44 Kitchen and Cookware Gifts That Won't Get Stashed in the Back of the Cabinet

We asked 10 coffee professionals about the best way to brew coffee. Nearly all of them said pour-over. While the method requires a few more steps -- and a gooseneck kettle -- the pour-over brewer itself is inexpensive. This $20 Oxo model is our favorite and makes the perfect gift for a coffee drinker looking to brew as industry insiders do.

Last year I discovered the Fluicer and my home citrus-juicing will never be the same. Most clamshell juicers kind of stink at their main task, but this bend-and-squeeze version gets nearly every bit of juice from a lemon, lime or orange wedge. There are three sizes but I'm partial to the medium, yellow Fluicer, which is sturdy enough to juice the dickens out of lemons and limes.

Most folks don't own dedicated dessert serverware but they should. If you worked on that moist rum cake -- or simply ordered it on Goldbelly -- this retro, ruffled jadeite cake stand is the perfect way to show it off on a table or buffet.

Folks are ditching their plastic cooking utensils faster than you can say "a mouth full of plastic." While it's unclear how dangerous all synthetic cooking tools are, you may want to take a better-safe-than-sorry approach. These bamboo cooking utensils are carbonized, meaning they're baked quickly to give them that rich, rustic tone. A set of four costs just $12 at World Market and can be snuck cozily into a stocking.

Good cloth napkins fall squarely in the category of "gifts anyone can use." Designers Piece & Ward teamed up with West Elm on these sturdy 100% cotton napkins in three handsome hues and patterns. The d cloth napkins are hand-embroidered in India and sold in sets of four or eight.

Aside from being undeniable fun, these chameleon-inspired tongs are sanitary because the grabbers stay high in the air when you rest them between fetching cheeses or olives.

Who says salt and pepper are old hat? Give the king and queen of spice a glow-up with stylish shakers to adorn the dining room table.

If you're going to cook scrumptious steaks or perfect poultry, you'll want to make sure you nail the internal temperature. Oxo's simple precision digital thermometer gives an instant read between -40 F and 302 F and costs about $20. 

If you know a wine person who could stand to take themselves less seriously, here's your chance to drop a hint.

The chili crisp obsession has reached a true fever pitch in my home and I'm not the only one. Lao Gan Ma chili crisp has been around far longer than most and this crunchy, slightly spicy, sweet umami bomb adds incredible flavor dimension to blank-slate foods, including eggs, chicken, fish and veggies.

If you're looking for something at a more wallet-friendly price, you can't really go wrong with a Boos. This 16x11-inch maple block is light enough to fling around the kitchen but maple will last awhile if you care for it properly. This is perhaps more of a workhorse than a showpiece but any home chef will appreciate it for many chops to come.

If you're a Star Wars fan who happens to love cheese, this Death Star cheese board and toolset feels like an absolute must-have. The cheese board is made from eco-friendly rubberwood with more than 81 inches of serving space. The swivel top opens up to storage for four stainless steel cheese tools: a cleaver for crumbly cheese, a planer for hard cheese, a fork-tipped knife and a classic hard cheese knife and spreader.

The sleekest blender on the market is now available for under $100. The Beast Mini, used by CNET's Managing Editor David Watsky, packs a ton of power into a small, visually pleasing package. Its modest 21-ounce blending cup doesn't leak and can be easily cleaned in the dishwasher.

The blender is perfectly sized for smoothies and comes with a drinking lid featuring a cap and a straw, allowing you to take your morning shake or smoothie along for the ride.

Every kitchen should have a few key herbs growing all year to grab for soups, sauces, marinades and roasts. There are cheaper options, but the best-looking set I've found is Lettuce Grow's trio of amber grow vases. It's a simple design, but it works well either when placed near natural sunlight or with the optional add-on grow lamp ($50).

The system includes three plant pods when ordered directly from Lettuce Grow.

My new favorite hybrid kitchen utensils are as beautiful as they are useful. Tenderly toss and serve a salad or break up diced meat for chili right in the pan with these wooden spatulas handmade in Montana. A four-pack means your giftee won't have to choose which job to use them for on any given night.

Making paella at home is fun and much easier than you might think, but you need the right pan if you plan on serving a group. This excellent 15-inch carbon steel pan from Lodge is reserved for those with kitchen space to store it although it's not nearly as heavy as it appears (remember, it's carbon steel and not cast iron). It also looks darn good hanging from a cookware rack. 

Pair it with some quality saffron-seasoned salt, saffron threads or paella spice blend and wait for your invitation to paella night to roll in.

