Buying someone a present for their kitchen is trickier than it looks. Get the size wrong and the thing ends up at the back of a cupboard, if it even fits in the cupboard at all. If you’re shopping for someone who cooks in a kitchen smaller than they’d like (a studio, a shared house, a flat above a shop) here are three things that earn their keep without asking for a shelf of their own.
A rice cooker that doesn’t need a cupboard to itself
The Yum Asia Panda Mini holds 0.63 litres, about 3.5 cups of cooked rice, which suits one person easily or two modest portions. The maker lists it at 22.5 x 30 x 21cm and 2.36kg, small enough to leave out permanently rather than shuffle in and out of a cupboard. It has eight preset modes, including porridge, slow cook, steam and even cake, so it earns its spot by doing more than plain rice. The bowl has a nonstick ceramic coating, and the maker recommends hand washing it to protect that coating, though the lid and accessories are dishwasher safe.
Good to know
It’s a ceramic bowl rather than steel, so treat it a bit more gently than a cheap non-stick pan and skip the metal spoon. We haven’t tested one ourselves, this is based on the maker’s own listing and spec sheet.
Somewhere for pan lids to actually go
Loose pan lids are one of the most annoying things to store in a small kitchen. They slide about, they clatter, and somehow they still take up a whole shelf. The Joseph Joseph Duo set gives each lid its own holder, stuck to the inside of a cupboard door with strong tape (3M VHB, no drilling), and takes lids up to 24cm across. Each holder measures a modest 3.7 x 19 x 2.3cm, so three of them barely register on a door that was doing nothing anyway.
Good to know
It’s adhesive rather than screwed in, so it depends on a clean, flat, dry surface to stick to. A textured or freshly painted cupboard door might not hold it as well as a smooth one.
A chopper with no plug, no motor and nowhere obvious to lose it
The Zyliss Easy Pull is a manual food processor: an 800ml bowl, three stacked stainless steel blades, and a pull cord on top instead of a motor. Pull it a few times and it chops onions, garlic or herbs without a socket or a charging cable anywhere in sight. Zyliss says the bowl and blades are dishwasher safe (the cord mechanism isn’t, so keep that part out of the water), and the whole thing weighs 350g and measures about 12 x 12 x 13cm, small enough for a drawer rather than a shelf of its own.
Good to know
It’s a chopper, not a food processor in the full sense. It won’t purée soup or knead dough, it’s built for a quick rough chop and it does it really well.
None of these need a cupboard to themselves, which is really the whole point of a good kitchen gift for someone who’s short on space. One more thing: the pictures above are illustrations of what each type of product looks like, not photos of the exact items, so whatever actually turns up will look a little different in the details.
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