All of the Kitchen Essentials You Need to Cook a Holiday Meal

Depending on your outlook, cooking a showstopping holiday meal is either a total blast or an absolute nightmare. But whether you love or loathe hosting a big dinner, one thing’s for certain: It’s a heck of a lot easier when you have the right tools. Trust me, I know. The first Christmas dinner I ever hosted was in my late 20s, and I hadn’t built up my kitchen arsenal. While dinner eventually happened, I spent almost as much time washing pots and pans as I did cooking.

Lesson learned: Having the right tools (and enough of them) makes all the difference. In the interest of more efficient, stress-free holiday entertaining, I’ve pored over our equipment reviews to find the most useful gear for cooking a big meal. And yes, you really do need two spatulas.

Essential Pots and Pans

I get it: A stock pot is big, bulky, and not the easiest piece of equipment to store. But it’s also non-negotiable for so many tasks. Making a batch of chicken or turkey stock? You need a stock pot. Simmering a large quantity of soup? Yep, you still need a stock pot. Boiling lots of potatoes? See: stock pot. The 12-quart Cuisinart stock pot won our review thanks to its wide handles that helped when moving the pot around the kitchen.

What’s the main dish at your holiday dinner? Ham? A turkey? A rack of lamb? Regardless, you need a roasting pan. A disposable pan will work in a pinch, but it’s much less versatile. (For one, you can’t deglaze an aluminum pan over the stovetop or make gravy in it.) The included rack in our favorite roasting pan perfectly cradles a large cut of meat. We also liked Misen’s nontraditional option, which can fit a standard-size cooling rack.

If you don’t already own a Dutch oven, consider this your excuse to invest. The cast iron composition gives it superior heat retention for excellent browning, and the enamel coating makes it easy to clean. It’s great for braises, soups, homemade bread, and more. There are some worthwhile budget Dutch ovens, but you’ll never regret a long-lasting Staub or Le Creuset.

A braiser, like our winner from Le Creuset, will serve you well long after the holidays are over. It’s our favorite vessel for, well, braising, thanks to its large surface area that’s ideal for searing, and also great for finishing pasta and quickly reducing a sauce. On the fence about a Dutch oven or a braiser? This comparison will help sort things out.

Saucepans are cool, but sauciers will go the distance for you. Their gently sloped sides make them the pot for stirring and whisking—you’ll use yours for boiling grains, making cream sauce, whisking gravy, simmering cranberry sauce, and tons more. The best you can buy is from Made In: The heat conduction was beyond compare, with barely any hot spots. 

Cooking Tools and Utensils

You probably already own a knife or two. But is your knife up to the task of holiday cooking? The best chef’s knives have comfortable handles that won’t leave your fingers cramping or wrists seizing up, and edges that stay sharp through mounds of carrots and celery. The Wüsthof Classic Chef’s Knife is our favorite Western-style blade, but if you’re eyeing a Japanese option, look no further than the elegant Misono UX10 8.2-Inch Gyutou.

Portioning out prime rib or finely slicing a holiday ham is loads easier with a good carving or slicing knife. Carving knives have sharp, precise tips; slicing knives are adorned with dimples on the side of the blade that prevent meat from sticking. This two-piece set marries both qualities and includes a meat fork. It’s worth every penny. 

The right carving board has a wide, not deep, juice trench, and is made from hard but forgiving wood. We’ve long recommended the board from The Boardsmith for those reasons and more. It’s customizable, so you can get it with or without feet or a trench, and choose your ideal size. 

Potato ricers create light, airy potato threads that can be transformed into silky, creamy mashed potatoes. When we tested ricers, we found ones that employed a twisting motion were the most efficient. This one from Joseph Joseph is super affordable and easy to clean, too.

Did you know outdoor furniture is often made from teak because of its resistance to water damage? It makes sense, then, that one of our favorite wooden spoons is teak. It has an oval-shaped head and a deep bowl which makes it ideal for stirring and serving.

Whisks don’t seem like they matter that much until you’re holding one for five minutes straight, whipping cream or egg whites. The very best whisk you can buy is from GIR—it has a grippy silicone handle and 12 taut wires. OXO’s whisk was a close second in our review. 

You can never have too many spatulas! It seems like they’re always soaking in a soapy mixing bowl, tucked in the dishwasher, or being used for another batter, soup, or sauce. Our favorite is firm but flexible and heat-resistant. It comes in a few sizes and styles if you want to branch out—the spoon spatula is pretty handy!

