Cook your way around the world with these travel-inspired kitchen essentials

Russian cuisines don't get quite the attention of, say, French or Thai, and that's a real shame, as illustrated in Beyond the North Wind, a loving blend of recipes, cultural history, and travelogue that gets to the heart of Russian hospitality and flavor. From blini to baked cultured milk to sour pickles, Beyond the North Wind dives into unique ingredients, sauces, preserves, and mains that you'll find on tables across Russia.

Every cook needs a versatile baking dish for everything from casseroles to gratins to roasted vegetables and juicy cuts of meat. Emile Henry has been making some of the best bakeware around in Burgundy, France since 1850, and the quality is still unmatched. Pick up a pretty, classic piece like this covered baker and you'll not only have delicious meals now, but an heirloom to pass down later.

Writer and cook Sky McAlpine has earned a devoted online following thanks to the way she seamlessly weaves classic Italian cookery with the rhythms of everyday life in Venice, making a world of canals and cardamom tartlets, risi e bisi and radicchio lunches, flaking plaster and flaky amaretto biscuits feel tactile and accessible no matter where your kitchen is.

For thousands of years, Mexican and South American cooks have used a molcajete (mortar, from the indigenous Nahuatl word molcaxitl) made of rough volcanic stone to break down chiles, nuts and spices to make salsas, guacamole, and more. The porous stone becomes seasoned over time like cast iron, making a true molcajete a valuable family treasure. Modern cooks can not only use a molcajete to make traditional Mexican cuisines from scratch, but also as a versatile mortar and pestle to grind other spices for Indian, Chinese, and Middle Eastern dishes, too. 

Japan is famous for its broad and deep array of culinary styles, from ultra-refined kaiseki and sushi traditions to everyday street dishes like takoyaki and dango. To the curious outsider, it can be hard to know where to begin. Fortunately, food journalist Nancy Singleton Hachisu takes you straight to the source that united those disparate, complex foodways in the aptly-titled Japanese Farm Food. She immerses the reader in the seasonal, fresh ingredients that are the backbone of Japan's culinary arts – a timeless approach to food that predates sushi conveyor belts and all-night ramen shops.

Get this Italian classic while you still can – Bialetti has been battered by bad economics in recent years, despite the fact the moka pot has become an integral part of Italian culture since it emerged in the post-war era. Whether you're craving a homemade latte, looking for a way to brew a good cup of coffee from the campground, or want a taste of Italy on hand, the original moka pot is a must-have.

African cuisines often get short shrift on the world stage, but this Senegalese cookbook does a rich food culture justice. Written by chef Pierre Thiam, who was born and raised in Dakar before moving to New York and opening African food company Yolélé, Senegal feels like a homecoming from the first measured cup of millet to the last bite of plantain. Full of brightly colored photographs and welcoming snippets of Senegalese history and culture, Thiam joyfully conveys what makes these dishes so special, memorable, and utterly delicious.

Tadkas are integral to Indian cooking, used to quickly melt a pat of clarified butter, toast spices, or fry a garnish. The tadka is such an essential part of the Indian kitchen that the term applies not only to the tool itself, but also to the flavorful oils it's used to create – taking on the grammatical properties of both noun and verb as well. This anodized steel tadka has a one cup capacity, can be used over an open flame, and is easy to wipe clean when you're done. 

Peru is an extremely trendy travel destination, but there's more to the country than just Machu Picchu. Packed with five hundred Peruvian recipes perfected by Gastón Acurio, one of the country's most celebrated chefs, Peru: The Cookbook is a definitive guide to an ancient, vibrant cuisine. From classic dishes like lomo saltado (a kind of steak and potato stir fry) to beloved ingredients like aji amarillo (spicy pepper), Acurio leaves no cornerstone unturned. 

Many countries that love their legumes have some kind of essential clay pot to cook those beans down into soft, silky dishes – like the Moroccan tagine or Tuscan fagioliera. The chamba is Colombia's traditional bean vessel, made of natural unglazed black clay that's burnished by hand. Perfect for not only beans, but also soups, stews, grains, casseroles, and even tender cuts of meat, the chamba is a hard working piece of cookware that can be used for a variety of international cuisines. This particular chamba is made in Central Colombia by families in a small village by the Magdalena River the same way they've been making pots for centuries, and holds five quarts.

Indian cuisine is stunningly diverse, but this accessible guide breaks the subcontinent's best known culinary genre down to the titular 50 Greatest Curries of India. From spicy dishes like Goan lamb vindaloo you might recognize from a takeout menu, to treats that are lesser known outside India such as Gujarat mango and yogurt curry, author Camellia Panjabi guides you through not only the steps necessary to turn out a delicious dinner, but also some of the history and philosophy that have shaped these longstanding culinary traditions.

A good knife is integral to almost any culinary endeavor, though the type you need depends on what you're trying to prepare. The Italian mezzaluna was designed with vegetables and herbs in mind, making quick work of dicing, chopping, and mincing everything from garlic to rosemary to the holy trinity for sofrito (carrots, onions and celery). But don't feel you're limited just to getting ready for pasta fagioli – a mezzaluna comes in handy for prep work across cuisines, from Cajun étouffée to West African jollof rice.

