothing can ruin a dinner party—or a romantic date—like a splash of red wine spilled on your favorite piece of clothing or table linens. Which is why we love keeping a bottle of this stain remover in our kitchens. This stuff works like magic, and comes in a cheeky container meant to look a bottle of red. And it’ll turn you into the sort of easy, breezy host you’ve always wanted to be.
For serious fans of lemonade or margaritas (or both!), this is a must-have for your kitchen counter. It makes juicing citrus a breeze, thanks to an ultra-quiet motor and a juice press arm that means the machine is doing way more work than you are. And it fits anything from key limes to hefty grapefruits.
Poor storage can cause cheese to dry out or prematurely mold. These little “vaults”—with dividers to accommodate for different sizes of cheese scraps—will keep your parmesan and your tomme separate and well cared for. And their edges double as dry-erase labels, to keep track of which cheeses are in the fridge, and when they need to be eaten by.
This kettle looks more sleek and modern than your traditional stovetop variety. It’s made from stainless steel and designed by Fellow and has a few key features that set it apart from other kettles. It has a wider spout that stays sealed until you tip the kettle over to pour, at which point the spout automatically opens for safe one-handed pouring. And the right-angle handle isn't just for style: it makes for a controlled pour that's easy on your wrist. And this kettle is beautiful enough to keep you happy while you wait for that water to boil first thing in the morning.
Composting always sounds like a great idea—it’s good for the environment! It turns all your kitchen scraps into worm food!—but it can be an enormous hassle without the right equipment. This little bin fits neatly on a kitchen counter, and its handsome wood exterior will actually make its new owner happy to set aside their banana peels and eggshells.
Few things are more disappointing than getting home from the farmers market, where you blissfully strolled through the stalls to lovingly pick out ingredients for your upcoming dinner party, only to realize that your delicate produce has smashed against your other delicate produce, and also that carton of grass-fed milk spilled all over your foraged mushrooms. Avoid tote bag clutter with this handsome, handy bag with six compartments.
