The 25 Best Tinned Gifts

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Our list includes tinned fish, editor-favorite olive oil, gourmet popcorn, and panettone.

In This Article

Food & Wine / Kevin Liang

There’s no holiday gift quite like a commemorative tin. Tinned gifts — like traditional Italian cookies or the classic popcorn tin — have found their way into gift exchanges for years. Many families turn tinned goodies into an annual ritual. But just because this holiday gifting idea has been done many times before doesn’t mean it’s boring. As we've tested, reviewed, and researched hundreds of products for our editor-favorite gift guides, we kept coming across things we love to give and get that come in festive tins.

We’ve rounded up the best tinned gifts that are perfect for every home cook on your list. Whether you’re shopping for someone who prefers sweet treats (we’ve got lots of cookies, decadent hot chocolate, and fluffy panettone) or likes things on the salty side (there’s no way we could leave tinned fish off this list!), these tinned gifts are practical, pretty, and a perfect way to cut down on your gift wrap consumption this year, or just avoid wrapping altogether.

We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again: a giant tin of artisan pasta is the way to our hearts. This cheeky offering from the famous NYC restaurant looks just like a traditional popcorn tin, but inside, it's filled with dried casarecce, lumache, and trottole. Don’t worry: the tin contains dividers to keep each shape separate. This gift bundle goes all out; it also includes a tin of Rubiosa's extra virgin olive oil, plus their two most popular sauces: vodka and marinara. Your recipient will surely want to invite you over for many, many pasta nights to come.

Fishwife is one of our favorite tinned fish brands, and for good reason. The woman-founded company was a major forerunner in shaping the seafood industry’s shift to transparent, ethical sourcing, and we love them for it. Other reasons to adore Fishwife: their highly unique offerings (sardines with preserved lemon and smoked salmon flavored with Fly by Jing Sichuan Chili Crisp, to name a couple); their cheeky origin story (“fishwife” is a colloquial term for bossy, brash women), and the gloriously illustrated packaging. This adorable gift set lets you customize your tins so you can pick what kind of fish your recipient will love and then set them up with a cute fish-shaped board and utensil set.

If you love Italian cookies, Chiostro di Saronno is a baker you need to know. They’ve been baking in Saronno, Lombardy, Italy, for centuries, so it’s safe to say they’ve mastered the recipe for the perfect amaretti cookie. The family-owned bakery pulled out all the stops for this giftable tin, with four different varieties of these favorite almond-flavored cookies.

There’s the traditional crunchy amaretti, soft amaretti, amaretti with chocolate chips, and lemon amaretti. Can’t choose a favorite? Giada de Laurentiis uses the crunchy cookies in many of her holiday recipes, including as a crust for a naturally gluten-free cheesecake.

Nobody said you have to make hot cocoa from scratch every time. But we can do better than those weakly-flavored grocery store packets. Enter Spicewalla, a spice company committed to diversity of flavor and sourcing, and created by James Beard Award winner Meherwan Irani.

The Haute Chocolate selection earns its name by using Guittard chocolate in each of its blends: Classic, Mexican Hot Chocolate with cayenne and chilis, and Chai Spice featuring green cardamom and a touch of sugar for an elevated cocoa experience.

The tins make for pretty packaging, but they’re also ideal for keeping the cocoa fresh and fragrant until the last cup. Hot tip: We recommend adding one of our editor-favorite coffee mugs for a cozy holiday gift.

No sweet treats brand delivers smiles quite like Milk Bar: After all, this is the company behind such irreverent concoctions as a Cheetos-adorned Birthday Cake. They’re keeping things a little more mellow but just as fun with this holiday gift idea. The pink branded tin is packaged festively and comes with Milk Bar’s best-loved cookies: compost (a sweet and salty combination of chocolate chips, pretzels, potato chips, graham crackers, coffee, oats, and butterscotch), cornflake chocolate chip marshmallow, confetti, chocolate confetti, blueberry and cream, and corn, so there's something for everyone — though your recipient may not want to share!

Shopping for a tea drinker when you don't know much about tea can be daunting, but we turn to Fortnum & Mason's teas in this situation. Fortnum & Mason is the official tea supplier of the British royal houses, has stores dotted all over London (and the rest of the world), and calls the famed Diamond Jubilee Tea Salon home — so, needless to say, they know tea.

The quality of Fortnum & Mason’s loose-leaf tea is unparalleled. We like this festive blend that combines Fortnum & Mason's quality, strong black tea with cocoa nibs, cloves, clementine, ginger, and safflower petals. The deep, bold notes of black tea feel more grown-up, while the combination of warming spices, citrus, and cocoa harkens to childhood memories of the winter season. The elegant tin is pretty enough to pop right into someone’s stocking, and it’ll look good next to your favorite electric tea kettle all season long.

