The 2020 Kitchen Gift Guide, Part 3

The gift that keeps on giving ...

For more than a decade, I’ve been recommending gifts for your kitchen. This year, I’m experimenting with sending them out by email. Part One covered stocking stuffers, and Part Two covered some larger gifts for under the tree. Here in Part Three I’ll cover some bigger-ticket presents, especially kitchen electrics. Part Four, where we’ll talk cookbooks and how to find gifts for people with specific interests, is still to come …

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Today we passed a thousand subscriptions! I hope that means you’re finding it helpful. I gather that the most popular item from among the stocking stuffers was far and away the dough whisk, while the big winner from among the larger gifts in Part II was the Shun’s Bird Beak Paring knife. As data becomes available for today’s guide, I’ll pass it on.

In the meantime, onwards to even larger gifts! But first I want to pause for just a minute and talk about supply chains.

As you’ve perused this guide, you may notice that prices feel a bit … off. Which is to say, high. Some of the things I’m recommending are as much as 40% more expensive than a comparable product last year. Unfortunately.

Supply chains have been heavily strained by covid-19, as we all know. Shipping was interrupted for weeks in the spring and early summer, factories have had to shut down or operate at lower capacity, and of course, moving people and goods across borders is now both medically and politically fraught. So in some cases, thing a simply much more expensive than they used to be, especially electrics. And obviously, as the price rises, you’re going to notice that more.

It’s even made it hard to get your hands on some things at all, as manufacturers have streamlined their operations and concentrated on the most popular lines. The Kitchenaid 6-quart professional mixer that I normally recommend, for example, is listed on both Amazon and the Kitchenaid website as out of stock.

Given that something like a mixer is a big investment you’ll have for years, my recommendation is to print out a picture of the one you want to give and leave it under the tree, with an IOU for when it becomes available, rather than buying a less-than-ideal substitute.

The harder question is what to do when things are available, but only at an elevated price. That’s a difficult conundrum; it might be cheaper next year, but then again, it might not, because supply chains are going to be resettling for a while. I can’t tell you what to do in that situation, but I did want to highlight it so you can decide for yourself.

Now, with that said, let’s do the fun part: talking gifts.

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Profligate Presents $100 to $200

Instant Pot Duo Evo Plus $120-$140 Years ago, I started talking about electric pressure cookers; now it seems like everyone’s talking about them. And with good reason. The speed of a pressure cooker makes it ideal for busy families, and the one-pot cooking makes for easy cleanup. But convenience isn’t the only reason to like them; I also find I get the most flavorful soups out of a pressure cooker. Plus the electric ones have all sorts of other settings—yogurt, rice, slow cooking, even sous vide. And while the slow cooking features were pretty uneven in early years, they’ve steadily improved over time.

The Instant Pot was the model that put electric pressure cookers on the map, and it’s the one I recommend, for a few reasons: they’re well made, reliable, and they have a lot of accessories and recipes available specifically for them. This particular model is one of their higher-end offerings.

Aside from the standard settings, the Duo Evo Plus has 48 “one touch” settings for specific foods. But its main appeal is just solid performance at basic pressure- and slow-cooking. If you’re cooking for a large family, I’d get the eight quart model, but I manage reasonably well with a six quart for myself, a large dog, and a husband who has been known to eat more than a pound of meat in one sitting.

If this is a first foray into Instant Pottery, you might want to add a basic accessory kit with a steamer basket and some pans that fit inside the machine. They’re not necessary, but if you plan to get into Instant Pot fan favorites like cheesecakes or egg bites, they’re useful.

Shun 6.5” Nakiri Knife, $145 I love the Japanese knives, with their thin, sharp edges. This one was my mother’s discovery, however; as my mother has gotten older, she no longer likes using a big, heavy 9-inch chef’s knife as much. Instead, for all but the toughest jobs, she’s switched to this knife, which is lighter and easier for her to use even with arthritis in her hands. It’s great for vegetables, small pieces of boneless meat, or fish.

Shun 6” serrated utility knife $129 This is another of my mother’s finds: a wide, scalloped serrated edge that’s especially good for anything soft, like tomatoes, ripe fruit, or pastries with squishy fillings. Shun also makes a slightly less fancy version for $70.

