Most overated kitchen utensil?
Now this is a little off my usual recipes and reviews, but as lover of cooking I have an interest in kitchen ‘stuff’. I love cookbooks, quality knives, cookware and my potato ricer. However, I cannot stand useless kitchen utensils that are marketed as labour saving devices making so called unpleasant or difficult kitchen tasks ‘fun’. Generally the items don’t work very well and if they do it takes about 3 hours to clean it after use.
By contrast my wife loves them particularly when it comes to anything for preparing onions or garlic or anything that is pink and made of plastic.
Here are 8 utensils that always seem to provoke a grumpy old man frown and head shake from me:
Strawberry huller – This looks like something that would be used in the Spanish inquisition or aliens to remove your eye balls. What’s wrong with a sharp knife?
Honey spoon – These always seem to crop up in country fair’s or craft shows, whittled from sticks to give you that wholesome organic feel. Granted they aren’t made of plastic – hurrah! They even work quite well. The trouble is they are fiddly to clean.
Onion goggles – Before I learned how to cut an onion properly and breathe in through my nose and out of my mouth while cutting, I must confess to grabbing an old pair of motorcycle goggles when I had a pile of onions to cut, but to buy a pair of goggles that cannot be used for swimming (or riding a motorbike) is too gimmicky.
Garlic peeler – It resembles something across between a car from the Wacky Races and a device that Wiley Coyote would order from ACME. Furthermore it eats fingers when it comes to washing the damn thing.
Says the garlic: "there's no way I'm getting in that thing"
Cherry pitter – Why?
Cornish pasty maker – As a self proclaimed pasty aficionado I should like this, but I don’t. A good pasty should be crimped by hand not by something that looks like an ashtray.
Victorian Apple peeler – These look like great fun, in fact they are. You can pretend that you are a craftsman or should that be crafts person, turning the apple like a piece of wood being carved on a lathe. But after the first 2 apples the pleasing feeling subsides and you have another awkward dust magnet cluttering up the place.
Spaghetti measurer– Best left on the ktchen store shelf in my opinion.
I realise I am not the first to comment on the effectiveness of some kitchen accoutrements but hopefully I have an original spin on this. What are your picks for overated kitchen utensils?
Next post: barbequed ribs
About the Author
Gareth Englishman in Sydney loves a whisky, pies and all things savoury. Digital Marketer by day, cook the rest of the time. Amateur writer, photographer & aspiring anthropologists.
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When I was a kid we had an electric can opener that was about the size of a small Volkswagen and required an engineering degree to use. Needless to say I inherited my love of kitchen acrouchments from my mother.
That’s pretty funny Nina, obviously not the space saver version then.
How about those plastic containers for storing stuff in the fridge, that also come in the shape of the thing your supposed to put in it? Example. Onion container (in the amusing shape of an onion) Or apple storer. Why?
Or a George Foreman grill…..
Oooh onion containers what a great stocking filler idea.