2016 Home Chef Gift Guide

I picked up this grilling basket a year ago, and I have used it frequently ever since. It's a little different than most grilling baskets because of the slits in the sides and larger holes, but I have found that it is also more durable than most. When you're cooking with olive oil in this basket, it's best to add it after the food has already been added. If you do this, then it works great. The biggest advantage of this basket over the others is that it is made of a quality stainless steel which helps it to hold up better with the temperature fluctuations and moisture of cooking outside.

There are a lot of styles of grill cleaning brush out there, and I'm sure that I have destroyed every one at some point. I've tried brushes, grilling pads, and scrapers at various times. I'm recommending this style because I have found that it does a much better job at cleaning between the grates on the grill. If you're grilling pineapple, you don't necessarily want it to taste like hamburger (I've done that more than once). With this grill brush, the bristles are wrapped around a coiled wire that keeps them from shedding, and they are stiff enough to clean in the crevices. Since I bought my first one of these, I've stuck with them (there are a few companies that sell them, and I can't tell any differences other than the labels).

If you don't like cleaning the grill, then you could buy one of these grill cleaning robots. I'm pretty sure that no one needs one of these, but they are quite the novelty. After you set a time duration from ten to thirty minutes, you turn it on and close the lid. This guy is battery operated and they sell replacement brushes. Though I don't own one (and probably never will), I would consider buying one for a guy who loves grilling and already has everything. If nothing else, it makes for a great story.

You never have enough hands while you're grilling, so this beer holster is a steady place for your beer while your hands are occupied. When I'm grilling, I'm always running between the smoker, the grill, the sink, and the prep area. These holsters keep your drink close at hand.

Whether you are shredding pork or picking up a chicken out of a smoker, strong tools with a good grip are very useful. The teeth on these “paws” are much pointier than they look in the pictures, and they are well balanced. I personally use them primarily for pulling pork and chicken, but they are also useful for lifting and positioning heavy pieces of meat.

I've picked up a few pair of insulated gloves over the last few years. They work much better than hot pads or oven mitts – especially for grilling or smoking. With advances in heat resistant materials, they are now very heat resistant and pliable. This is important because it gives you increased dexterity while moving around meat on the grill. They are also easy to clean which is important because the fats and oils in meats often don't want to come out of fabric gloves.

This fabric mitt is perfect for handling a spatula or tongs over a hot grill. As I noted above, a flexible plastic glove has many advantages for handling the meat itself, but these are less expensive and can be used for moving the grill lid and grilling tools in the hot air.

I have multiple pairs of heat resistant gloves for different purposes. I use the above flexible plastic gloves for handling the meat, and I use these full grain leather gloves for dealing with the grill, smoker, campfire, or fireplace. They are ideally suited for moving hot grates. They aren't fire proof meaning that they shouldn't be exposed to direct flame, but they give me enough fire resistance that I can use my hand to adjust the grill while I'm cooking.

A few years ago I was in Minneapolis for a conference and went to Matt's Bar to try the original Jucy Lucy, a burger with cheese in the middle. To be totally honest, I thought it was awful. The cheese inside was like molten lava that exploded in my face with the first bite. For Jucy Lucy aficionados this is probably sacrilegious, but I was not impressed. I greatly prefer a homemade burger with mushrooms or cheese in it that has been carefully prepared rather than cheap beef with American cheese. If you like burgers at your house and want to change it up, this burger press will help you stuff your favorite toppings right into the burger. Just don't splash your guests with yellow molten lava.

One of the challenges of making cheeseburgers is putting cheese on at just the right time. If you put it on before the burgers are cooked properly, the cheese liquefies and runs off the sides of the burgers. If you put it on too late, it remains unmelted. A melting dome is designed to concentrate heat briefly over the top of your burgers to melt the cheese quickly. This way you can add the cheese right when the burgers reach temperature and melt the cheese without overcooking the burger.

Pizza grilling sets are advertised for just throwing a pizza on the grill, but they usually provide unhelpful instructions. If you want to do it right, you need to put the pizza stone on the grill long before the pizza is ready so that the stone can heat up. The hot stone is intended to replicate the stone fired ovens the professionals use. You'll want to make sure the stone is properly heated to ensure that the crust cooks quickly at the same rate as the toppings. Once the stone is hot, you'll want to place the pizza onto the stone with the peel, the fancy word for the giant, pizza-sized spatula. It helps if you put a little cornmeal on the peel first. (Don't put the cornmeal right on the pizza stone or it will scorch.) Finally, cut the pizza with a pizza cutter once the cheese has had time to cool down. This starter kit includes all of the pizza grilling tools you need including the pizza stone, pizza peel, and pizza cutter.