Nestled in the heart of South Philadelphia, this family-run bakery has made traditional Italian cookies and pastries for 120 years. This small neighborhood bake shop was recently nominated for a James Beard award, turning national attention to the classic Italian holiday cookies that seem to overflow from the cases in their window.

If you can't swing a trip to Philly to sample one of everything in Isgro's vast cookie display, this tin is the next best thing. It includes a two-pound assortment of all the Italian classics: pignoli cookies, butter walnut cookies, almond macaroons, coconut macaroons, apple butter and sesame-filled cookies, apricot-filled cookies, raspberry-filled cookies, and chocolate fig-filled cookies.

Sometimes, you just need an extra special gift for an extra special person or occasion. And that's where a tin of Petrossian Royal Ossetra Caviar comes in. When we tested caviar, we named this Ossetra Sturgeon caviar the most versatile because of its buttery, balanced flavor and texture. It is an excellent gift because your recipient can eat it straight from the tin or pair it with potato chips or blini.

When it comes to fancy salt, it’s hard to beat Jacobsen. The Oregon-based company is serious about delivering briny, seaswept vibes to customers’ tables with its hand-crafted, highly curated product selection. We like their flaky salt for its perfectly sized crystals, which adds a finishing touch to everything from salads to chocolate chip cookies.

Once you’ve tried Jacobsen Salt, you won’t want to be without it — making these slim, highly portable tins essential. Buy the 15-pack, and you’ve got stocking stuffers and your White Elephant gift exchanges handled.

This high-end oil has its origins in both Brooklyn and Italy: It’s made from Sicilian-grown olives and used by the famed New York restaurant Frankies 457 Spuntino. The team at Frankies 457 isn’t shy about sharing their trade secrets (This EVOO is made from Nocellara del Belice olives), resulting in a drizzle-able oil with nutty, fruity notes. The tin isn’t just for good looks, either. It protects the oil from UV rays and keeps it fresh.

For the uninitiated, Italian panettone is a rich, eggy, sweet bread infused with dried fruits, traditionally made and gifted around the holidays. Panettone is only as good as the ingredients used, which is why Giada DeLaurentiis only recommended this one after ensuring it was baked with the highest-quality flour, butter, and fruit. This cake is made by hand in Verona and leavened naturally with a 48-hour fermentation period. The result is a fluffy, impossibly tender loaf you’ll want to keep all to yourself. Oh, and the Italian-designed tin is attractive enough to keep around long after the panettone is gone.

Peppermint bark is one of the more traditional picks on our list, and the ingredients matter when crafting a sweet and minty bark with the perfect snap. The team at Harry & David has cracked the code, making their tinned bark one of our must-haves.

The secret is a thick slab of dark chocolate swirled with sweet white chocolate, finished with a shower of crushed peppermint candies. Every bite contains a little bit of each flavor — a must for true bark aficionados. These tins come in a pair, perfect for crossing off two peppermint bark lovers on your list or for keeping one all to yourself!

Ceremonial Grade matcha is a wow-worthy gift for avid matcha drinkers, and we’re big fans of the blends by Chamberlain Coffee. This gift set includes three 1.5-ounce tins of their best-loved matcha: original, mango, and vanilla-flavored. The high quality of these blends makes the variety pack a gift equally suited to matcha pros as well as novices — any matcha drinker would be thrilled to receive these variety tins. P.S.: We think their lavender matcha latte mix is pretty darn delicious, too.

This luxe tinned fish company has been on our radar for a while. Their fish are sustainably harvested in Galicia, Spain, which makes this a good option for giftees who prioritize sustainability and transparency in sourcing. Siesta Co.’s variety pack will appeal to aficionados and the newly curious alike. The set includes mussels in pickled oil, mackerel, and sardines in extra virgin olive oil, but the tuna in extra virgin olive oil is one of our favorites. The colorful packaging is pure joy and makes it a memorable stocking stuffer. We’d happily display these tins on our counters as decor.

We can’t imagine the holidays without Moose Munch, the caramel corn snack mix so famous that it has a trademark. This pretty holiday tin features a Scandinavian-inspired winter design and holds four bags of flavored Moose Munch. The 10-ounce bags of dark chocolate peppermint bark, dark chocolate salted caramel, dark chocolate churro, and milk chocolate holiday blend prove this is not your basic caramel corn. Don’t leave Moose Munch off your list: It’s a must at parties, holiday snack spreads, and office break rooms throughout the season.

