Handmade gifts for home cooks

Colorado End Grain Cutting Board

by Independent maker

For a cook who sharpens their own knives. A true end grain block from a Handmade storefront, at the price where end grain starts.

End grain means the wood fibers stand vertically, so the knife edge slots between them instead of scraping across them. Two things follow: the board is kinder to your knives, and the cut marks close up rather than staying as scars. It is also heavier and more expensive to make, which is why edge grain dominates the shelves. This is the entry point to the real thing.

Embossed Relief Serving Bowl, 10 in

For the bowl most kitchens do not have. A ten-inch handmade bowl with a raised relief surface, at under thirty dollars.

Ten inches is the useful serving size: big enough for a salad for four, small enough to fit in a cupboard. The relief surface catches light on the rim, which is what stops a plain bowl looking like a plain bowl. This is the best-value ceramic on the page.

Highlight Series Large Board with Handle, Walnut, Maple and Padauk

by Independent maker

For chopping and carrying from the same object. Large, handled, and padauk gives it an orange-red stripe you cannot get from stain.

Padauk is bright orange when freshly cut and mellows to a deep red-brown, so this board changes character over its first year in the same way cherry does. Large format with a handle is the entertaining configuration: it carries a full cheese course. It is a lot of board, so check they have somewhere to put it.

JABIHOME Wooden Spoons and Forks, Set of 4

by JABIHOME

For a drawer of melted plastic spatulas. Four wooden serving pieces, which is the least glamorous useful gift on this site.

Wooden utensils do not scratch a pan, do not melt, and do not conduct heat into your hand. Most kitchens have one, warped, from a supermarket. A set of four is the kind of gift that gets used every day and never gets photographed. Under twenty-five dollars.

Earthen Vessels Hydrangea Leaf Dish Set, 5 Pieces

by Earthen Vessels Pottery

For mise en place, and anything in brine. Five stoneware dishes pressed from real hydrangea leaves, so the veins are the mold.

Leaf-pressed pottery is made by laying an actual leaf on the clay and pressing it, which means the vein pattern on the finished dish is a record of a specific leaf. It is one of the few decorative techniques where the process is visible in the result. Five pieces makes it a set rather than a trinket.

Clarks Cutting Board Oil and Wax Kit

by Clarks

For giving with any wooden gift. Food-grade mineral oil, finishing wax, an applicator and a cloth, in one box.

A wooden board that is never oiled will dry out, and a dry board cracks along its glue lines within a couple of years. That is the single most common way a hundred-dollar gift dies. The kit includes both the oil that soaks in and the wax that seals the surface, which is the two-step the manufacturers actually recommend.

Handmade Stoneware Soup Mug, 12 oz

For soup and coffee from the same object. A handled 12 oz chili bowl, which is a better object than it sounds.

A handled bowl is the most useful vessel in a kitchen and almost nobody owns one: it holds soup, chili, cereal or a large coffee, and the handle means you can carry it hot without a tray. Handmade stoneware, twelve ounces. This is the gift that quietly becomes the thing they use every day.

Maple Leaf Sectional Serving Platter

For someone who feeds people. A shaped, sectioned wooden platter that keeps the olives out of the cheese.

Flat boards look good in photographs and behave badly with anything wet. Sections solve the real problem: a divided platter keeps the marinated things away from the crackers for the length of an evening. Shaped as a leaf, which is either the appeal or the objection depending on the recipient.