Few serving vessels get more compliments than the mighty molcajete. Use the bowl to make and serve fresh salsa and guacamole, and the hand-woven basket for storing the molcajete but also for serving chips or warm tortillas on taco night. 

Sous vide is the perfect gadget for a food nerd. This water bath cooking method requires little technical skill and produces excellent results and consistently tender chicken, steak and fish filets.

While you might not use it at every meal and a good chef's knife works in a pinch, having a proper carving knife is a total chef's kiss when you need it. Laguiole's elegant carving knife and fork set is feast-ready.

The cocktail shaker has been around for a long time, but it has been lacking in innovation. This elevated shaker from Huckberry is double-walled so your hands don't freeze and has a no-stick lid so you're not pounding it around the kitchen like a maniac to get into your drink. It's also large enough to make four drinks at once. (Three for me and one for you!)

It might just be the perfect shaker. 

The production of D.O.P. balsamic vinegar is about as tightly regulated as any other food. Crafted in small batches in Modena, Italy, using special grapes, a meticulous aging process (12 years minimum in wooden barrels), this "liquid gold" is as sweet, complex and flavorful as it gets. 

All this careful production comes at a cost -- it's much cheaper if you go to the source -- but you can lay a small bottle on someone for less than $100 and it should last a while. Just don't let them waste it on sauces or salad dressings. This special balsamic is meant to be used sparingly to finish pasta, risotto or served solo with bread and cheese. 

You may need different types of cookware depending on what you're making and the results you're after. For searing steaks, burgers, pork chops and other meats, it's hard to beat carbon steel. For one, it holds heat well, getting and staying hotter than Hades, but it's also lighter than cast iron so you can maneuver it over the stovetop easily. Pair this sleek pan with a box of quality cuts of meat from one of our favorite online butchers.

A coffee grinder that looks this good and grinds this well could cost a lot more. If you're serious about coffee, you need a burr grinder that smashed beans uniformly instead of cutting them wildly and unevenly as cheaper blade grinders do.

There isn't a small kitchen appliance that I use more than a rice cooker. In our testing, this $25 Oster model did excellent. For a more giftable version with fancy features and a sleek look, I recommend Tiger's 5.5-cup rice cooker. It has a special setting for brown rice and doubles as a slow cooker and steamer.

Glass-bowl air fryers are my trend to watch in 2026. This model packs all the punch and convenience of a normal air fryer but without the nonstick basket. It's perfect for an air fryer enthusiast with concerns about PFAS.

A beautiful set of steak knives is an often overlooked gift, but it shouldn't be. This striking eight-piece set has full-tang blades for increased strength and comes housed in a handsome wooden box.

You can't go wrong with a $30 Lodge skillet, but if you're looking to splurge on some luxury cast iron, Lancaster's lighter 10.5-inch pan is a thing of beauty. It weighs in at 4.5 pounds, a full pound lighter than most cast-iron skillets of this size.

Immersion blenders are one kitchen tool that even some seasoned home cooks don't have in their arsenal -- but they should. For pureed soups and sauces, a stick blender is far easier than trying to transfer hot ingredients to an upright blender. Breville's Control Grip model is the best one I tested, with tons of power and a sleek and sturdy build.

The Vermicular cast-iron skillet is a wonder to behold and perhaps the best piece of cookware I discovered last year. The Japanese cookware company managed to create a skillet that holds heat just about as well as thick cast iron but weighs a fraction; a 10-inch pan is just 2.4 pounds. 

The skillet is also very nice to look at if not just a tad fussier to care for than the classic cast iron. It's not a budget buy -- $170 for the pan and $45 for the striking lid -- but it's one of those kitchen splurges I believe is completely worth the money.

This stylish Swedish water purifier is great at removing dissolved solids and looks fabulous doing it. What's not to love?

If you haven't noticed, we're big fans of carbon steel around here and the unique material makes a great candidate for a roasting pan. Carbon steel allows scorched food to lift off its surface more easily than stainless steel. Unlike nonstick -- another popular material used for roasting pans -- it can be heated to scorching temperatures without worry of chemicals leaching.

This handsome pan, complete with an included rack, is courtesy of a collaboration between Made In and Tom Colicchio. It makes a stunning centerpiece and, if cared for properly, will last for many years to come.

When dining at NR, one of New York's buzziest new Japanese restaurants, I was confronted with soup broths and cocktails infused with such deep and delicate flavors that I had to ask how they achieved it.

Owner and director Shigefumi “Shige” Kabashima let me in on the kitchen and bar's secret weapon...

