For the friend or family member who adores the culinary arts, it can be remarkably rewarding to offer them a gift that can support their pursuit of cooking at home. There are many ways that a home, or even garden, can become a brilliant environment for developing cooking skills, as well as being a prime location for hosting dinner parties and events.
Pizza Oven
Technology has distilled the pizza oven, generally a large feature of the garden, into a compact, tabletop design. These new pizza ovens offer residents the ability to cook restaurant-quality pizzas and breads efficiently and effectively. Many models also eliminate the need for wood, heating, instead, from a stone base that retains warmth over long periods of time and gives every pizza a perfectly cooked, crisp base.
Bio Box
Receiving a great deal of sun throughout the day, while also staying relatively warm even during colder periods, windows and sills are a prime space for indoor growing. As such, bio boxes are a superb gift for the home cook who wants to have access to homegrown spices and herbs throughout the year.
A variety of fresh seeds can be offered with the box, allowing the gift to be personalised too. This is ideal for those who have an interest in a particular cuisine.
Preservation Equipment
A popular, contemporary trend in the culinary world is the art of preservation. Some cooks will stack their shelves with pickle jars while others will utilise log cabins as a curing space. These methods not only create rich flavours but also extend the shelf life of food, helping to save money on food bills and make ingredients go further.
Free-Standing Fire Pit
Dedicating an entire garden space to a central firepit can be quite ambitious, especially if it is largely to be used for outdoor meals and cooking experiments. Having a free-standing fire pit, however, could be an effective solution. These easily transported assets can create beautiful and warming fires quickly, allowing for campfire cooking at home – and with greater control over the amount of smoke too!
Griddle
It can be hard to replicate certain dishes at home, since most properties are equipped with hobs and not the broilers and griddles of professional kitchens. There are, however, options for griddles at home, with many now being designed to sit on top of a cooking hob, much like a pan, while offering a cast iron and professional cooking surface to cook high-quality dishes.
Chef’s Knives
For a chef, few gifts come close to being as sentimental as a chef’s knife. It can be worth seeing which model they might have a preference for, with many chefs having a preference for knives like the santoku or a cleaver over their Western counterparts. If, however, they already have a set of knives that they are attached to, consider getting them a knife bag or wall mount instead, helping to keep their knives in great condition and ready for use.
