Best kitchen gifts 2023: Tech for chefs

Best kitchen tech gifts: Our top picks

Anova

Anova Culinary Precision Vacuum Sealer Pro

1. Best kitchen tech gift overall

Preserve, cook, and save space

Anova provides the ultimate companion for its lineup of precision sous vide cookers with the Anova Culinary Precision Vacuum Sealer Pro. An absolute must-have for any kitchen, sous vide machine or not.

Pros

• Seals meats, vegetables, and liquids with ‘wet function’
• Can be activated with one hand
• Built-in bag storage and cutter

The use cases for a good vacuum sealer are almost too numerous to list outright. This is one of those kitchen gadgets that you buy with one or two uses in mind then find 20 more once you actually start using it. The Anova Culinary Precision Vacuum Sealer Pro will quickly prove to be a workhorse in any kitchen with a serious home chef. Its most obvious use is to vacuum seal proteins, foods, or liquids for use with Anova’s Sous Vide machine, allowing you a perfect seal and an even cook while immersed in the heated water.

The Anova Vacuum Sealer Pro can also be used to preserve foods so that they last longer in the fridge, seal in smelly foods, or seal meats for a longer freezer lifespan. Taking proper advantage of what the vacuum sealer has to offer can even save you money in the long-run.

Sealing foods for longer lasting freshness is a great use, but the real trick is buying high-quality meats in bulk at a great price, then portioning it out and vacuum sealing meal portions for freezing and later use. Once you have a good vacuum sealer it becomes the kitchen gadget you’ll find yourself reaching for time and time again.

Combustion

Combustion Predictive Thermometer & Display

2. Best kitchen gift for the perfectionist

Cook your holiday turkey just right

The Combustion Predictive Thermometer is the very latest in smart thermometer tech. By using multiple zones to find the true core temperature, this predictive thermometer helps you achieve the perfect cooking time.

Pros

• Multiple zones mean accurate temperature readings
• Integrated app makes tracking your foods progress easy

Cons

• Signal range on the thermometer and display could be better

The combustion predictive thermometer solves one of the most pervasive issues when using instant read thermometers in an amateur kitchen. When inserting an instant read thermometer into meat, or dough, you often worry that you haven’t inserted the tip of the probe precisely in the center of your cooking dish.

You end up spending the entire cooking time somewhat nervous that your meal will come out either undercooked or overcooked from the smallest of misplacements. Combustion has aimed to solve this worry by having multiple temperature sensors along the length of the thermometers metal probe.

Each of these sensors provide a distinct temperature reading and the combustion predictive thermometer finds the coldest point among them, or “core” temp, and displays it on the app or optional accompanying display. From there it is able to track the rise of the internal temperature, as well as ambient temperatures, and predict when exactly whatever you’re cooking will be finished and ready to pull.

(Editor’s note: at time of writing the Amazon product page was out of stock, but may be back in stock in near future.)

Anova

Anova Culinary Sous Vide Precision Cooker 3.0

3. Best kitchen gift for meat lovers

Set the temp and let it cook while prepping your other dishes

The Anova Culinary Sous Vide Precision Cooker 3.0 is the latest in sous vide gadgetry for the kitchen, offering a hands-off and foolproof method for cooking any manner of proteins or vegetables.

Pros

• Wi-Fi and Bluetooth enabled
• Can handle large batches
• Basically fool proof

Cons

• Vacuum sealer needed for ideal experience

Sous Vide is simply French for “under vacuum,” and typically refers to a method of cooking. This method involves cooking any variety of vacuum sealed foods or even liquids by submerging them in a vat of hot water and then maintaining the temperature of the water stable over an extended period of time. Over time, the submerged item(s) will reach the same temperature as the surrounding water, ensuring a degree perfect finish every single time. What used to be achieved by carefully monitoring water over a low flame and check the temperature constantly is now being done in modern consumer kitchens with these sous vide immersion circulators.

The Anova Culinary Sous Video Precision Cooker 3.0 is the best in show Sous Vide cooker for the aspiring home chef. Paired with little more than a vacuum sealer, and a container large enough to hold whatever you’re cooking submerged in water, the Anova will help you achieve absolutely glorious results from a wide range of recipes.

You can submerge and slowly cook proteins, vegetables, eggs, or even use it to slowly infuse syrups or tea concentrates. Use the Anova to achieve the perfect internal cook on a steak, the perfect poached egg, or the perfect flakey salmon. Once your desired temperature has been reached, simply remove your food from its sealed bag, season, and add some color with the searing method of your choosing.

This device is the hero of large dinner parties that require you to cook multiple proteins absolutely perfectly. One of the beauties of these devices is that you can “set it and forget it” while you get other parts of your meal ready, or just relax while it does its thing.

Breville

Breville Smart Oven Air Fryer Pro

4. Best kitchen gift for the budding gastronomist

A jack of all trades counter-top oven

$400 $450 Save $50

Breville brings a whole lot of “smart” features to this connected combo oven to your countertop. Sporting 13 different cooking modes, the Breville Smart Oven Air Fryer Pro is an absolute work horse in the kitchen.