From Korean kimchi to Dutch gherkins, nearly every culture has found a way to ferment foods as a way of preserving them and enhancing their flavors and nutritional profiles. Sandor Katz has made the ancient craft of cultivating tangy yogurts, fizzy kefirs, and bubbling bread starters his life's work, perfecting these techniques in his rural Tennessee kitchen. If the pandemic sourdough trend left you wanting to learn more, if you're hooked on spendy store bought kombucha, or if you're wanting to connect with a piece of your culinary heritage like kvass, Katz's guide is absolutely essential.

One of the beautiful things about fermenting foods is that people have managed to do it for thousands of years even with rudimentary equipment. But if you want extra peace of mind that your batches of pickles and krauts are going to come out simply and safe, a few basic tools go a long way – like the Masontops Fermentation Kit. This set has handy weights, airlock valves, and a wooden tamper that convert your basic glass mason jars into fermentation factories. The "pickle pebbles" hold your veggies down under the rising brine, reducing the chance you'll have a mold fail, while the airlock valves let the gases produced by fermentation release without letting in "bad" bacteria that won't help your food flourish. The tamper helps you fill your jars to the max, and an accompanying booklet offers tips and some basic recipes to send you on your way. 

For a country as vast and regionally diverse as China, writing a definitive cookbook sounds like an impossible task, but author Kei Lum Chan manages handily with 650 recipes that provide both an overview of Chinese cooking and a deep dive into its subregional cuisines. From flavors familiar to diners outside of China like Sichuan, Cantonese, and Hunan to Wuxi-style dishes from Jiangsu and Hakka cuisines found in Hong Kong and Taiwan, China: the Cookbook keeps the reader apprised not only of ingredients, but tools and techniques, too.

The comal is Central and South America's answer to a kitchen tool many cultures have – a flat, broad skillet that can be used for everything from cooking flatbreads to searing meat and toasting spices. Many comal are made from cast iron or steel, much like American griddles or European crepe pans, but this very special comal reaches back further into culinary history. It's handmade from burnished black clay by Colombian artisans, much as the Aztecs would have made their comal centuries ago.

Spirituality and food are both universal, intimate parts of the human experience, and it only makes sense that's they're deeply intertwined in practice. The way our religious beliefs shape what we eat, however, often gets left out of discussions of food, culture, and place – but not in Anissa Helou's lovely Feast: Food of the Islamic World, a collection of dishes that have followed the Koran from the Middle East to the Mughal regions of Asia and down the African continent to Zanzibar. From foods you might expect, like kebabs, to those you might not, like grilled fish in coconut sauce, Helou traces her cookbook's lineage all the way back to Abu Muhammad ib Sayyar, author of the first Arab cookbook, and ties together seemingly disparate dishes with the role they play in Muslim life.

Nearly all cultures have some type of bread as part of their cuisine, but few have taken bread to such lofty heights as the French – from the legally-mandated simplicity of baguettes to the surprisingly intricate etiquette that's evolved around eating bread at the table. If you, too, want to get your pain just right, this Matfer Bourgeat professional-grade bread mold is just the place to start. Made of Exoglass, a French composite of resin and fiberglass that is extremely heat resistant, nonreactive, and easy to clean, this bread mold is freeze resistant from -4ºF (-20ºC), heat resistant to 482ºF (250ºC), and dishwasher safe.

This cookbook does double duty – giving you step-by-step instructions on how to prepare delicious dishes at home, as well as a field guide to some of the best restaurants in Mexico. That's because author Danny Mena cleverly roots each of his recipes in a different Mexico City restaurant, with photos and notes on restaurants, cafes, fondas (inns specializing in home cooking), and street stalls that you can add to your itinerary on your next trip. The gimmick doesn't stop Mena from offering an expansive overview of Mexican cuisine, either, with over a hundred dishes that represent regions from around the country.

Many of the cooking tools in this list are flexible enough to serve numerous roles, across international cuisines, offering you versatility without taking up too much room in your kitchen. This aebleskiver pan is the same, even if it looks at first like a pan with just one purpose – making a Danish dish called aebleskivers, a kind of round cousin of the pancake or doughnut, often stuffed with something sweet like jam, or a piece of fruit or candy. But the Danes aren't the only ones with round popovers on the menu. You can use your aebleskiver pan to make Indian paddu, Chinese gai daan jai, American donut holes, Japanese takoyaki, or even hush puppies.

Author Caroline Eden paints a vivid picture of the region around the Black Sea and what dishes have come out of this shifting, storied corner of Europe. From Bulgaria to the Ukraine to Turkey, Eden knits together a moving, well-researched story of an ineffable, hard-to-define place that is less a cookbook and more a culinary biography, a cultural history in food, and a blend of travelogue and memoir. You'll feast on lush descriptions of cities and turn the last page hungry for borscht and zelnik pie.