Shun 8” Chef’s Knife, $180 However, if you do want a larger knife that can easily joint a chicken or mince a mountain of onion, I love the Shun chef’s knives, which rely on a sharper, slightly thinner cutting edge to do the job their German cousins attack with sheer weight. They’re beautifully constructed, perfectly balanced, and if you take care of them, they’ll last you for decades.

Anova Immersion Circulator, $140 “Sous vide” is a technique for cooking things in a water bath at a very precise temperature. This is not the same thing as boiling them; you put your meat, eggs, or vegetables in a vacuum-sealed bag, or even an ordinary ziploc, so that they don’t get waterlogged. What the water bath does is hold the temperature steady, so that it’s impossible to overcook.

This is the killer app for meat and especially fish. Not only do they turn out perfect every time, but this technique makes certain things possible that aren’t possible any other way—a 24-hour chuck roast, for example, cooked to medium rare and tasting surprisingly close to a much more expensive prime rib. It’s also a game-changer for chicken breast, which comes out moist, flavorful, and unbelievably tender, even if you don’t use any fat in cooking.

These circulators clip to any large pan or large plastic container, then store neatly in a drawer, where they take up less space than almost any other kitchen electric. They’re particularly good for novice cooks, because if you follow a few simple instructions, it is absolutely impossible to screw things up.

Kitchenaid electric teakettle $122 I first learned about electric kettles in the UK, where they are ubiquitous. Unfortunately, American kettles simply aren’t as good as the ones across the pond, which boil water in practically the time it takes you to think “I’d like a cup of tea”. The fault is not in our kettles, but in our electric wiring; America runs on 110v, which just doesn’t generate the pow! of Europe’s 240v.

Nonetheless, electric kettles can be very useful—when my grandmother went blind from macular degeneration, an electric kettle meant she could enjoy a cup of tea when she wanted it, rather than waiting for my grandfather to get home from his gas station. My husband keeps ours on the basement bar for making toddies. And the fancy ones like this also let you bring water to a precise, but sub-boiling temperature, which the more finicky tea and pour-over coffee fanatics insist on.

Burr grinder, $140 In my opinion, most of the benefit of grinding your own coffee comes from grinding your own coffee, not the kind of grinder you choose. There is a huge difference between coffee that was ground months ago in a factory, or weeks ago in the store, and coffee that was ground this morning in a cheap blade grinder. There is a much smaller difference between coffee ground in a cheap blade grinder, and coffee ground in a state-of-the-art burr grinder.

However, most is not all. And if you really love a good cup of coffee—or know someone who does—then you should invest in a burr grinder. Blade grinders produce an uneven grind, and in theory the friction of the fast-moving blade slightly heats the beans as it grinds, which can change the flavor. Burr grinders are also somewhat more convenient to use, though unlike a blade grinder, they cannot double up for spices.

All Clad Three Quart Saucepan, $179 I noted in the last newsletter that I think the most useful saucepan sizes are one quart and three quart. And what I like in a three quart is solid, stainless steel construction that can manage high heat for boiling down liquids as well as a slow simmer. Non-stick is always tempting, but eventually it will scratch, and you will have to replace it; I say get something that will last. You can buy cheaper saucepans, but you can’t beat the quality of All Clad.

Copper pepper and salt grinder, $65 each Obviously, these are pretty. But the actual reason I got them is accessibility for people with arthritis or grip strength problems; the lever is easier to work than a traditional grinder that requires you to twist your wrist.

Toothbrush/Waterpik, $135 Okay, technically this isn’t a kitchen gift, but I just love the darn thing. It combines brushing and light flossing into one step, and I think it works slightly better than a normal water flosser. My teeth have never felt cleaner. Sorry if that’s too much information, but I am a natural enthusiast, and when I find something I really like, I want to tell people about it.

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Lavish Luxuries $200 to $500

Breville Smart Oven Air, $400 If your main priority in a toaster oven is making toast, then I suggest you just buy a toaster; no toaster oven performs quite as well as an old fashioned narrow-well-between-heating-elements model. But if you want a flexible appliance that can also double as an oven, Breville is the clear winner.