We’d be remiss to leave these popular cookies off the list. We’re not sure which is more famous: the buttery, melt-in-your-mouth cookie recipe or the iconic tin. Although Royal Dansk may not be as artisanal a choice as some of the other cookies on our list, we appreciate that they’re made without preservatives or dyes — and we’ll admit, there’s no substitute as an accompaniment for a cup of hot coffee. The nostalgia factor here is high; many of us have memories of eating these cookies around the holidays (or thinking there are a few cookies left and opening the tin to find sewing supplies).

We’ll get to the teas in a moment, but first, you’ve got to check out the gold-embossed details on these tins! They feature the brand’s signature hot air balloons with different colored ombré backgrounds. Just gorgeous. Now, onto the tea. This set includes three different blends of real-deal chai: ginger, cinnamon, and Maharani Oolong. The blends are extremely high-quality (no “tea dust” here). VAHDAM prioritizes its relationships with Indian farmers, eliminating the middleman to allow for more sustainable, ethical sourcing.

Can’t jet off to Italy for the holidays? This eye-catching Moka pot is the next best thing. Two Italian powerhouses merged for this collaboration, with Dolce and Gabbana’s designs on Bialetti’s Moka pot, coffee canister, and commemorative tin. The Moka pot small coffee maker can be used on various stovetop styles, and the tin is filled with 7.5 ounces of freshly ground coffee. We’d love to see anything from Dolce and Gabbana in a gift-wrapped box, but the Sicilian-inspired design on this set makes it one of the most covetable items on our list.

Love Ghia? We do, too. Show your super fan status with a branded apron embroidered with the NA aperitif’s logo. We like that it has pockets (four of ‘em), and is made from sustainable dyes and a blend of cotton and hemp fabric. Oh, and did we mention the packaging? Ghia’s apron comes in a La Dolce tin, so you can spend your gift wrap money on a case of Ghia’s editor-loved nonalcoholic drinks.

One of the most unique picks on our list, this tinned fish is made from plants. It’s an innovative spin on snow crab (enoki mushrooms) and whitefish (celery root). Packaged beautifully, these tins look and taste just like the real thing, but they’re vegan-friendly and packed with umami. They are pretty enough to give all on their own, but we think they’d shine paired with fancy crackers or a DIY ramen kit.

New York's famous Levain Bakery is known for its super thick chocolate chip cookies. And who doesn't love a giant chocolate chip cookie? Choose from four different assortments of Levain's ultra-decadent takes on the classic to suit any type of chocolate lover on your list. You can't go wrong with any of the options that include the standard chocolate chip, but we also recommend the chocolate chip walnut for a slightly more grown-up cookie and the dark chocolate chocolate chip for serious cocoa lovers.

You can't go wrong with anything from Harry and David. They're known for their opulent gift baskets full of high-quality items, and this Savory Snack Tin is no exception. Perfect for snacking around the holidays, this tin is loaded with munchable salty snack mix, nuts, and all the fixings for a stellar meat and cheese spread. The pork summer sausage, cheddar cheese, and honey mustard are a crave-able combination, and with the seeded crackers and other snacks, this tin will be a hit with anyone on your list.

The smell of Mrs. Fields' cookies evokes deep nostalgia for warm cookies in a bustling mall. With this tin of bite-sized cookies from Mrs. Fields, you can give the gift of fresh-baked cookies without the holiday shopping crowds. The adorable mini cookies come in some of Mrs. Fields' most popular flavors: chocolate chip, triple chocolate, cinnamon sugar, white chocolate, and oatmeal raisin. The mixed variety and tiny, one-bite size make this tin perfect for sharing at parties or around the office—or not!

Nuts.com is one of our go-to spots for high-quality nuts and snacks. We love this nut variety tin because it's the perfect blend of sweet and salty. It includes over a pound and a half of everything bagel cashews, chili crisp almonds, vanilla rum cashews, and salt and pepper pistachios. The combination of tried-and-true classics with trending flavors means this tin will appeal to a broad audience, perfect for gifting when you don't exactly know someone's preferences or are looking for a gift to share.

Cheese straws are a classic Southern treat; if you know, you know. Not quite a savory shortbread, not quite a cracker, not quite a cheese puff, cheese straws are in a category all their own. The first ingredient in these Mississippi Cheese Straw Factory cheese straws is cheddar cheese and they certainly deliver on cheesiness. They're the ultimate salty, cheesy snack; you'll be hooked after just one straw. Be warned, though — once you give this tin once, you'll be asked for it every year!

Rochelle Bilow is a food writer and editor with over a decade of professional experience. Previously a senior associate editor and social media manager at Bon Appétit and Cooking Light magazines, Rochelle is also a novelist, a culinary school graduate, and a former professional baker and line cook. Rochelle has written extensively about home and kitchen products in the luxury space; in writing this article, she included picks from a variety of brands, including many tested and approved by Food & Wine editors.