HARRISONBURG, VA (Rocktown Now) — Mashita owner Mikey Reisenberg shared on WSVA’s Early Mornings the tools he thinks are essential to have in a kitchen. So if you know someone who loves cooking or is just getting into it, check out this list for potential holiday gift ideas.

Knives:
-8-in chef knife, Chef Mikey Reisenberg prefers Japanese makes. Shun knives are in his personal collection, but there are a large number of other Japanese brands that are also wonderful. Tojiro DP is a high quality and affordable knife for beginners.
-bread knife: decent quality serrated bread knife at least 9 in Long
– pairing or utility knife: Chef Mikey Reisenberg prefer 6-in blade lengths, but they also make smaller knives for smaller hands. He currently uses a Nacionale Blade works bunka style knife as his go-to utility.

Instant read thermometer: Probe style, Thermopen is a decent brand for home cooks

Kitchen scale: An affordable yet accurate kitchen scale with actual buttons, not a digital display or touch screen options. Touch screen and digital displays often fail when wet. Make sure it can measure in standard and metric volumes.

Cookbooks:
– Flavor Bible: A very helpful resource for creating
– Pheidon books: Very nice cookbooks written by chefs for intermediate and advanced Cooks. Austin includes step-by-step tutorials and in-depth discussions of why you are doing things.
– Better Homes and Gardens/ Martha Stewart/ Southern Living: are good options for beginner Cooks. Learning a recipe, assessing the recipe, and determining what changes can be made is often as valuable of an experience as learning the how and why.

Listen to Mikey’s full interview on Early Mornings here.