Pros

• Can function as a dehydrator
• Large enough to fit a 14lb turkey
• LCD display for easy reading

Cons

• An expensive addition to your kitchen
• More bells and whistles means more things that can break

Counter-top convection ovens are a ready find in any cook’s kitchen. Faster to heat than traditional ovens, and more compact, these are perfect for preparing smaller portions in a tighter timeframe and with typically more precision than your typical full-size oven.

Breville has successfully manufactured a convection oven straight out of a cooks dream. The Breville Smart Oven Air Fryer Pro already gives away some of its appeal in its name. The Breville oven is not just an oven, but a magical cooking box capable of 13 different cooking modes, among them are air fryer, dehydrator, convection oven, toaster, and many more.

The LCD screen on the front displays just about all the information you could ever want from an oven, and its multiple internal sensors with temperature control ensure even temps for even cooking.

Delta

Delta Faucet Essa Touch Kitchen Faucet

5. Best kitchen gift for the messy cook

The perfect faucet for the busy cook

Before you roll your eyes at a smart faucet, ask any home cook how often their hands are greasy, dirty, or otherwise covered in food and they need to turn on the kitchen sink.

Pros

• Turn your faucet on and off with a simple touch
• LED light indicates your water temperature

Sometimes the simplest things can have the greatest net effect. Ask any cook how often they find themselves needing to turn on the kitchen faucet, but their hands are covered in something from cooking that they rather not smear all over their faucet handle. You’ll see them use their elbows, forearms, or whatever they can to turn on the sink without making a mess.

The Delta Essa Touch Kitchen Faucet aims to eliminate this issue by providing a simple touch sensitive mechanism for turning the faucet on and off. This means no matter what is on your hands, a simple touch of the back of your hand, or any part of your arm, will easily start the flow of water for you to rinse with and keep working on your meal.

The Delta faucet also has a neat LED light that indicates with red and blue hues the approximate temperature of your water. Again, ask a cook how often they stand there running their fingers through the water waiting for it to get hot or wondering if the water is hot yet. This allows you to simply turn on your faucet, and go about your business. Once your water is getting hot, you’ll be able to see the lights change. These two functions might seem totally superfluous to some, but to anyone who cooks a lot, they are incredibly useful.

Peugeot

Peugeot – Elis Touch Electric Corkscrew

6. Best kitchen gift for wine lovers

Stop struggling to open a wine bottle

Easily impress at any wine night get together with the Peugeot – Elis Touch Electric Corkscrew. Gone are the days of fumbling about with an old-fashioned corkscrew. Simply open your wine with the push of a button.

Pros

• Great value for performance
• Opens wine bottles without user having to exert force
• Pulls cork gently so as not to break them

Cons

• Much larger and more cumbersome than a waiters key

A good kitchen gadget will make a task easier, more fool-proof, and ideally more fun. The Peugeot – Elis Touch Electric Corkscrew checks all these boxes splendidly. No more struggling with your flimsy old corkscrew, or worrying about tearing or breaking corks into your wine.

A good electric corkscrew endeavors to deliver a seamless cork removal on every bottle, every time. This is the perfect gift for a wine lover, and especially an older loved one who might be arthritic but still enjoys a good bottle of red. This electric corkscrew is rechargeable, so you don’t have to worry about replacing batteries, and a useful LED light shows you the corkscrews current state of charge with each use.

The bottom line: What’s the best kitchen tech gift?

You might invest in our best overall pick, the Anova Culinary Precision Vacuum Sealer Pro, which will become a mainstay for any new adopter and tops our list. For the host that loves to throw big dinner parties and stresses about the social and financial implications of overcooking half a dozen New York Strip steaks, the Anova Sous Vide Precision Cooker 3.0 is the perfect gift. If perfection is the name of the game, then the Combustion Predictive Thermometer will come in handy every time. It’s the perfect gift for that friend that spent 2020 baking loaves of sourdough, or to make sure no one overcooks the Christmas roast ever again.

Anova

Anova Culinary Precision Vacuum Sealer Pro

Editor’s Choice

How did we choose these items?

Every single one of these kitchen gadgets was selected from the personal experience of our most cooking obsessed editorial staff members, including hands-on experience. Each one brings efficiencies, technology, and an enhanced cooking experience to your home kitchen.

Do you have to be a really serious cook to enjoy kitchen tech?

Not at all, in fact any of these tools will only help those that are a little more nervous about approaching big cooking projects. The beauty of many of these is they take the guess work out of cooking times and temperatures, which is one of the greatest challenges facing any would-be cook.

Is a touch-sensor sink worth it?

Yes. As someone who has seasoned and spatchcocked many a turkey and then struggled to turn on the sink with my hands covered in giblets and turkey juice, I think it’s worth the money and the hassle-free user experience.