Ribs are challenging to cook well, and I'll confess that they are my nemesis meat that I can never cook quite to my satisfaction. These racks allow you align sections of ribs vertically for better airflow. As an added caution, you should pick up a number of these racks. If you try to fill the racks, you won't get adequate cooking or air flow. I recommend that you only put up to three half racks of ribs in one of these racks so that there is at least one space between each occupied slot. This will improve circulation and cooking evenness.

Unless you just can't get enough of the smell of lighter fluid exploding into flame, I recommend that you take a look at an electric charcoal starter. The biggest advantage is that it doesn't use chemicals that will add an unpleasant taste to your food. It also can be turned on once and left to get the coals going. Lighter fluid doesn't always work which means that you need to dangerously keep applying more. This electric element will get the coals going and can then be removed before cooking.

The fastest way to start charcoal is in one of these chimneys. When charcoal is preheating, the briquettes need to all get very hot to ash over. The chimney channels the heat and keeps it concentrated to more evenly heat and ash the briquettes. This speeds up the process and makes it easier to pour them out evenly over the grill.

It is hard to beat a good charcoal grill. Though I switched to propane grilling years ago for the convenience, I still prefer the flavor of cooking over charcoal. Weber undoubtedly makes the highest quality grills out of the best materials, so this is why it's the only brand I recommend. I hear people say that they can't afford to buy a Weber, but that suggests that they can afford to buy a new grill every two years.

If you like charcoal grilling but want like the convenience of gas grilling platforms, Weber makes a nice grill with a built in utility platform that nicely fits the bill. The bin on the side is used for storing charcoal away from the rain, and the rack on the other side holds the lid when you raise it. The nice counter top comes with a digital timer and hooks for brushes, and the grill has an easy to use cleaning system and ash catcher.

If you want the convenience of a gas grill but miss the flavor of smoky cooking, these boxes help make up the difference. These drop into the grill with wood chips inside to smoke. You don't want to actually ignite the contents as this will produce less smoke. The objective is to place them close enough to the heat source that the wood smokes without igniting to provide a nice smoky flavor to your cooking.

Two years ago my parents bought a Weber grill. They had previously owned a Weber gas grill that had lasted them for nearly thirty years. That old grill had been so tough that it survived a cherry tree falling on it and a welding repair. When that grill finally needed to be replaced, they were surprised by how expensive Weber grills were compared to the cheaper options at the store, so they went with a Char-Broil. Then they went with another brand. Then they bought another brand. They found that the less expensive grills started rusting in the fire box and then across the rest of the grill within a couple of years. It turns out that Webers are more expensive upfront, but they are much cheaper if you count the total life of the grill. That is why they took the hit and bought a Weber again two years ago. The Weber Spirit recommended here is their smallest and most affordable grill. Even though it costs more than the top end models from other brands, it is far better constructed than those options and will last longer.

This is the grill that I bought five years ago, and I have used and abused it ever since. I can honestly say that this is one of the best purchases I have ever made. It is quality through and through. The operation is smooth even after moving it to multiple houses and states. The temperature control is precise, and every component is holding up nicely. If you look at some of the features like infrared cookers found in other brands, you'll see that they don't tend to hold up well over time. They clog with grease over time and become ineffective. Instead of the “infrared burners,” Weber sells sear burners. They are nothing more than an extra, standard burner placed between two other burners. These three burners close together get hot enough to turn the flavorizer bars glowing red if you leave them on. This will consistently perform for a nice sear. I also prefer this setup because it uses the same, reliable parts as the other burners. In the end, a grill like this is an investment in many good meals. After five years, my grill barely looks used, and I anticipate getting many more years out of it. If a tree fell on it, I would probably put in an order on Amazon for another one the same day.

