10 Small, Cheap Kitchen Gadgets that Make Great Stocking Stuffers

Kitchen gadgets are some of the best little gifts that you can buy for the holidays. They are affordable. They are small enough to work as stocking stuffers (although they can also be wrapped up and given as a real gift to someone if you are so inclined). They tend to be functional and are products that are going to get used by the people who you buy them for. At the same time, they aren't typically necessary items so they aren't the type of thing that the recipient is likely to already own or to bother buying for herself. Kitchen gadgets are fun and they're functional which makes them a great item to pick up for one or more people this holiday season. Below you'll find ten different gadgets that each provide a great gift option for someone in your life.

How many times have you stirred something in a pot and then left the spoon sitting in the pot. And how many times did the spoon then fall into the pot and land in the sauce or stew or whatever it was that you had been stirring? You have to reach into the hot mess to get your spoon which is usually too hot to handle. It's a problem that you can avoid by getting this little clip-on spoon rest that attaches to the side of the pot and serves as a resting place to keep your spoon in place in the pot. This also helps you avoid the problem of having to take the spoon out and set it on the counter where it dirties up your space. It's a cute little solution to a common problem and a gadget that people love but rarely buy for themselves.

An apple corer is a really fun product to have in your kitchen. Of course it's not really a necessary item. You can eat around the core of your apple. You can slice the apple up using a kitchen knife to get rid of the core. But the apple corer makes the job easier, cleaner and a lot more fun to do. Most people don't own their own apple corers but most people do eat apples so it's likely that giving this gift will result in providing someone with something that they'll enjoy using again and again.

One of the things that I find most annoying about doing dishes is that I always lose my sponge in the sink. I try to remember to pull it out of the sink and to stick it on the side of the faucets so that it can dry out but it's a task that I often forget. Then I have to go digging through the dirty dishes to find the sponge which is all wet and gross. I think that having a sponge holder right in front of me would be a great reminder to set my sponge aside when I'm done with the dishes. It's definitely a gadget that I'd love to see in my stocking. Do you know someone else who feels that same way?

A citrus reamer is a tool that you can use when trying to get the juice out of a lemon, lime or orange. The tool easily removes the seeds from the piece of fruit so that you can get the juice without getting the seeds. It also pulls the juice from the ream of the fruit so that you can get as much juice as possible out of each piece. The great thing about this gadget is that it can be bought in stand-up style which means that you don't lay it down on the counter and get germs from the counter all over the reamer part before you use it. Smart design for a great little gift!

There is no real reason that you need a hamburger patty maker. It's easy enough to form hamburger patties by hand. However you get a much more uniform hamburger patty (and you get a lot more easily) when you use this little gadget. Plus you get a lot less of that hamburger smell and feel on your hands. If you know someone who makes a lot of burgers, this is definitely an affordable little kitchen gift to stick in their stockings this year.

If you get a lot of prepackaged foods and whatnot for your kitchen then you've probably had to deal with the hassle of opening the wrappers. You can use a knife or scissors but neither one of these common kitchen tools is very good at easily opening plastic packages. That's why a gadget has been designed that has the specific job of opening up plastic packages. It's easy to use, cheap to buy and makes a fun little addition to any set of existing kitchen gadgets.

This set of two gadgets is a bit pricier than most little stocking stuffers but it's also a lot nicer. If you've got to buy a gift for someone who likes the finer things in life then this is a good safe bet. You can simply press the battery-operated button on these little things and they'll grind the salt and pepper inside of them to the fineness (or coarseness) that you specify when setting the settings. You can have freshly ground salt and pepper for your food without putting forth a lot of effort at all. This is one of those things that you don't even think about getting until you see one and then it feels like a must-have!

The banana slicer is a cool little product that serves the singular purpose of cutting your bananas into little slices for you. You simply lay the banana out in the banana-shaped slicer and slice down one time over the banana. It's so much simpler than cutting the messy banana slice by slice. Anyone who eats bananas on their cereal or who dries their own bananas to make banana chips will appreciate this little affordable gift.

This is a great functional gift for the individual who does a lot of cooking-by-the-recipe. It allows you to easily look at a recipe, punch a few numbers into the machine and figure out how to create the same recipe for more or fewer people than what the recipe calls for. Anyone who has done a lot of cooking knows what a convenient tool this is to have in a kitchen and yet barely anyone actually has one of his or her own!

The onion slicer is a great thing to have because it makes it so much simpler to cut up your onions. No more unnecessary tears while you cut, no more dicing into tiny little pieces for hours when you're cooking a meal that requires a lot of onions. You just stick the onion in the dicer and slice it up easily. Of course you could get a food processor to do the same thing but it costs a lot more money than this little gadget. And yes, this one can be used to slice other vegetables if you so desire.