I've bumped this post up the list because Christmas is approaching, so it might be handy to eye up what you fancy while people are asking for gift ideas. This isn't a comprehensive list of everything a kitchen needs, just the things I find especially useful for bulk-cooking, from stocking-filler stuff to Big Gifts. And I wouldn't suggest anyone rush out and buy the whole kaboodle, just add bits and pieces as time and money and gifts allow. (As you'll see, masses of mine were gifts.) I'm putting them in approximate order of what I'd consider most essential, with a bit at the end of how the hell I fit all this stuff in my dainty kitchen.
A good chopping board
Large enough that you can chop plenty on it, durable wood that you can scrub down, a gutter to catch any juice, and thin enough that you can lift it easily one-handed when it's loaded up with ingredients to push into the pan. A very thick wooden board with no funnel is a beautiful thing for serving cheese on, but a weight-lifting exercise for cooking, plus then the counter is skidding with tomato juice. This one's served us for about ten years and is still going strong.
A water knife-sharpener
I'm putting this before "a really good knife", because a really good knife is a much bigger outlay, and at least if you have a knife sharpener, you can start from where you are and have really sharp knives. (You may have to sharpen them more often.) The water twin-wheel knife sharpeners are ideal. You can get a sharper edge by using an actual steel, but it takes a lot more skill and means only one person can sharpen the knife. These two makes are brilliant: the minoSharp one is recommended for Will's Global, the other one is for my Damashiro knife.
Having super sharp knives cuts down on your prep time dramatically, because you're slicing swiftly instead of sawing away at things. It also means you're less likely to cut yourself - sharp knives don't skid the way blunt ones do. If you don't know cheffy knife skills, though, I'd really recommend watching this video before you start handling your freshly sharpened knives. It covers all the basic knife-safety and high-speed chopping tricks.
A really good knife
Just one really good knife will do. Rather than buy a whole set, drop the full amount on one really good knife. A smaller one is better - about 15 cm or so is ideal. (That's the size of the two smaller knives in this picture.) It's much more versatile and we rarely use the larger ones these days. The two silver ones are Globals: the big one was a gift from me to Will (before I knew a smaller one was better), the smaller Global was a gift to Will from his brother. The Damashiro was Will's gift to me last year, and the only knife I ever reach for now. All of these were Significant Gifts: a really quality knife is around £100. It should last forever. (Or at least your lifetime!)
A digital scale
This was a gift from my mum about fifteen years ago and I'm baffled how I ever lived without it. I used to be a "pinch, pour and guess" kinda cook, but then I got a lot more interested in learning new recipes, which means actually following the instructions, and started cooking in bulk a lot more, and then a scale becomes fantastically useful. And when your recipe-quadrupling means you now need 10 tablespoons of a spice mix, it's a lot easier to just weigh out 150g rather than sit there counting tablespoons. A scale like this can also take any bowl or jug in your kitchen, so you don't have to pour ingredients into a special scale-bucket which then needs cleaning.
More of your favourite cooking implements
Whatever your favourite tool to reach for when you're cooking is, buy more of it. Buy loads. Buy so many that you never need to reach into the dirty dishwasher or wash one up specially while you're cooking. We have about five of those flat-headed wooden spatulars, my instrument of choice, and about 8 wooden spoons of varying lengths. We only have three of those silicone scrapers and that's not enough! They live in a big cookie jar next to the stove and when you're cooking, you just reach and grab your preferred tool. And there are always enough of them.
Masking tape and Sharpie stash
These are absolutely essential in the bulk-cooking system, so that you can easily label everything that goes in the fridge or freezer with what it is and the date, and easily pull those labels off when the tupperware gets washed. Buy masking tape in sets of 5 rolls, it's cheaper that way anyway. Buy Sharpies in three. Stash the spares and never run out. The current Sharpie and masking tape live in the kitchen drawer, the rest are upstairs in The Stash.
Stacking tupperware and lots of it
I'm evangelical about this: stop using random containers from all over the shop with unreliable sizes and all different lids and old ice-cream tubs with rounded sides. I bang on about it in the freezing post; here's the summary. It wastes space in the freezer, often lets the food get freezer burn because the containers aren't made for so much reuse, turns your tupperware cupboard into a nightmare, and makes it almost impossible to reliably freeze the right amount. Pick the appropriate size tupperwares for your household and stock up on it. We have about 20 of each of the 250ml, 600ml, and 1 litre, all Sainsbury's Basics range. They're cheap and they last! They also stack beautifully. In a perfect world, you also have a roll-out drawer. Our kitchen's IKEA, so a year or two ago Will ordered us a roll-out drawer of the right dimensions and fitted it in. Brilliant! No more tupperware-wrangling.
