You know this one friend or relative. The one that constantly appears with fresh-baked cookies and bread and just casually roasted a whole chicken when you came over last Tuesday. Every year you think “Well I’ll get them a whisk, or a loaf pan, or a mixing bowl.” But this year you realize you’re out of luck, because they already own literally every thing. They have a mixer, a rice cooker, a slow cooker, a roasting pan, another roasting pan, a blender and a food processor, a pastry cutter, multiple kinds of rolling pins, and a gravy boat. No worries, friend; your luck has not run out just yet! It’s possible that person has one or two things on this list, but I guarantee you they don’t have all of them. Go wild.
Pasta
Making your own pasta is great because it’s a way to turn what’s normally the easiest and quickest of weeknight meals into a complex multi-step upper arm workout that lasts for hours. These various accoutrements will make it easier, though. Probably if you get someone this they’ll make you a delicious fresh pasta dinner out of gratitude, so it’s a pretty smart move.
Paderno World Cuisine Tri-Blade Spiralizer ($34.20), Brieftons Spiral Slicer ($10), Waring MG105 Professional Meat Grinder ($80), Manual Grinder, Mincer, and Pasta Maker ($19)
Spiralizing and Grinding
Sometimes there are foods that come in one form, but you want them to be in a really different one. For instance, you have a zucchini that’s shaped like a zucchini, but you would rather it be shaped like tiny strings. Or you have a big chunk of a pig that you wish was a bunch of tiny chunks instead. People who often fall into these categories are: vegans, raw foodies, gluten-free humans, and people who enjoy making their own sausage. So, Ron Swanson and people who are the opposite of Ron Swanson.
This Electric Milk Frother
This is for the rare person who wants a cappucino and already has a means of making espresso (perhaps they own this?) but they do not have a means to steam or froth milk. Someone out there knows that person, and while their predicament is unique, they are gonna be THRILLED when you give them this.
Bakers Gonna Bake, Bake, Bake
For the discerning baking enthusiast who has been thinking to themselves “My cakes, pies, and muffins are the toast of the town, but I still feel empty inside. How can I make things that are even tinier, cuter, and more worthy of Instagramming? Also, I wish I had an enormous spatula designed specifically for cake.”
This Thing Meant To Lift Poultry
I don’t understand this thing but I want someone to buy it and tell me everything.
A Very Tiny Spatula
I am obsessed with this and will not rest until it is mine. It’s small enough to scrape every last drop of everything you cook out of whatever you’ve cooked it in, even the stuff that your regular spatulas leave behind. Get bent, last of the gravy that I can’t get out of the saucepan.
Rachel,Rachel, Rachel……I thought the turkey thing was a PUMP to plump up the body!!! OMG!! :) Then, sex toys came into my mind……for some reason.
Pretty much a kitchen essentialist, after moving so often – but these gift descriptions are hilarious, perfect!
I’m trying so, so hard to be more of a kitchen essentialist. I love ridiculous kitchen gadgets though. it is a struggle.
Well, if I’m honest, I’m mostly an essentialist when it comes to gadgets. Vintage bowls and dishes, while other story!
whole other story.
Actually, I am pretty sure I must have The Frother!! too!
“Uh, would you like to be ‘ frothed’?” I have the Jim Dandy Frother as talked about on AS. Rachel recommended it, and she has an advanced knowledge of “frothing”, or so I have heard.
“Oh? No frothing for you…..you are driving? Ok,….maybe next time!”
This cat-printing rolling pin!
They have dino and other prints, too. [EVEN A ROBOTS ONE.]
THIS IS THE ONE. :)
DINO PRINT OMFG!
I am so glad I’m not the only one who hears “Bakers gonna bake bake bake” in Shake It Off. Thank you for validating my existence once again.
I nominate microplanes. Always grate your Parmesan cheese fresh. Use a microplane. Your fingers will thank you.
Very yes. Microplanes are also the best zesters and nutmeg-dispatchers.
Yes! That’s a thing I’d like for Christmas…
I now need all of these things! But also..do you know that get bent is a homophobic insult from the UK? Or did you put it on purpose because of that?
Hm, I don’t think there’s actually much evidence to support that theory of the phrase’s origins. It’s attested from at least the 1950s in North America and has always meant something along the lines of “get lost”. It might be used in a homophobic way now in the U.K. (is “bent” slang for gay there?) but it doesn’t have the same connotations here.
Yeah ‘bender’ and ‘bent’ means gay in the UK. Which I find hilarious because when I watch Avatar: The Last Airbender they are always referring to Aang as “such a powerful bender”. And I am a child.
I kind of hate kitchen gadgets, but I also kind of want a spiralizer. I am large, I contain multitudes.
I have the one that is in the first link and it’s AWESOME! But I also love kitchen gadgets so…
I nominate silicone baking mats and aluminum half-sheet pans. No matter how many you have, YOU NEED MORE.
I suggest cookie cutters. There are literally ENDLESS shapes and sizes, and who doesn’t like cookies?
so funny. The part about hand making pasta… i thought perhaps Id make my own ravioli sometime but I’ll just imagine the pain in my arms the next day instead.
I love kitchen things! I desperately need to get a mixer of some sort, I don’t have one right now and it is not good. I have made a lot of frosting by hand, a bit more time consuming but not awful. The other night I tried to make egg foo yung, which requires meringue-like whipped egg whites. The best I could do by hand was frothy, tasty but not quite right.
You def need Rach’s frother! Make those young foos stand up proud and peaky! :Pl
Spiralizers! The most fun I’ve ever had with a kitchen tool was using the gadget that simultaneously peels, cores, and spiral-cuts apples when i was helping my mom make applesauce as a kid. They were fun to eat afterwards too! Apple slinky!
I fully admit to owning or rather co-owning many of these amazing items although the milk frother died somehow and the pasta machine has never been out of the box. I have actually requested a decent potato masher for Christmas this year because after 10 years I’m sick of using the broken and useless one I found in a drawer in my first flat. I now need to had those tiny spatulas…or is that spatulae or spatuloo? And the bird hook carrier thingy!
If you happen to be dining with a man you don’t particularly like, this banana slicer will make him gloriously uncomfortable as long as you take it slow and never break eye contact.
This item has literally the funniest reviews on Amazon, I can’t
The picture of that turkey oxo thing really freaked me out.
What do you do if you have more than one drop left in a jar? Do you use multiple very tiny spatulas simultaneously? Tape them together to create one normal-sized spatula? Train your cat to hold a very tiny spatula between his paws and scrape out the jar while you do the rest of your meal preparation?
Just going to come back and say that I’ve had everything from that itty bitty spoon to the ravioli maker on my must buy list and this post is a sign from the Lord that I should get them. Now.
In the event that you happen to feast with a man you don’t especially like, this electric griddle will make him wonderfully uncomfortable the length of you take it moderate and never look away.