I tried their top-of-the-line model, the Smart Oven Air a few years back, and my husband loved it so much he made me upgrade. It’s not just an excellent toaster oven, but also an air-fryer, a dehydrator, and even a slow cooker (obviously, you need to use your own pot). All of those functions are top-notch, and this machine probably gets more use than our regular oven. But if you don’t think you could use an air-fryer, slow cooker, and dehydrator in addition to your toaster oven, you can get the regular Smart Oven for about a third less.

Breville Ice Cream Maker, $500 This is the Rolls Royce of consumer-grade ice cream machines. Instead of a bowl that you freeze in advance—and will start to lose its chill towards the end—this machine uses a compressor, like your air conditioner, so that you can, if you want, freeze batch after batch. The main problem is that you will then have batch after batch of delicious, fattening ice cream to consume.

Kitchenaid Stand Mixer $500 Over the years, I’ve considered a lot of alternative stand mixers. But at the end of the day, I always come back to the Kitchenaid—and not just because I’ve spent over 20 years cooking with the classic white model my mother gifted me with for Christmas while I was still in college. The main reason I recommend it is that Kitchenaid makes a damn fine mixer: powerful, well constructed, and reliable. But as an economics journalist, I recognize that there’s a secondary reason, something economists call “network effects”.

Kitchenaid absolutely dominates American counters. Because they sell so many mixers, at a hefty price point, their equipment is relatively easy to get serviced. But it also means they can afford to invest in developing a very large array of accessories—my personal favorites are the pasta rollers ($139) and the spiralizer ($90), and the ice cream bowl ($90) also works very well if you don’t have a compressor machine. Third parties have also invested in developing things for the Kitchenaid, like this pouring chute ($18) I rely on to keep my baking neat(ish).

I do think it’s worth spending the extra money for a pro-style bowl-lift model. The form factor can be off-putting at first for people who are used to the convenience of a tilt-head, but it really doesn’t take long to adjust, and once you have, you’ll never go back. The bowl-lifts have more powerful motors, and the bowls are, in my experience, more stable on the base. Plus you get a bigger bowl, which is useful if you like to bake a lot.

The problem is, you can’t get them right now, so if you want the higher-end model, you’ll have to be prepared to wait. Still, given that a good mixer can last decades, I’d be willing to delay gratification.

Vitamix, $415 The secret to a great blender isn’t so much the motor—though of course you do need a powerful motor—but the design of the container. A good container is a masterpiece of fluid dynamics, ensuring that all the food gets sucked down onto the whirring blades. Here Vitamix is the champ, which is why they routinely top ratings of high-end blenders.

But do you need a high end blender? Well, I was very glad to be able to borrow one when a friend had jaw surgery, and I wanted to puree the soup I made him absolutely fine. And if you make a lot of smoothies—or frozen cocktails—you’ll certainly enjoy the machine’s power, not to mention its seven year warranty. Also, they’re all made in America, so they still seem to have good availability.

But if you’re making one margarita every three years, I’d skip it. Expensive appliances are usually absolutely worth their cost—but only if you use them all the time. The secret to assembling a great kitchen is to recognize when you are that person who will—and when you aren’t.

Enameled Cast Iron Dutch Ovens. I have four of these: a Le Creuset 5.5 quart round ($360), their 6.75 quart oval ($360), the Staub 4 qt ($280), and a Le Creuset 2.25 quart novelty cocotte ($200). Obviously, I did not acquire these all at once, even at slightly lower pre-pandemic prices; I accumulated them over years of gifts and sales.

These are the all-around workhorses of my kitchen; I fry chicken in them, make stews and soups, bake casseroles, even roast chickens. They’re also essential for baking crusty no-knead bread.

Why are they so essential? Well cast iron is a perfect braiser, because it’s not a very good conductor of heat. I know that sounds funny, but relatively poor conductivity means it heats slowly and evenly, then stays hot for a long time, which makes it the perfect material for a long slow cook—or to create crusty bread.

Unfortunately, cast iron does not play well with the acids that you often use in braises, such as vinegar or wine. Enameling protects the metal from your beef bourguignon, and also cleans up a little easier. Plus enameling means you get gorgeous colors instead of dull black—and to be honest, this is why there are so many Le Creusets decorating American shelves).