I was at a conference in Austin a year ago and caught up with one of my local friends there. It was about 11 in the morning, and I asked him if he wanted to go to Franklin's Barbeque, a place I found on Yelp with impressive reviews. He looked at me like I had two heads. Then he explained that if you want to do lunch at Franklin's, you need to get in line hours in advance to wait in line. I was dumbfounded, but I was also intrigued. I found Aaron Franklin's short-series show on PBS to stream online, and I was impressed with his deep understanding of the process for consistently making top notch barbecue without cutting corners. This book is more of a textbook on the how and why of making Texas barbecue than it is a cookbook, but it is also an excellent cookbook as well. If you know someone who is into smoking meat, then this book paired with the free streaming PBS shows makes a very enjoyable overview of smoking like Franklin.

When I picture a smoker, I think of the horizontal barrel with a smokestack and a firebox. Though these look great, they aren't great for cooking. Because the firebox is on one side, their poor insulation and air flow causes the meat to overcook on the fire side and undercook on the smokestack side. They also tend to be very dry because the fire pulls the moisture out of the air. The better solution is to use a vertical water smoker. These silos work more like a smoky oven. The firebox with the charcoal goes at the bottom with the wood chips for smoke. Above those goes a water pan. This pan gets heated by the fire and keeps the smoker at a constant 100% humidity. This keeps the moisture in your meet and helps the smoke to adhere nicely onto the surface. If you compare the results from an offset smoker (the horizontal barrel with the firebox) to these vertical water smokers, you'll realize the difference.

If you're looking to do a full brisket, a few pork shoulders, or full racks of ribs, then you'll need a bigger smoker. This larger model has more than double the cooking surface of the smaller unit above.

This cooker has changed my life, and I'm not exaggerating. In the past month I have done a pork tenderloin, a large prime rib, chicken breasts, and ribeye steaks with my Anova sous vide. The best way to explain sous vide cooking is to think about the meat like a sponge. When you put a sponge in water, the outside starts absorbing the water first. If you put a sponge in water for a few seconds, the center of the sponge might still be dry, but the outside will be soaking wet. This is like meat with heat. When you put meat in a hot environment, the outside absorbs heat first and has to pass it to the center of the meat, and it is cooking quickly the entire time. The center of the meat gets the heat last. This means that you might have a perfectly cooked center of a steak with a charred exterior. The magic of the sous vide is that it brings the entire piece of meat to the exact same temperature over time. If you want to cook a steak to medium rare, you set the cooker to 135 degrees. After a few hours, the entire steak will be 135 degrees from edge to edge. Because you cook it inside of a vacuum sealed bag, the meat doesn't touch the water or lose moisture. Once the steak has been evenly cooked, then you can throw it on the grill, in the oven, or on a pan to give it a beautiful and crispy seared finish. The steak looks perfect from the grill, and the entire steak is beautifully pink from edge to edge. This same method works on everything from chicken breasts to prime ribs. This is one cooking appliance that I use multiple times a week. If you live with the person that you're buying this for, you get the added bonus that they will cook perfectly cooked food for you for years to come.

If you're just getting started with sous vide cooking, you should pick up a copy of this cookbook and read the author's accompanying website. He gives a thorough explanation of the preparation, cooking, and finishing process for sous vide along with great recipes. We appreciate that this cookbook also includes recipes for accompanying side dishes – some of them can even be cooked in the same sous vide!

This book provides a more involved discussion on sous vide cooking techniques and methods, and it is directly addressed to professionals. The author is a professional chef and restaurateur and has written the book for chefs in restaurants and very advanced home cooks. If you're up to the challenge, this is the book that will get you there.

As I'm writing this, I'm looking at a pineapple that I will use this slicer on later today. I first discovered these pineapple cutters while working at a SCUBA diving operation that would send a pineapple on the dive boat every day. Our team got trained on these cutters in about two minutes. You cut the top off the pineapple, align the slicer with the core, and start turning. A minute later, you have a perfectly cut pineapple. While it does leave a little of the fruit, it's honestly not much, and it's much easier and safer to use than a knife. Back when I cut up pineapples with a knife, we might buy a couple a year. Now we buy a pineapple a week.

It's embarrassingly difficult to remember if the dishes in the dishwasher are clean or dirty. This classy moustache dial lets you rotate between clean and dirty to keep track of the status.