Take a peek into any professional kitchen, and you’ll see cooks using sauce spoons to taste food and drizzle sauce over plates. Their heavy, well-balanced shape feels luxurious in the hand, and they’re big enough to use for serving in a pinch. Use it once and you’ll soon find yourself investing in many. 

Don’t leave temping a roast to chance. You need an instant-read thermometer. We can’t say enough good things about the Thermapen ONE. The digital display auto-rotates so you can read it no matter how you’re holding it, and the temperature registers in under three seconds. Just about every Serious Eats staffer owns one.

Baking Gear

Metal mixing bowls are key to an efficient kitchen. You can use them for portioning out ingredients, whisking, stirring, prepping, whatever—and they’re heat-proof, so you can also place them over a simmering pot (in case you need to, say, melt chocolate or make zabaglione). Our favorite bowl comes in a set of five and nests tidily.

If you’ve ever mistakenly made a too-dense cake or overly gooey brownies, you know that measuring ingredients by volume isn’t very accurate. Retire baking-by-guesswork and get a digital scale. The best one we’ve ever tested, from OXO, has a pull-out display and it remembers the last value it registered, in case you get distracted. It can hold up to 11 pounds, which is a real boon for marathon baking sessions. 

Stoneware casserole dishes are a must for serving a crowd. Not only are they ideal for dishes like macaroni and cheese and dressing, but they’re meant to act as serving vessels, too. Look for one that comes with a lid and that has wide, spacious handles. One of our favorites, from Staub, comes in a handful of classic colors. Prefer glass? This one from OXO is around $20 and aced our tests.

Save the wine bottles for drinking: They’re no substitute for a well-made rolling pin. Wood is our favorite material for this tool because it resists sticking, and we prefer tapered pins because they concentrate force in the center of a pie dough round. If you’re more comfortable with a traditional dowel-style pin, you don’t need anything fancier than this one.

Great news: There is no need to spend a lot of money on a pretty pie pan. In our review, the runaway winner was the cheapest pan we tested. It’s made from stainless steel and has a flat edge that allows for crust versatility, producing evenly baked, beautiful pies. It’s a 10/10—no notes.

Here’s another item you could do with plenty of. Half-sheet pans (also known as baking sheets) are the workhorses of any kitchen, be it in a home or a restaurant. You may have experienced sheet pans that warp after a few uses, in which case you’ll be very interested to know these sturdy pans from Nordic Ware refuse to get bent out of shape, even when used at blazingly high heat. 

An 8 x 8-inch baking pan is surprisingly useful. If you’re not using it for brownies, it can stand in for cake, small batches of dressing or cornbread, or even dinner rolls. You’ll want a metal pan, which bakes more evenly than glass. Lighter-colored pans produce the best baked goods; darker pans tend to get overbaked at the bottom and edges. 

Other Helpful Odds and Ends 

It’s good to have a colander for draining boiled potatoes or noodles, and for steaming vegetables. This handled colander is so cleverly designed, it could almost replace a fine mesh sieve. It has hundreds of tiny holes that let water escape but hold on tight to the smallest of grains. It has smooth sides which clean up with a quick swipe, and a footed bottom keeps it standing. 

A sieve can stand in for a colander, but its real usefulness lies in sifting and rinsing. It’s the perfect tool for dusting powdered sugar over baked goods, and it’s a must for washing excess starch from rice. Our favorite from Rösle is worth the minor upgrade price: It has a large helper handle that keeps it secure over any mixing bowl, and the cylindrical handle feels nice to hold.  

At their best, oven mitts are snug, thick, and covered in heatproof, easy-to-clean silicone. You can’t do better than this set from OXO, which won our oven mitts review. Prefer pot holders? We like these—also with silicone grips.

Our favorite kitchen towels aren’t fancy, but they are hard-working. Known as “side towels” in the restaurant industry, these striped cotton towels are thick enough to use as pot holders, absorbent enough to mop up spills, and quick-drying enough to tackle a pile of dishes. Plus, they come in a pack of 15. Just use, toss in the laundry, and repeat. 

Bench scrapers seem superfluous until you’ve used one. They’re aces at portioning dough, cleaning up a sticky work surface, and transferring chopped vegetables, fruit, or nuts from a cutting board to a bowl. The best bench scraper, from OXO, has a rounded silicone handle, which gives you much greater control than metal or wooden options. 

Why We’re the Experts

• Rochelle Bilow is an editor at Serious Eats. Previously, she worked at Cooking Light and Bon Appétit magazines. 
• Serious Eats has been reviewing kitchen gear for years. Our editors all have culinary backgrounds, in addition to being prodigious home cooks.