The gifts your foodie friends will appreciate

For any flavour nerds in your life, a good cookbook might be the way to go. Although online recipe platforms have taken over as the main way people interact with recipes, the gems that a good cookbook holds recipes and tips that online platforms often miss. 

With many books focusing on specific methods of cooking, such as The Noma Guide to Fermentation, or Flavorama by Arielle Johnson, these books carry more than just recipes, but a deep dive into food science.

Use this list for extra inspiration: The best cookbooks to keep in your repertoire

With a focus on fresh beans, Rancho Gordo prides itself on producing the forgotten foods of The Americas, and one of them being fresh beans. In Napa, California, where founder Steve Sando was from, he found it difficult to believe that fresh beans, which were supposed to be native to the land, were hard to find, and most were mass farmed. To change that, he started Rancho Gordo to bring back indigenous crops. 

The Rancho Gordo Bean Club is a quarterly subscription service that is notoriously difficult to get into. Think wine club, but for beans. Receive bags of heirloom beans, and fresher than anything you would find in any grocery store. With rare varieties such as Royal Corona, the creamy Marcella, and the Ayocote Morado, expand your repertoire of bean knowledge, and have the culinary flex of eating limited-run crops.

Perfect for staying occupied during the holiday downtime, Piecework creates some picture perfect puzzles of stunning tablescapes with ingredients as the centerpiece—whether it be butter, pumpkin spice, or cake!

A salt pig is a practical tool that has been around for centuries, where this ceramic container keeps salt dry and accessible for quick pinches during cooking. Functional and fashionable, the salt pig can easily spice up the look of your kitchen countertop, and making everyday tasks—like a sprinkling of salt—that much more fun. 

Perhaps a gift that might do more harm than good to the waistline, the Ninja CREAMi is the internet’s newest obsession, and we see why. It’s the ultimate gift for two types of foodies: the health-conscious snacker who wants to turn a protein shake into a sundae, and the experimental chef who wants to custom make every flavour, from savoury notes (basil and olive oil is a personal favourite), or make them dairy free.

Get a backstage pass to what’s widely agreed upon as the best restaurant in the world, Noma. If you happen to be friends with a fermentation nerd, this is the ultimate gift. Taste Buds is a membership subscription service run by Noma Projects where members can get access to the Noma Test Kitchen and world famous Fermentation Lab. Instead of purchasing their readily available garums, oils, and more, members will receive experimental, unreleased, and limited-edition ingredients that are still in their R&D phase. Members will also have access to live sessions and exclusive events over the course of their membership year.

Every true chef knows that a sharp knife is one of the best indispensable tools you can have in the kitchen. Whetstones breathe life into your dull knives, and save you the money of purchasing a brand new set. Sure, there are plenty of knife sharpeners on the market, but whetstones are the best way to care for your knives. With a whetstone, you can control the angle, grit, and pressure whilst sharpening your tools, more precisely than any other method.

A good apron is a luxury that many might overlook, something like an expensive candle—rarely will anyone splurge on one for themselves, which is what makes them the perfect gift. Many brands out there produce incredible, heavy duty aprons, but also many of them have some cute and funky colourways. Look for heavy-duty but stylish options from brands like local Malaysian brand The Apron Maker Co, Dusen Dusen, Hedley & Bennett, or Carhartt.

A special treat for any bakers in your life, a juicy, fat, vanilla bean pod is the gift that keeps on giving. Uses for the vanilla bean can extend into so many ways, and it doesn’t just end in a baked good. Use it to infuse flavour into custards, ice creams, pastries, beverages and more, or repurpose the pod into making vanilla sugar, salt, or even homemade extract. Its uses also can be in scent pods, scent drawers, or blended into body scrubs, maximising their aromatic potential beyond just the kitchen.

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