If the price seems a little steep however—and while I haven’t kept detailed figures, it looks to me like there’s a pandemic premium on Staub and especially Le Creuset—you can get more modestly priced versions from Lodge ($70) or Cuisinart ($85) that will also do a good job, and come in pretty colors. Though perhaps not so many pretty colors as usual.

Technivorm Moccamaster, $250 We tried this coffeemaker on our honeymoon, came home, and replaced the Cuisinart I’d been using. It doesn’t grind the coffee, or have a timer, or an alarm, nor does it latte or espresso. It just makes an absolutely perfect cup of coffee, and keeps it perfect in a stainless steel carafe that will deliver hot coffee for hours without that cooked taste you get from machines that keep the coffee hot over a burner.

Even if the coffee weren’t so good, I’d favor this over machines with more bells and whistles. The more moving parts a machine has, the more parts can break and the shorter its likely life. This machine is expensive, but on the other hand, the first one lasted us a decade, which is a personal best on coffeemakers.

Woodman’s of Essex, $60-$350, plus delivery charges. Woodman’s is legendary on Boston’s North Shore for its best-in-class onion rings, clams, and especially, lobster. Well, you can’t get the onion rings delivered, though you can buy their cookbook and make them at home. But you can get them to deliver you their famous lobsters. We did this for a birthday one year rather than going to a fancy restaurant, and it was worth every penny—just as in their restaurant, it was the best lobster I’d ever eaten. And it’s an especially good deal now, when the lobster industry is in a major slump.

Note that the (largely fixed) delivery cost accounts for a major portion of the ultimate price, so if you do decide to order something, you might want to double up your order and have lobster or clam rolls the next day.

Roasting pan. Holiday for us always means hauling out the roasting pan for turkey, leg of lamb, or a giant roast beef. Mine is a Mauviel ($250), which I love for its heavy construction and solid, roomy handles. It goes easily from the oven to my 25k btu rangetop to make gravy or Yorkshire pudding, and I love the way it looks; properly cared for, it should last a lifetime.

However, you don’t need to drop hundreds of dollars to get an excellent roasting pan; this Cuisinart, ($50) is very solid and comes with a stainless steel rack.

All Clad Saute Pan, $250 The saute pan is what I use to brown meat for stew, shallow-fry chicken, or just saute up a whole mess of anything for a crowd. My All-Clad, which has unfortunately gone up in price, is durable and induction-ready, heats quickly and evenly, and has well-designed handles that make it easy to maneuver.

Damn the cost, I want to knock their socks off

Anova Precision Oven $600 I am less recommending this than calling it to your attention, because I have not personally tried it. The reason I’m calling this to your attention is that Anova makes my sous vide circulator, and was in fact the pioneer in making immersion circulators affordable for normal people. Now they’re trying to do the same thing for the combi-steam oven.

Combi-steam ovens use convection that is, er, combined with steam to cook food. They are fast, cook very evenly, and especially enhance baked goods.

Steam injection ovens are how commercial bakers get those perfect crusts on their loaves, and serious home bread bakers spend a lot of time trying to replicate that effect by futzing around with pans of water and similar in their regular ovens. A steam oven gets you a lot closer, without the futzing. This device is the only thing that could make me consider giving up my Breville.

Breville Induction Burner, $1500 This is definitely a specialty piece of equipment. It is a top-of-the-line induction burner with a probe built in so that you can monitor the temperature of what you’re cooking exactly. This means you can use it to, for example, sous-vide—but I think the killer application is deep frying or candymaking, where it is simply notably better than a conventional stovetop or even a dedicated deep fryer.

That said, while I keep hearing rumors that a cheaper consumer version is coming, it has not arrived, and at such a high price point, this is really not for everyone. I’d get it as a stovetop replacement, for a cabin or RV, or for someone who deep fries or does sugar work all the time.

The Big Green Egg ceramic grill, price varies by size. These are charcoal grills with very thick ceramic walls that hold heat so that you can get the temperature either very low, for smoking meats over long hours, or very high, for making pizza in minutes.

We bought a used one from a friend last year, and installed it just in time for the pandemic, and while my husband, the grill-master, was a little nervous about learning to use it, he was quickly producing delicious ribs and pulled pork, before graduating to brisket. We’re also making a fair amount of pizza and naan, both with truly excellent results.

