Top Christmas gifts for home cooks

Kitchen gear is one of the most useful and personal types of gifts you can buy a friend or loved one. And even better, you may even get to enjoy the dividends of coffee, sweet treats, and other goodies when you next see them (in a socially distanced scenario, of course). Get the right Christmas gift for home cooks and you'll be reaping the rewards throughout the year.

But if you're not much of a foodie or baker, where do you start? Thankfully we at TechRadar are here to help you bring smiles to the enthusiastic chefs in your life, from sleek, stylish coffee machines that make a delicious cup o' Joe, to smart displays that keep them entertained with music and Netflix, and let them set timers without them having to wash their hands.

Of course, if you want to thrill the foodie in your life with good-quality kit, you'll need to pay for the privilege. The gift ideas below aren't cheap, but you can trust that they will stand the test of time many cakes, meals, and healthy mixed drinks down the line.

So read on to find the very best festive home cook gifts, and you just might get the choicest hunk of festive meat and pudding on Christmas day.

If you know someone who loves baking, but doesn't have Herculean muscles (or enough time) to mix plenty of bowls of sugar and butter all the time, a stand mixer is the present to get. It does your mixing for you, so you can spend more time rummaging through your cupboards to try and find that waylaid spice jar.

KitchenAid makes some of the most premium stand mixers out right now, so they make for great gifts as they'll last for a long time and provide great results. They're also pretty sleek-looking devices, so will fit in with your kitchen decor.

Instant Pots give you loads of versatility and flexibility in the kitchen, as they're a combination of slow and pressure cookers, letting you set up a meal to cook over the course of a day or just crack out a dish in no time.

This electric pressure cooker tops our list of the best Instant Pot, pressure and slow cookers, so you know you're getting a high-quality gadget here. Make sure you're only gifting it to someone who's sure to invite you round for dinner in future, though.

Most people don't have room in their kitchen (or budget) for huge coffee machines, so here's a smaller coffee dispenser instead, the Nespress Vertuo Plus. It uses Nespresso's pods to deliver you coffee in an easy, quick and painless way, although it perhaps won't be as fresh-tasting as ground coffee.

The real reason you'd want a Nespresso Vertuo Plus is how dainty it is, so it'll easily fit into a kitchen. Forget that massive espresso machine that'll take up half the surface area of your house, this can be slotted in wherever's convenient. 

Why not buy a healthy Christmas gift, in the form of a machine that turns whatever you put in it to juice? Juice is the best way to have your five a day, anyway.

This Philips Juicer doesn't have all the bells and whistles of some of the other gadgets on this list, but it'll do exactly what you want it to: make juice. You can put a range of objects in it, from oranges and apples to harder things like pomegranate seeds and nuts, and still get a smooth blend.

NutriBullets are popular juicing machines, that can blend whatever you throw in them (well, things you'd want juiced at least), without breaking a sweat. You can easily use them to make a quick healthy smoothie or paste with a range of different ingredients.

This is a blender, not a food processor, so you might not have success trying to make guacamole or falafel mix in here. But for people who want to easily create a healthy drink while they're on the go, this is a great gift.

There are plenty of healthy Christmas gifts on this list, but we also need to bring up one for the good stuff - waffles. Gift this to someone, and you can help them get what's important in life: friends, waffles, work.

This Cuisinart waffle maker has a griddle arranged so your waffles will be in a traditional square pattern, not thin and circular like some other waffle irons create. It's quick and easy to use, so there's no need to mess around with different settings and timings.

Smart displays used to be rare among smart devices as a whole, but now you've got plenty to choose from if you're looking for a device that can set timers and play music, but with a screen that lets you video chat and see recipes. There's stiff competition from the Amazon Echo Show when it comes to the best smart displays, but for us the powerhouse pick of the bunch is the Google Nest Hub Max.

Better than the Home Hub at pretty much everything you'd want from a smart display – video, music, podcasts – the Nest Hub Max is the ideal kitchen companion. And for those lengthy waits while you're mid-bake, the addition of Netflix integration is a nice bonus.

Nest integration was been a bit shaky at launch, and there are sharper screens to be found on the smart display market, but the Google Nest Hub Max is the full package. If you want to buy a great Christmas gift for cooking or baking, but you don't know your way around kitchen appliances, this'll be great.

Read the full review: Google Nest Hub Max