Holiday Kitchen Prep: The Gear to Buy Before the Rush

The appliances you will need in November are cheapest and most available in September.

Every year the same thing happens. Somebody volunteers to host, and three days before the meal they discover the slow cooker died last winter and everything decent is either sold out or marked up.

Kitchen appliances follow a predictable curve: widely available and reasonably priced now, thin on stock and full price by mid-November. Buying the workhorses early is not about being organized, it is about paying less for the same object.

The Deal Nest

Crock-Pot 6-Quart Programmable Slow Cooker

The single most useful thing you can own for a holiday meal, because it frees an oven rack. Sides stay hot on the counter for hours, and the locking lid means it survives the drive to somebody else’s house.

~$88Shop it

The Deal Nest

COSORI Air Fryer

Your oven is the bottleneck on any big cooking day. This is a second heat source that crisps things fast without competing for space, which is why it earns its counter footprint in December.

~$73Shop it

The Deal Nest

Variable Speed Hand Blender

Soup, gravy, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce. Blending in the pot instead of moving hot liquid to a countertop blender removes both a mess and a burn risk.

~$65Shop it

The Deal Nest

Chefman Gooseneck Electric Kettle

Temperature control matters more than people expect for tea and coffee, and the gooseneck spout gives you actual pour control. Also the fastest way to get hot water for a crowd.

~$30Shop it

The Deal Nest

Bodum Pour Over Coffee Maker, 34 oz

When guests want coffee at different times, a drip pot going cold is the enemy. This makes one good cup at a time with no paper filters to run out of.

~$20Shop it

If you buy nothing else on this list, buy the slow cooker. It solves the oven-space problem, which is the actual constraint on every holiday meal, and it is the item most likely to be sold out when you finally need it.