You should be sure your giftee wants this before you get it, because a Big Green Egg, or a similar ceramic grill like the Kamado Joe, is something you have to learn to use. But if you do want to smoke, grill, and make grilled breads, it is by far the most versatile piece of backyard equipment. You can sometimes find them used on Craigslist, and frankly, it will be filthy inside soon anyway, so if you’re buying for yourself, and you can find a good deal in excellent condition, take it.

Dyson Cordless Vacuum, $600 We live in a rowhouse with no closets on the first floor, and hauling a vacuum cleaner up and down our narrow, century-old basement stairs made me reluctant to vacuum as often as I should. This is lightweight, hangs unobtrusively on a wall near the kitchen, is rechargeable so you don’t have to keep plugging and replugging it, and was the only such vacuum I could find that rivaled the power of a normal plug-in unit. Now we not only vacuum the carpets regularly, but whip this out to clean up dry goods spills in the kitchen, a major improvement over a broom.

Thermomix, $1500 As always, the Thermomix closes the equipment section of this gift guide. It is a sort of hard piece of equipment to explain, but let me try: imagine the product of a breeding program that started with a blender, a stovetop, and a scale. The result is, well, a device that lets you measure out ingredients by weight, chop them, and cook them—while continuously stirring—all in one device.

I use it to saute up my mirepoix for braises, even if I’m going to cook the meat in the oven; to make a caramelized bacon-onion jam that cooks and stirs slowly for hours; to make cooked frostings that need a precise temperature and constant whipping; to simmer soups I then puree straight in the bowl; to steam vegetables; to whip up pancake batter with egg yolks while the whites beat up in my stand mixer, to be folded in at the last. But its single biggest advantage is sauce making. You can toss all the ingredients for hollandaise or bechamel into the bowl, in no particular order, press a few buttons, and come back ten minutes later to a perfect sauce. I’m not saying you should do this every night, but you could.

The newest model, which I don’t have, also comes with recipes, and programs for yogurt, rice making, even sous-vide. The fact that they’ve added sous vide points to who this is for, which is to say, foodies, current or aspiring. While the machines are obviously quite different, their sales pitch is basically a very upscale version of what Instant Pot promises: a lot of functions packed into one small machine, for people who want to cook all the time, but sometimes find it hard to squeeze quite enough of that time into their schedule.

And frankly, they deliver on that pitch. I have never regretted dropping so much money on this machine. This device won’t make you a great cook if you’re not, but it can make a novice into a remarkably decent cook, because it reduces recipes to foolproof steps with precise timings and settings—the new model will apparently even generate a shopping list.

For people who are really great cooks already, it can relieve some of the most time-consuming steps, freeing them to do other things. And by keeping everything in one dish, it also reduces mess, in somewhat the way the Instant Pot does.

It’s especially good for people with small kitchens, as it combines many functions, like food processor and blender and scale, into one place. This is why it’s so popular in Europe. I’ve also heard from some (obviously affluent) disabled people that this was a major game changer for them in terms of how much they could do in the kitchen.

There are knockoffs available, but they generally get poor reviews; as of yet, there appears to be no substitute for Vorwerk’s top-notch German engineering. And that engineering really is top-notch; in nine years of ownership, I have replaced one part, the blade of the blender, which stripped last month after nine years of daily use on heavy-duty tasks like hard cheese and ice. The only electric I’ve ever owned that rivaled this durability is my now-approaching-its-third-decade Kitchenaid mixer.

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Well, that brings us to the end of the equipment portion of the Kitchen Gift Guide. In case you missed them, Part I and Part II went up earlier this week. Part IV is coming soon, in which we’ll cover my favorite cookbooks, what to buy for people with special interests, and some closing thoughts for the folks who want to buy sets of knives, or pots and pans.

As a further bonus, I have some great news: my husband happens to be the author of the world’s greatest newsletter on home bartending, which incidentally, makes a lovely gift on its own. But that’s not the news, although I’m sure you’re very happy for me. The exciting part is that, at my behest, he’s agreed to write up a gift guide for the aspiring cocktail enthusiast, which I will be passing on as soon as he gets around to writing it. And honey, if you’re reading this, yes, that was a hint.

Again, thanks for reading—it was really heartening to see so many people interested in my guide. I hope you’re finding things that your loved ones will love, and maybe even a little something for your own kitchen.

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