Holiday Gift Guide - Top Gifts for the Home Cook!

It's the time of year when everyone is scrambling for that last minute perfect gift for friends and family. If you have an aspiring chef or an avid home cook in your family or among your friends here's my Holiday Gift Guide - Top Gifts for the Home Cook. It's my go-to list of absolute must-haves for the kitchen. 

I've lived in Italy 35 years and worked in the culinary field most of that time...food consulting, catering and Italian cooking classes. Everything on my holiday gift guide are things I use constantly both professionally and in my daily home cooking. They're tools that everyone looks at and says “wow, I have to get one of those!”

• There’s a list of items that are great small gifts to use as stocking stuffers, or hostess gifts.
• There’s a list of medium-sized, and medium price range gifts.
• And then there are the larger, extra-special tools and appliances.

So let's get started! If you see something you like click on the image and it’ll take you right to the gift item details! Happy shopping!

Small Gift Items:

Perfect stocking stuffers, hostess gifts!

Microplane Classic Zester

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This is one of the most loved tools by chefs and home cooks alike. It started off as as a zester – and it's fabulous for this – but now it's used all the time for small jobs like grating cheese and other food items when you want a fine, almost powdery grate.

Knife Sharpening Stone

Click on the image for product details!Whether you have top-of-the-line knives or knives that were handed down to you from your mother you need a fabulous knife sharpener! The only thing that truly works well, and is the best way you can treat your knives with care, is a sharpening stone. Before slicing or chopping dip the stone in water and then sharpen your knife. That way your knife is always at its sharpest - and that also means at its safest! A dull knife guarantees your cutting and slicing job will be done poorly, plus you run the risk of cutting a finger.

Avocado tools:

I'm always on the lookout for great avocado tools and most of them don't cut the mustard. There is one that I am absolutely in love with and have been using for quite a few years. It is the

Avocado Slicer

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First slice your avocado in half and remove the seed. Then with a gentle scooping motion you slide the slicing tool through the avocado and it removes all of the flesh and slices it at the same time. It's a great way to prepare beautiful avocado slices for avocado toast and salads.

A second tool that I use is the

 Avocado Cuber Tool

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With this tool the concept is similar. Once you have your avocado sliced in half and pitted you push the avocado cuber right into the avocado flesh and squiggle left and right. The crisscross of stainless steel cuts into the flesh and you end up with perfectly and uniformly shaped avocado cubes.

Teardrop strainer

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I positively could not live without my teardrop strainer! And every single cooking student who sees one in our classes purchases one immediately! I use it to drain pasta and vegetables when I want to reserve the cooking water or when I want to drain the food very delicately. When I make ravioli or other delicate pastas if I drain them in a colander I run the risk of breaking them, but by gently scooping them out with a teardrop strainer they remain in perfect shape. And then I can use that nice starchy cooking water to thicken up my pasta sauces, and other sauces.

Often when I make soups I like to scoop out the vegetables and other ingredients to purée. This way I can add the cooking water gradually to achieve the perfect soup consistency.

Garlic Press

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I've had many garlic presses over the years and usually end up disappointed. The most annoying feature of most garlic presses is that to get all of the garlic out of the press, and clean it when you're done, you have to use a spoon or some other tool to pick and scrape out any residual garlic. 

The acts garlic press is not only incredibly sturdy but once you've done the pressing you lift up the perforated metallic part of the tool and easily rinse it off. This tool is a winner!

Food Tongs

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Most food tongs just don’t do the job, but these do! They grip food firmly and make it easy to grab and turn veggies, steaks and cutlets, sausages.

Adjustable Mandolin Slicer

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This is one of the simplest and most useful must-have tools when you want to quickly slice up fruits and vegetables. You can adjust the thickness, and use one of the attachments to grate, julienne , or grate.

Cherry and Olive Pitter

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it's not a tool you'll use all the time, but when you need it you will be thrilled that you have it! Of course here in Italy olives are a big thing so I'm constantly pitting them to throw them into dishes of all kinds.

And then when it gets to cherry season I love to make cherry pies, cherry cakes, cherry jams. This tool takes the pain and drudgery out of pitting cherries: you place the cherry in the pitter, squeeze and the seed goes out and the flesh remains behind: bingo!

