Vegetarian gifts have a reputation problem, and anyone who has ever shopped for one knows exactly what it is. Search for gifts for vegetarians and the internet will offer you a novelty tofu press, a cookbook they almost certainly own, and a hamper that turns out to be mostly crisps. Meanwhile the vegetarian in your life is a whole person with actual tastes: a favourite cheese, strong opinions about chilli heat, a preferred way with gin. This guide is about buying for those tastes: make-your-own kits they'll make something delicious or beautiful with, every one genuinely suitable for vegetarians, a good number vegan too, organised by the person rather than the diet.
Why are vegetarian gifts so hard to get right?
Because most gift guides treat vegetarianism as the recipient's entire personality. The moment someone stops eating meat, the world seems to decide they need meat-substitute gadgets and lentil-themed novelties for every birthday until the end of time. It misses the point twice over: being vegetarian is about what someone doesn't eat, an odd thing to build a present around, and it ignores everything they do love, which is where the good gifts live.
There's a quieter problem too, the flicker of doubt that comes with food gifts: is this actually vegetarian? Plenty of cheese is set with animal rennet, and some wine is cleared with finings a vegetarian would rather not read about. A genuinely thoughtful vegetarian gift removes that doubt completely. Every kit in this guide passes that test.
Why do make-your-own kits work so well as vegetarian gifts?
A kit is an experience and a result in one box. Instead of handing over a finished product, you're giving an afternoon or a week of properly enjoyable making, followed by warm homemade mozzarella, a bottle of their own gin, or a jar of kimchi fermenting away in their fridge. That beats another veggie cookbook on every measure that matters: it's more fun, it's more personal, and it produces something they'll actually eat, drink or display.
There's no skill gamble either. Our kits are designed for complete beginners, with clear step-by-step booklets, and each one is hand-packed in Britain. If you'd rather skip the wrapping paper, enter their address as the delivery address at checkout and the kit goes straight to their door.
What should you buy the vegetarian who loves cheese?
Cheese is the food vegetarians read labels for, because the rennet that sets milk into curds is traditionally animal-derived. Both of our cheese kits use vegetarian rennet, so every cheese they make is vegetarian. That one fact turns home cheesemaking from a label-checking minefield into one of the best vegetarian gift ideas going.
The Beginner's Cheese Making Kit makes five fresh cheeses: ricotta, mozzarella, mascarpone, burrata and a creamy goat's cheese. Mozzarella, the crowd-pleaser, is done in under an hour including the theatrical stretching stage, and there are few better kitchen moments than eating warm mozzarella you stretched yourself. The recipient supplies the milk, and everything specialist, the vegetarian rennet, citric acid, cheese salt and cheesecloth, is in the box. Each batch makes around 400ml of cheese, so a couple of litres of milk becomes a genuinely impressive cheeseboard.
For the vegetarian who already knows their way around that cheeseboard, the Cheeses of the World Kit doubles the repertoire to ten, adding halloumi, paneer, queso blanco, cottage cheese and squeaky cheese curds. Homemade halloumi, pressed and brined by their own hands, is the sort of achievement that gets casually mentioned at dinner parties for months afterwards.
Which vegetarian food gifts suit a spice lover?
For the heat seeker, the Chilli Sauce Making Kit makes seven different chilli sauces at varying heat levels from six dried chillies and flakes: chipotle, cayenne, green, jalapeno, facing heaven, habanero and piri piri. The kit includes gloves for handling the fiery ones, tasting pipettes for cautious sampling, and kraft labels for the finished bottles, so their fridge door ends up looking like the headquarters of a very small, very proud hot sauce company. And the golden rule of chilli holds: they can always add more heat, but they can't take it out.
For the fermentation-curious, the Kimchi Making Kit makes two big batches of authentic homemade kimchi. The kit brings the specialist ingredients, sweet rice flour for the porridge that binds the chilli paste, dried seaweed powder and Korean dried red pepper, along with gloves and a fermentation bag; they add a napa cabbage and a handful of fresh aromatics. The hands-on part takes an afternoon, then the kimchi ferments in the fridge for five to seven days while lactobacillus bacteria turn the cabbage's natural sugars into that distinctive tangy sourness. Watching the bag puff up with fermentation gas is more entertaining than it has any right to be, and they control the spice by how much red pepper goes into the paste.
