Foodie Gifts for Food Lovers

The best foodie gifts are things a keen cook will use, not another gadget for the drawer. Everything here is chosen for people who like cooking fish and seafood, smoking food at home or setting a good table.

Seafood gifts for the kitchen

For the seafood cook, MasterClass seafood shears cut through lobster, crab and prawn shells so the meat comes out whole, and the KitchenCraft 24cm mussels pot steams and serves moules in one pot. The non-stick paella pan has twin handles for carrying straight to the table, and the lighthouse cocktail forks are a small gift for anyone who hosts.

For a full set, our shellfish tool kits come in a canvas wallet: the Shellfish Tool Kit for 4 People has a lobster cracker, four seafood forks and a hammer, and the deluxe kits come for four, with seafood shears or with an oyster shuck. The Seafood Lovers Gift Set is the broadest, from fish scaler and bone remover to oyster shuck, and the Complete Seafood Tools and Utensils Kit covers fish and shellfish. For whole fish there's an 18-inch KitchenCraft fish poacher and an aluminium fish scaler.

Gifts for cooks: books and kitchen textiles

Fish by Mat Follas, the MasterChef winner, has over 80 fish and seafood dishes arranged by fish type, and The Great Cornish Fish Book mixes recipes with stories from the Cornish coast. For something smaller, a Cornish mackerel tea towel, a Cornish lobster tablemat or a hand-sewn nautical apron makes a good stocking filler for anyone who cooks.

Food smoking gifts

Smoking at home opens up a new kind of cooking. The Cold Smoking Starter Kit pairs a ProQ cold smoke generator with four wood dusts, and the 10-flavour wood chip gift pack lets an existing smoker taste the difference between woods. For smoker box sets and complete kits, see our BBQ and smoking gift sets.

Choosing a gift for a food lover

Think about how they cook. Someone who cooks fish at home will get most from shears, a mussels pot or a cookbook; a barbecue fan will use smoking kit straight away. Our gifts for seafood lovers guide has more ideas, and a gift card lets them choose for themselves.