Potato Ricer

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Cutting Board Scraper

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Mini Whisk Broom for Your Kitchen Counter

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Let's move into some slightly larger tools that are must-haves in every home kitchen on my Holiday Gift Guide for the Home Cook!

Digital Kitchen Scale

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I'm fixated with cooking in metric as it's reliable and precise. I encourage every home cook and aspiring chef to move in this direction and ditch all those measuring cups you have! Seriously though, a digital scale is a must for anyone, and here's why.

Whether cooking in metric or US standard measurement, it's the simplest way to measure. If your recipe calls for a pound of potatoes plop them on top of the scale to weigh out your pound of potatoes. If you're on a diet and need to weigh out your foods use your kitchen scale. If you're making a delicate cake that requires precise measurements again the digital cooking scale is your best friend!

Food mill

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The food mill has been around for decades and it's of been a mainstay in every Italian kitchen all that time. When I make a tomato sauce with fresh tomatoes, once my sauce is done I place it in the food mill, turn the crank until the sauce is in one pot and what's left behind are the discardable tomato peels and seeds.

I use a food mill when I make blackberry jam and prefer to remove the seeds.

If I'm making a seafood or shrimp bisque I pass the bisque through the food mill until all the creamy essence and deliciousness is in a saucepan and what's left behind is the shells and tough bits.

Immersion blender

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I use an immersion blender just about every single day! It's an amazing tool to purée soups right in its cooking pan, to remove lumps from gravy & smooth it out, to purée veggies to a creamy consistency. It's simple, easy to use and gets the job done.

Larger Gift Items:

Perfect gifts for the avid home cook or aspiring chef!

Extra-Large Stainless Steel Nesting Bowls

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I've had my nesting bowls for about three years now and I guarantee you every time I use them I say to myself “I am so glad I got these nesting  bowls”! So why do you need these?

It's a super easy way to mix up dough for pasta and bread, or hand-whisked cakes.

They are fantastic to throw in tons of salad ingredients and toss them up with ease and without spillage all over your counter.

Do you have small children in the kitchen who like to cook and experiment? Then these nesting bowls are perfect! Kids can sit down on the floor or up on the counter and stir and mix away without making a mess. 

And by the way, on almost every cooking show I watch these nesting bowls are used constantly!

Gourmet Sandwich  Maker Grill

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How many of you out there love a grilled cheese sandwich, or other kind of grilled sandwich? Well I certainly do and honestly this grill let's me have a grilled sandwich without buttering the bread – and that makes it a winner for me.

But I use this grill for a lot of other things too: cooking sausages, salmon steaks, chicken breasts.

Place your sandwich or food item on the grill and then close down the lid. It cooks everything perfectly in a flash! Any grease drips down into a little grease collector which you can then wash out. The grill, top and bottom, can be wiped clean with a damp washcloth. No soap necessary!

I have lots of pots and pans and many of them are low-cost and all-purpose which works fine for me – most of the time! I do insist on a couple of top quality pans:

Agnelli Stainless Steel Casserole

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Agnelli is my favorite line of Italian cookware, and their product line is extensive from all-purpose items to show-stopping copper pots.

The handles on this casserole pot are also stainless steel so it's a stovetop to oven pan which is wonderfully convenient.

Wok Stir Fry Pan

Click on the image for product details!I like to have a pan like this on hand for stir frying, making risotto, and other cooking tasks when I want lots of space for cooking but with a smaller base so the food accumulates in the base of the pan..

 

Pricier Gift Items:

Perfect for the extra-special person in your life!

I have a whole collection of Le Creuset cookware and frankly this cookware line is fabulous. They come with a lifetime guarantee, they are heavyweight, even cookery pans, and most are stovetop to oven. They’re also so gorgeous that you take them off the stove and right to the dinner table.

Here are some of my Le Creuset favorites:

Le Creuset Tagine

Click on the image for product details!Tagine cookery is one of the most beautiful ways to slow cook foods with a constant rotation of moisture because the conical top let's the steam come up and collect in the top of the cone and then drip right down into the center of the cooking food. Do I use it just for tagines? Not at all! It's become my go-to slow cookery pot!

Le Creuset Heritage Covered Rectangular Dish

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Great for lasagna and other casseroles and again: it's freezer or stovetop to oven, and then oven right to the dinner table! It's beautiful.

Le Creuset Mini Pots

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I love these for so many reasons and for so many uses: they’re beautiful, they’re great to make small individual meals like mini eggplant Parmesan, soufflés, and other dishes when you want to prepare individual portions.

