Of the ones we own (we have no bread-maker or electric can-opener), it is the garbage disposal without doubt. Not only is it slower than just tipping waste into the kitchen trash-bin, but it has the added bonus of potentially blocking up and spewing vile water all over the kitchen. I think plumbers bribe the developers to install them to secure ongoing revenue.
Wow I didn’t know the undercurrent against the electric can opener. I must say it makes life sooooo much eaiser when you have a dozen or so cans to open (OK not really 12). It just seems the speed of the electric can opener alone would make it popular, plus you know where it is, and the lid doesn’t fall into the stuff.
Another vote for the breadmaker. Lots of people love theirs, but I’d rather make my own by hand.
I also rarely use our ice cream maker.
And though it’s not actually an appliance, the “good” china my mom insisted on giving me, plus the waterford crystal glasses have never come out of their boxes.
I love my epilator! I’ve been using it for a long time. I bought my mom one for Christmas about 6 years ago, and she still thanks me for it. I don’t think she even remembers what I got her last year, but she praises that epilator all the time.
I would have said garbage disposal until last year when our new home had one. Now I’m addicted to it and don’t know how I lived without it.
I guess my most useless appliance would be the electric skillet. I haven’t used it in years.
They’d be more useful if they actually worked, rather than breaking after a couple months of use.
Eggo has come nowhere close to detroying the market. This is because an Eggo “waffle” comes nowhere close to competing with a fresh home-made waffle. One of the favorite Sunday dinners in my family is waffles, usually with home-made blueberry or peach sauce. And a properly seasoned waffle-maker requires almost no cleaning.
And I forgot to add that I also consider the electric can opener the most useless appliance. I’ve never encountered one that worked better or faster than the old hand cranked ones.
Electric can opener - so useless I’ve never owned one.
I will also join in to defend the rice cooker. I can make good rice in a pan, but it requires a lot more supervision. The rice cooker is no-fail. If it is not making your brown rice correctly, use a little more water. The instructions that came with mine didn’t specify that, but since you use more water for brown rice in a pan, it just made sense, and now my brown rice comes out of the cooker tasty, not crispy.
I’m going to tell you guys without rice cookers the secret to rice. I know it’s not so relevent, but once I learned it, I never made bad rice.
Put rice in a pot. Wash it until you get bored or the water runs clear. Add water until it is two inches above the rice. Add oil, butter, or salt if that is your thing.
Cook on high until it boils. Then turn it down to medium and cover it. Leave it there for ten minutes. Then put it down to very very low. Leave it there for ten minutes. Then turn the heat off and let it sit there for about five minutes.
Never fails.
I thought of another useless appliance - the deep fryer. If I want to deep fry something, I just put a lot of oil in a pot and heat it up. Do many people actually use their deep fryers enough to warrant owning one?
OK, if you have all kinds of storage room for single-use small appliances, knock yourselves out. I didn’t say they don’t do a good job of cooking rice. All I said was that I have a pot & lid combination that does just as good a job. The rice cooker is therefore redundant.
Just like the Popeil egg slicer is useless. Not that it doesn’t do a good job of slicing hard boiled eggs, just that it’s useless because I have a knife that will give me the same end result.
I think you got that backwards. It’s the guys with rice cookers who don’t know the secret. That’s why they need rice cookers!
I love my electric skillet! It gets used only for pancakes so it probably doesn’t earn its cupboard space.
It’s too late for me to make use of that advice, unfortunately. I tossed the rice cooker out years ago. I just wish I could learn how to properly cook brown rice in the microwave (absorption method).
My 15-year old microwave oven is slowly dying. It either underpops or burns popcorn, and it takes about three and a half minutes to heat up a cup of water. I’ve got a Canadian-style electric kettle for hot water, I don’t make popcorn that often, and I normally use the oven for cooking, so I can ditch the microwave with few problems.
I don’t use my deep fryer much, but there’s nothing else that can substitute for it. I could bake chicken wings – it’s healthier and not as much of a mess – but they’re not quite the same.
The dishwasher is a must if you’re brewing your own beer. It makes it much easier to clean and sterilize bottles.
I’d have to say my microwave. While my husband and son use it all the time, I never do, and I’m the one who has to clean it. I’d LOVE to get rid of it.
And as for those electric can opener haters, when your hands are killing you cause of medical reasons, sometimes you can’t work the hand crank openers - my only problem is I can’t work the electric ones either. 
Other useless appliance - garbage disposal. It scares me.