The Best Gifts for Foodies

"Tastes good on everything!" Normally when a condiment makes such a claim I'm skeptical, but this condiment is Momofuku Ssam Sauce. Made by chef David Chang, founder of the Momofuku Korean-inspired restaurants, and really a whole culinary brand, this is some Momofuk-in' ssam good stuff. It really does taste good on everything. Meat. Rice. Ramen. Eggs. Pizza. The palm of your hand.

The base of Momofuku Ssam Sauce is a current food favorite, Korean gochujang. Gochujang is a savory-sweet chili paste of varying degrees of heat. You can get your Chang-kissed ssam sauce in Original, Smoky, or Spicy flavors.

For most of us, balsamic vinegar, made from cooked down and fermented grape must, is an ingredient in salad dressing. Part of a glaze. The brown-black thing that doesn't mix with the olive oil during bread service at an Italian restaurant.

But for foodies who know balsamic, this is a vinegar as variable and complex as that other thing they make from fermented grape must. Here you see a high-end balsamic from Acetia Rossi Barattini, a family producer from acclaimed balsamic region Modena, Italy. In Modena, there are only 2 grades of the vinegar: 12- and 25-year. At 25 years old, you could probably enjoy a drizzling of this aged balsamic over vanilla ice cream instead of hot fudge.

I know these Under NY Sky Aprons look like they're made for hipster foodies. Hipster foodies smugly running the grill. Hipster foodies self-importantly standing at the host stand. Hipster foodies passive aggressively mentioning how nice Under NY Sky Aprons are for those who don't want to look like complete slobs with sauce, grease, and liquor stains all over their custom-tailored hipster shirts and hipster skinny jeans after they've completed their hipster cooking, seating, and mixing duties for the night.

OK, so maybe Under NY Sky Aprons don't just look like they're made for hipster foodies.

Formerly giant, cumbersome, and expensive temperature-controlled water bath machines suitable really only for professional kitchens, the past few years have seen several attempts to make the immersion circulators smaller and more accessible to home cooks. Because not only do people swear that meat, fish, eggs, and vegetables taste a million times more juicy and texturally perfect when cooked in a bag underwater, but once you have a reliable sous vide machine, executing the sous vide method is kind of a piece of cake succulent, edge-to-edge-even 125-degree steak.

Chefman has simplified sous vide for the home with the stick you see here. It sits inside a water-filled pot or large container you already own, and heats the bath up to the exact temperature you'd like your food to be when you eat it. Then it gently swirls the water around to maintain that temperature for as long as it's submerged.

I don't know how you feel about pork rinds or cracklings, or snacks that describe themselves as "artisanal," but I tried paleo and keto diet champion brand Epic's new artisanal pork rinds a few weeks ago, and they were porking deee-licious.

I can't speak to all of the Epic flavors, I've only had BBQ and Sea Salt & Pepper. BBQ: 7/10. Sea Salt & Pepper: 70/10. Yes, seventy. I mean, I inhale entire bags salt & pepper kettle chips and salt & pepper peanuts too, so obviously it's a flavor that pleases me, but the specific recipe, the seasoning ratio, and the introduction of puffed meat enhancement to these crunchy carb substitutes puts Epic Pork Rinds on the top of my snackability ladder.

I don't know much, but I do know that I would like some duck fat french fries. Yes please, Baby Jesus! A coupla spiralized russets, a sturdy saucepan, a big, fat wad of Fatworks kettle-rendered quack fat, and I don't even need to go to the Belgian frites place and pay $8 to get them.

8-ounce jars of Duck Fat are just one of your choices in Fatworks' line of animal fats for cooking. Committed to ending what they consider an unmerited war on fat, the self-described "Fattitude Adjusters" at Fatworks also produce oils including Beef Tallow, Pasture Raised Lard, Leaf Lard, Chicken Fat, Lamb Tallow, and Goose Fat. These real, natural oils were staples in our diets up until the early- to mid-20th century, and some contemporary research suggests they never deserved the bag rap they got during the margarine and vegetable oil craze, and that many of us still find hard to let go of now.

Who wants a pork chop, a salmon fillet, a bloody mary, or a piece of chocolate cake that tastes like it's spent hours slowly absorbing the apple wood of a smoker? In seconds, and without heat, the Smoking Gun portable food smoker claims it will inject just about any edible or potable with the natural flavors of fired wood goodness.

Ingredients previously ill-suited for sweat sessions in the smoke sauna, such as butter, oysters, meringue, and sushi, seem to take on the savory profile of hickory, alderwood, or any chips of the user's choosing with a quick, cool blast from PolyScience's handheld gun. The process can be executed table-side, underneath a glass, inside a container or bag, or via aerating smoke directly into liquids inside a blender or shaker.