I keep a few on hand right on my kitchen counter for rock salt and table salt. Lift off the lid, pinch or scoop out what you need and toss it into your dish. It's a great multipurpose mini pot to have on hand - and they’re sturdy and pretty!

6 Qt Stainless Steel Pressure Cooker

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I’m an absolute fan of pressure cookers but almost everyone I speak to is afraid of them, and it’s usually based on a decades ago bad experience their mom had with an exploding pressure cooker. Those days have come and gone!

Nowadays modern pressure cookers, which are incredibly affordable, are one of the most useful tools imaginable! Do you feel like bean soup but you know beans will take hours to cook? Put them in a pressure cooker and they’re done in under half an hour! Would you like to make a wonderful beef stew so that the meat is tender and slips right off the bone and any fat tissue dissolves into wonderfulness? Use a pressure cooker: what would normally take all day can be done in under an hour. It's also great for making soups: throw in vegetables and other ingredients and soup is done in a flash. 

6 Qt Instant Pot

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The latest rage for those who are afraid of pressure cookers but want all the wonderful advantages of a pressure cooker is the Instant Pot. It’s a pressure cooker taken up 100 notches! It does all the fast cooking tasks that I mentioned before, plus a ton others. It serves as a food warmer so you can keep food warm for hours, it serves as a yogurt maker, it sautés, it steams, it works as a rice cooker and it's a great slow cooker: you can program various temperature settings and cooking times of up to 20 hours! If you don't want to go the simple pressure cooker route then the Instant Pot is a must and there's not a single person out there who would not love one!

And now we get to my number one favorite kitchen appliance of all times on my Holiday Gift Guide for the Home Cook:

KitchenAid Stand Mixer

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This mixer has a motor with incredible power so it can take on all kinds of tasks including kneading tough dough. I think I use it most of all for cakes and breads, but it's scope is endless! The KitchenAid has so many amazing attachments and each and every one of them I have fallen in love with! First off, make the investment in the KitchenAid. It's a must and something that will bring you, or the person you're buying it for, a lifetime of joy!

The mixer comes with a few basic attachment tools: a whisk, a paddle and a dough hook. That will do you for almost every task, but you might want to consider purchasing a few other tools. One for sure is the 

KitchenAid Flex Edge Beater

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The great feature of this beater is that as you mix the rubber side of the beater continuously scrapes down the bowl. That way all the little bits of ingredients on the bottom of the bowl get mixed in continuously.

A few other special attachments that I am over the moon about:

KitchenAid Grain Mill Attachment

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With this tool you can grind your own flour into a fine or courser ground. At Thanksgiving I love to make cornbread: throw in the corn kernels and grind up your own yummy cornmeal! Sometimes you might like to make a bread or cake using different kinds of grains (farro, wild rice, barley, chick peas), but don't find the ready-ground flour. The Grain Mill grinds perfect flour! And by the way cakes and breads made with freshly ground flour just tastes better!

KitchenAid Meat and Vegetable Grinder

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I adore this tool. This week I made delicious pork meatballs that were so full of flavor! I put pork meat, some sliced prosciutto, and some dried bread all through the grinder together. It mixed it all up beautifully and made just what I needed for these meatballs! You can also grind meat along with onions, carrots, zucchini or celery.

The grinder has a rougher grind and a fine grind depending on what you want to achieve. It's great to grind carrots or zucchini for breads, or just about any grinding task you need in the kitchen.

KitchenAid Vegetable Sheet Cutter

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This is my newest KitchenAid attachment and once again I am in love! It slices vegetables into a thin sheet – you can adjust the thickness. Use this tool when you want a sheet of zucchini that you can fill with vegetables or meats and rollup to cook in the oven. Or let's say you want to make a vegetarian lasagna without carbs: make sheets of vegetables and layer the sheets just as you would sheets of pasta dough. How about thin sheets of potato stuffed with meat or cheese and then deep-fried? I think you see how useful this tool is so go for it!

The Christmas Holiday Season is a time of splendor and beauty in Rome! You'll enjoy reading about it in these posts: Christmas Decorations & Festivity in Rome  and Christmas in Rome.

And why not try making Panettone, the classic Italian Christmas dessert this year? Here's my step-by-step recipe!

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