A hand blender set / food processor
I'd always resisted having a food processor because I refused to part with the counterspace and the extra storage seemed silly when I have a good knife and a chopping board. Ha! Idiot that I was! Then I watched my friend throw a carrot and a pepper into a wee container, go BZZZT, and they were chopped. AND their kitchen was at least as tiny as ours. Will bought me this set for my birthday about three years ago - my mum thought that was a really risky choice, but hey, the man knows me well. I was thrilled. And it's amazing! I've always been a fan of stick-blenders for soups, but all the other little bits are amazingly useful. And that squat beastie at the front is my absolute favourite. Need to crush a head of garlic and finely chop three inches of ginger and four chillies? Throw them all in together, BZZZT, chopping done. Curry-prep-time halved! Need 6 carrots grated or finely chopped for mirepoix as a stew base? Lop them in threes, throw a couple in at a time, BZZZT, chopping done. Unlike the stick blender, it doesn't puree things, just chops them tiny. It has earned a very special place in my heart. And none of this takes up counterspace.
A mandoline
(I forgot this one in my photo session so its model shot doesn't match) This is brilliant for rapidly julienning things like carrots (that's "cut into very fine sticks") and for thinly slicing all manner of things. We mostly use ours to make winter salad, pommes dauphinoises, and jewel bake (which is similar to pommes dauphinoises but with celeriac and beetroot as well). We've also used it to make starter dishes like a salad that included very finely sliced pear and julienned beetroot. Different blade attachments let you do fine sticks, flat slices, wavy slices, etc, and the knob on the side adjusts the thickness of the slices / sticks. It's a massive time saver. You could spend five years honing your knife skills to Japanese-sushi-chef level to achieve the same, or just get a mandoline. It's also a lot safer for doing fine slicing than just a knife, despite how razor-sharp the blades are. That plastic guard on the bottom right is your salvation. The rods underneath it grip the veg, you grip the top, the surrounding plastic protects your knuckles and palm. I tried it once without the guard and made blood salad. Don't use it without the guard. Happily, it's very easy to clean - just a quick rinse - whether that's to get rid of carrot juice or your own foolish blood.
This one was a gift from me to Will, and I got a Good Grips one on the recommendation of Serious Eats (my cooking heroes). We keep it in its box on top of the kitchen cupboard (our kitchen is small!) and it comes out to play about once a fortnight or so. It doesn't get used as much as most of our kitchen equipment, but for the stuff we want it for, it's amazing.
Big pots, big casserole dishes, big oven trays, big pans
Our biggest frying pan is 30cm and really handy when you don't feel like batch-frying panful after panful. It makes a double-quantity of tawa paneer way quicker, cos I can fry 450g of paneer in one pan.
The normal pots - there are actually four of those, the second-smallest one was having a spa day in the dishwasher I think. The smallest is for rice and little sauces. You still need regular sized pots alongside the giants!
Swedish McGuyver style storage
This isn't really a gift per se but it could be, if someone is good at putting up customised shelves or putting in IKEA roll-out drawers instead of the flat stationary kind. Our kitchen really is quite small and between all the different ingredients and all these massive pots we need to be really clever about where to put everything, without sacrificing any of the limited counter space. So here are some Cunning Plans...
Above the top cupboards: prime real-estate for the big baking trays, extra serving trays, and the fancy bowl. To the right of the boiler cupboard there's a two-inch gap so we added a shelf in there as well for bigger baking trays. (I have an IKEA stool so I can reach stuff.)
More sky-storage: we added a shelf above the kitchen door for bottles and jars of grains. Below that on the right, you can see there was a gap between the kitchen cupboard and the wall: we put up 5 extra shelves there as well for squash bottles, wine bottles, mugs, etc.
Roll-out drawers, nested pots, and containers. All the pots and funnels nest into each other. The blender-stick-set stuff is all in a plastic box to stop it flying all over the place and keep things orderly. Roll-out drawers are AWESOME.
The drawer underneath that is a bit of a nightmare drawer but as well arranged as possible: colander nesting inside the giant pot, bags for onions, garlic, potatoes (plus some bonus onions), all the pot lids stacked together.
IKEA rails bolted to the wall to hold all the frying pans and some extra quick-to-grab spices and oil, plus the pot for all the wooden spoons and wooden spatulas
Another roll-out drawer, this one for the spices, all in tall thin jars to maximise the space with their names written on top. (I want to get some coloured labels to colour-code them as well.)
And finally... an extra freezer
We didn't have space for an extra freezer. We didn't have money for an extra freezer. I refused to put a freezer in the conservatory, the one space that might fit it, because it would be ugly, and I insisted we needed to design some sort of wooden surround first, to fit it. And then, in 2014, my endometriosis started coming back, and best-case scenario I'd be well for two weeks, sick for two, and I needed more freezer space stat. (My first response to any health emergency is to make a giant vat of bolognese.) So we looked on the Daily Info and got a secondhand one for £20, put a pot plant on top of it, and it's been there ever since. It's not in perfect shape; about once a year we need to take out the trays, drag it into the garden, and hose it down to get rid of all the built-up ice, but that's fine. We tried replacing it about a year ago with a brand-new one, but the brand-new one was noisy and had way less space in it, plus a stupid design where the bottoms of all the shelves were curved, further reducing the inside space. So I spat bullets about people who design freezers but don't use them, we returned it, and Ye Old Faithful came back indoors.
There you are! Happy Christmas! And it's my birthday on Tuesday so feel free to buy me an extra silicone scraper / tell me how much you love this post. Either would delight me.