Best holiday gifts for home chefs in 2018
Give one of these to the chef in your life and you're sure to be rewarded with something delicious.
June Intelligent Oven (2018)
It's time to heat up your holiday shopping. If you have a family member who loves to cook, these gifts are perfect and you're bound to get something tasty out of the deal.
Let's start with the second-gen June Intelligent Oven. This $600 countertop cooker looks like a toaster oven, but it has a built-in camera that will recognize your food and set the proper time and temperature for you. You can check in on your food with that camera and you can tweak settings if you want crispier bacon or gooier chocolate chip cookies.
Instant Pot Ace
The $100 Instant Pot Ace -- a blender from the makers of the popular electric pressure cookers -- surprised us with high-level blending performance at a reasonable price. Plus, it can heat your food while it blends so you can quickly mix up a batch of soup or baby food.
Instant Pot Lux 6-in-1 V3
Speaking of popular electric pressure cookers, the classic $80 Instant Pot is still a great multicooker. Choose from 12 automatic programs to sear, saute or pressure cook your favorite foods.
Lenovo Smart Display
Not all great kitchen gadgets will do the cooking themselves. Case in point: the $250 Lenovo Smart Display combines the functionality of a smart speaker like the Google Home Mini with a touchscreen for looking at pictures, watching videos and controlling your smart home.
The touchscreen and the built-in Google Assistant make it a great gadget for helping you cook. It'll show you the ingredients and steps in a recipe while reading them off one-by-one. You can skip forward and back as needed. You can also multitask and watch videos, play music, set a timer and add something to your shopping list while you cook. Tell it to resume the recipe when you're ready, and it'll jump right back to where you left off.
Amazon Echo Show (2nd Gen)
The Amazon Echo Show was the first major smart display and led to devices such as the Lenovo Smart Display. While the first Show was clunky and the touchscreen underutilized, Amazon added a lot of polish to the second-generation $230 Echo Show.
Complete with Amazon's assistant, Alexa, the Show offers step-by-step recipe guides similar to the Lenovo Smart Display. You can also watch videos for each step with recipes from SideChef.
Google Home Hub
The $150 Google Home Hub offers all of the same features as the Lenovo Smart Display for less, including step-by-step recipe guides.
Better yet, when you're not using it, you can set the screen to scroll through your family photos, and it'll automatically customize the brightness and warmth of the pictures to match the ambient light in the room.
Amazon Echo Dot (2018)
If you want voice assistance in the kitchen and don't need a touchscreen, look no further than the 2018 Amazon Echo Dot. The refreshed $50 smart speaker features a softer look than the previous version and still has the same vast assortment of features offered by Amazon's voice-enabled assistant, Alexa.
KitchenAid Stand Mixer
Of course, if you don't want to get someone a fancy new piece of tech, you could always go with a classic. A colorful KitchenAid Stand Mixer will likely set you back at least $200, but it's also likely to last a long time and will give your favorite family cook a classy kitchen centerpiece.
Kenmore Elite Ovation
If your family's designated cook is a bit messier, you might want to consider this new covered alternative to the KitchenAid stand mixer. The $450 Kenmore Elite Ovation holds five quarts and you can mix away without worrying about splashing, thanks to the lid covering its bowl.
Char-Broil Performance XL
It's never too early to start thinking about summer barbecues. The $300 Char-Broil Performance XL includes a side burner and a ton of cooking power at an affordable price.
Simple Chef HF-898
A nice addition to any basement bar, the $70 Simple Chef air fryer will quickly heat up snack foods like pizza rolls or mozzarella sticks. It's also pleasingly easy to clean once you're done cooking.