"This Japanese distiller is designed for making aromatics, and it’s incredibly simple and easy to use. It’s great for ingredients that don’t release their flavors well through traditional infusion methods -- things like pinecones, hinoki wood or even wasabi. The distiller extracts only the clean, elegant essence of the ingredient with remarkable precision. It can be used both for creating aromatics and for making unique infusions for beverages.”

Making seltzer at home is a good idea. It'll save you money and keep loads of cans from clogging up the recycling system. Plus, no more lugging them out to the curb. SodaStream is the most well-known brand but Aarke has the plastic seltzer makers beat big-time when it comes to style. The Aarke carbonator is made from stainless steel and comes in shiny and matte finishes.

It also uses the same SodaStream CO2 canisters, which are easy to find and have a great exchange program that'll only cost you $15 per bottle.

If you've tried traditional compost but can't handle the smell, a Lomi will make green living much easier. It's shocking how much organic waste goes into the trash bin and landfill, but not with Lomi. This small countertop machine turns egg shells, rinds, coffee grinds and other food scraps into sweet soil for the yard or garden.

A trash bin may not sound like a special gift, but trust me: any home cook will appreciate the smart design of this dual-compartment trash can. The automatic lids are a lifesaver when hands are dirty or holding spatulas and chef's knives.

The recycling bin lifts out for easy emptying, and the garbage side has a pocket to hold air fresheners to keep the worst odors from taking over. Built-in bag storage dispenses custom-fit liners one at a time, though you'll need to buy SimpleHuman's bags for them to fit.

It's the very garbage can I use in my kitchen, and I wouldn't trade it for another.

I am a big fan of the at-home pizza oven. Not just for pizza but for all sorts of meal-making when you don't want to turn on the oven. You can cook burgers, fish, veggies and more in very little time because these ovens get up to 900 degrees. And with its sleek, modern design, the Ooni Koda would make a stylish, as well as delicious, addition to anyone's backyard space.

If a chef on your gift list is short a Dutch oven, Le Creuset's 3.5-quart round Dutch is a no-brainer. They'll praise you every time they bust out this elegant and durable pot for making a slow sauce, braise or soup. These luxury French pots can cost more than $500 so less than $280 for the 3.5-quart (a good size for cooking for two or three) is a proper steal.

There are the gifts we think people want and the gifts they definitely want. An absolutely beautiful piece of sushi-grade tuna belly is the latter for a foodie, I promise. If you're looking to give a special piece of tuna belly, hamachi or yellowtail, I suggest this family-owned online seafood purveyor based out of Los Angeles. The Ito family procures some of the best high-end sushi-grade fish, along with more common catches like wild salmon, prawns and unagi. 

Riviera ships fresh or flash-frozen fish to all 50 states and Washington, D.C., and most of it is sashimi-grade, meaning you can slice and eat -- no cooking necessary.

ButcherBox is known for sending premium cuts of beef that are 100% grass-fed, grass-finished and humanely raised to satisfy even the choosiest carnivores. Most customers choose a subscription that can be canceled or paused easily, but you can also gift someone a one-time send like the Steak Lover's Box. This collection of cuts includes two 10-ounce rib eyes, two 10-ounce NY strips, two six-ounce filets and four six-ounce top sirloin steaks for $175.

For someone who likes to toy around and tinker in the kitchen, a bundle of interesting pantry staples is about as good a gift as they could hope for. Bokksu sells loads of Japanese pantry staples including misos, chili crisps, spice mixes and plenty of snacks, too. Snatch a preassembled bundle or curate your own for the home chef on your list. The Discovery Pack (shown here) costs $56.

This is another gift for a foodie or home chef that's about as foolproof as it gets. Every chef uses spices, but sometimes we're limited by region or a meager selection at the grocery store. RawSpiceBar opens up a world of exciting spice blends for less than $12 per month, sending freshly ground global spice mixtures to your giftee's home along with recipe ideas to try them with.

You can give a one-, three-, six-, nine- or 12-month subscription or buy a gift card for the person on your list.

If the person you're buying for could use a lift in the kitchen, a few weeks of handy meal kits will do the trick. Blue Apron is one of the best meal kit services we tested, offering fancy bistro steak and fresh seafood options. It also no longer requires a subscription, making it even more giftable than it has been in years past.

Sometimes the best gift you can give a busy home chef is a night or two off from cooking. If you're looking for a great gift to send from afar, Mosaic Foods' inventive plant-based meals are my pick. It's one of the best prepared meal services I've tasted and the brand allows for easy gifting. You can send six meals (four servings each) for under $100 or create your own custom box. 

Read my full review of Mosaic Foods.