What about the vegetarian who would rather drink their gift?
A useful thing to know first: none of our drinks kits contain any alcohol. They hold the botanicals, spices, equipment and instructions, and the recipient buys the spirit separately.
The Gin Making Kit is the classic. They add juniper and botanicals to a bottle of inexpensive vodka, leave it to infuse for under a week, strain, and it's gin, made completely legally with no still and no licence required. The blend is built around bright citrus with fragrant coriander and allspice, designed to echo a premium London-style gin. For the true gin obsessive, the Ultimate Gin Making Kit is the generous one: 13 premium botanicals and enough to make up to ten 700ml bottles, mixed and matched into a signature gin of their own. And for the friend who loves a little theatre, the Colour Changing Gin Kit infuses blue pea flowers, whose natural dye shifts with pH, so the gin pours a deep blue and turns pink the moment tonic hits the glass. The change happens almost instantly, so the trick is to do the pour in front of guests.
If they're more of a rum person, the Spiced Rum Making Kit turns bottles of inexpensive dark rum into two batches of their own spiced rum, each ready in under a week: Captain's blend, a classic pirate spice, and Jamaican ginger, with a unique ginger zing.
And for the patient one, the Hedgerow Wine Making Kit makes country wine from a huge range of fruits, blackberry, elderberry, apple, plum, rhubarb and more, with each batch producing about six bottles over 8 to 12 weeks. And here's the detail a label-reading vegetarian will genuinely appreciate: even the finings that clear the wine are a natural clay, with nothing animal-derived in them.
What if they would rather make something than eat something?
The safest meat-free gift of all is one without an ingredients list. The Kintsugi Repair Kit brings the Japanese art of golden repair to their kitchen table: broken ceramics are mended with seams of gold, so the cracks become the most beautiful thing about the piece rather than something to hide. The kit includes a two-part epoxy, premium gold mica pigment and two practice bowls to break and mend before they attempt anything precious, and a first piece takes about an evening of unhurried mending plus 24 hours of curing. It's meditative, quietly philosophical and entirely diet-proof, and the mended bowl they keep will be the only one of its kind in the world, wobbles included.
Which vegetarian gifts work for vegans too?
More than you might expect. Made as directed, the Gin Making Kit, Ultimate Gin Making Kit, Colour Changing Gin Kit, Spiced Rum Making Kit, Kimchi Making Kit and Hedgerow Wine Making Kit are all vegan, gluten free and lactose free, and the Chilli Sauce Making Kit joins them too. One honest caveat: where a recipe asks for fresh ingredients from the recipient's own kitchen, those decide the finished result. The cheese kits are vegetarian rather than vegan: the rennet is vegetarian, but the whole point is milk.
Vegetarian gift FAQs
Are the cheese making kits really vegetarian?
Yes. Both the Beginner's Cheese Making Kit and the Cheeses of the World Kit use vegetarian rennet, so every cheese they make is vegetarian. The recipient adds their own milk, which means the finished cheeses are vegetarian rather than dairy free.
Which kits are vegan as well as vegetarian?
Made as directed: all three gin kits, the spiced rum, kimchi, hedgerow wine and chilli sauce kits are vegan, gluten free and lactose free. Where a recipe calls for fresh ingredients from the recipient's own kitchen, those decide the finished result.
Do the drinks kits contain alcohol?
No, none of our kits contain alcohol. They hold the ingredients, equipment and instructions, and the spirit is bought separately. You don't need to be 18 to buy one as a gift, but the recipient needs to be old enough to buy the vodka or rum to use it.
Can I send a kit straight to the person I'm buying for?
Yes. At checkout, simply enter their address as the delivery address and the kit will be sent directly to them.
Do they need any cooking experience?
None at all. Every kit is designed for complete beginners, with a simple step-by-step booklet, a few common kitchen items and, for some kits, a fresh ingredient or two.
Is there anything in the wine kit a vegetarian should know about?
Nothing animal-derived anywhere, right down to the natural clay finings. It does contain sulphites, in the sterilising powder, the stabiliser tablet and the finished wine, which is worth knowing for anyone sensitive to them.
Whoever you're buying for, browse the full range of make-your-own kits, every one hand-packed in Britain with free UK delivery over £25.
