21 Best Gifts for Chefs (2025): Vitamix, Pans, and Air Fryers

Every cook has seen these chessboard-like cutting boards and been a little thirsty for them. They’re handsome, of course, but they’re also practical. Using smaller pieces of wood makes your butcher block more difficult to scratch (which is not only aesthetically important but also from bacteria), and easier to do. Your favorite knife. But because end panels have to be made from many pieces of wood, they are usually expensive. And so they’re perfect gifts for the chefs in your life – a functional indulgence they might not have given themselves, but they’ll be grateful for every day they use them.

Boardsmith’s Walnut End Grain is the board I have been using and cherishing for the past year. Walnut, like most maple and fruit woods, falls into the sweet zone of hardness that is hard to break but easy on knives. It has a beautiful dark color like the color of walnut. Its heaviness makes it unlikely to move. It makes me feel a little better every time I cook, as if cutting celery was a luxury I had previously been denied. The cook in your life likely feels the same way. Note that maple is also a great wood for chopping Boardsmith It costs $50 less than walnut. —Matthew Corvage

Other great cutting boards: If you don’t have room for a large plate of butcher blocks, Steelport has an elegant solution. the Steelport Steel Core ($280) It’s a rare thing: a truly innovative cutting board. It’s a still hefty but much thinner board made of finished walnut on one side for vegetables and everyday preps, a composite cutting board on the other side for raw meats, and steel beams inside to resist heaviness and warping—all in a thin enough package that’s easy to store. I’ve probably never met a more useful board before, and it still seems like just a glance.

On the budget side this Boos reversible edge block It’s also great (if not as great as the final panels) and is only $87.