We bought our first set of magnetic measuring spoons when I was buying a gift for my wife and searched for these on a hunch. I guessed that surely someone had found a better way to keep their spoons and cups together in the drawer. These hold together nicely and have the added benefit that they nest in such a way that you can keep the stack stuck together even when you pull one of them out of the middle. It takes me much less time to find the measuring spoons now than it did before, so it was rather a gift for me as well.

Just like the measuring spoons above, these measuring cups brilliantly hold together with magnets. They nest nicely.

You might look at an adjustable measuring cup and not appreciate its utility right away. My recipes don't require an adjustable measuring cup, but what I do need is an easier way to dispense sticky stuff like peanut butter and honey. This clever cup lets you set the depth to the amount you need, and then it squeezes it out once you've filled it. This can hold and squeeze both dry and wet ingredients. Fortunately it's dishwasher safe to get the last of the peanut butter out.

If you're like me, your homemade cookies and noodles have varying depths depending on where they got rolled on the cutting board. When you put the cookies in the oven, the thin ones from the edge are burned to a toasty crisp and the thick ones from the middle are raw. With this adjustable height rolling pin, it forces you to roll to a consistent thickness. It includes several depth rings so you can raise and lower the rolling pin.

Immersion blenders are really cool ways to mix without throwing ingredients everywhere. They are designed to blend without scratching non-stick surface without splattering. This model includes a nylon head and is a great choice for everything from soups to smoothies.

About the only way you can go wrong buying a KitchenAid mixer for a home chef is if they already have one. They look gorgeous and are so smooth. If you haven't used one before, the main thing that makes them great is the way that the head moves around the bowl while the blades spin. The cheap mixer that we used before had two beaters that stuck into the head and pushed the goo through. A KitchenAid mixer moves around the bowl while spinning a single beater, an arrangement that is much smoother and better for mixing and kneading. For example, I would never use our old mixer to make noodles, but I use our KitchenAid mixer for the task all the time. As an added bonus, KitchenAid sells a number of attachments that turn this mixer into a range of kitchen appliances from a pasta roller to a meat grinder to an ice cream maker.

If you want to take your game to the next level or you already have a KitchenAid mixer, then the larger stand mixer will do the trick. The bowls on these larger mixers raise and lower with a handle to make larger batches easy. Just like the other model, this is a fantastic KitchenAid mixer that accepts all of the attachments.

We purchased our first vacuum sealer a couple of months ago, and I'm recommending buying one here because we have been so impressed. Food really does last longer after you vacuum seal it. Whether its deli meat lasting much longer or even fresh herbs, you can tell the difference in the taste and in the food budget. I raved about sous vide cooking above. While you can technically cook sous vide with Ziploc bags, you will have more even cooking surfaces and predictable cooking times when you vacuum seal the food instead. Whether you want to start saving money by reducing food waste or you want to get into sous vide, you should pick up one of these vacuum sealers.

Not all vacuum sealers are equal, and you get what you pay for. This upgraded model has to major features worth noting. First, it's designed to handle moist foods. This comes in handy when you're sealing a soup or even a marinated chicken breast. Second, this also offers a “gentle” strength. This comes in handy when you want to vacuum seal something for freezing without crushing it. This works well for soft foods like bagels. This is the model that my wife I and selected after spending hours looking through all the different models.

This is, as far as I'm aware, the most magnificent cookbook ever made. A Microsoft executive retired 20 years ago and hired a team of chefs and scientists to investigate cooking science in ways I'd never even heard of before they published this book. I need to point out that the cookbook is gorgeous to look at as well. With their professional food photography team, the Modernist Cuisine team developed new methods of food photography to make cookbooks that look like coffee table books. This collection of works spans 2,400 pages and is definitely the only book of any kind this expensive that I would consider buying. The books cover a wide ranging of cooking techniques and the science between them for the home chef and professional chef alike. If you know an intellectual who likes to cook, these books will provide countless hours of entertainment in the kitchen and on the couch.

These books opened my eyes to the science of cooking with practical tips and stunning photography. If you don't have the patience for a multi-volume cookbook (I don't) and are looking for something more affordable for the home cook, this is an excellent cookbook for the advanced home chef.

Following the remarkable success of the Modernist Cookbook collection, their team set out to do the same thing for baking that they did for cooking. In an equally impressive and similarly 2,400 page tome, the team set out to understand, perfect, and teach everything there is to know about bread. For home and professional bakers, this intimidating masterpiece is a worthwhile investment.