I’ve got it – microwave. Useless POS. I only bought it because my then Father In Law wanted to make his “waist-line reducing” porridge in it.
Also, dishwasher. I never use mine, but I didn’t buy it, so it doesn’t count for the purposes of this quiz.
I was wondering, how would that even work? Would you just stretch the cloth over the top of the pan and hold it in place with a rubber band?
For all you colander haters out there: Could you please describe your method for draining an 8 qt. pot of pasta? I’m just not picturing how it’s done.
I use mine all the time. Love it for measuring peanut butter, mayo, or generally things that are thicker than water and are hard to get all of out of the measuring cup. I love it so much I have 2 more now.
I see the problem with the colander-haters (including me).
I only ever cook spaghetti or other longer noodles, so I just fish them out with tongs. Works dandy, and I can just reheat the salted water in a few hours if I’m in a pasta mood.
But, being a neat-freak, the Hughes in me objects to splash-back from possibly infective surfaces, such as would be encountered in the usual colander-straining of otherly-formed pastas. but if I were to cook a ziti or something, I’d just grab some towels and use the lid to strain – I’m 6’3" 210lbs, so I don’t have the limitations that others may, though.
Of course, there was a write-in to Cooks Illustrated a while ago about using a half-sheet or an inverted jelly-roll pan over the drain of the sink, but that’s another thread (but good idea, IMO).
Okay, I think I win. I bought one of those potato cutters that makes curly fries. I think it’s called a Tater Twister. It actual does curly fries and larger slices that you could cut down the middle and then have lots of slices. I was young and naive and had money burning a hole in my pocket. I actually did use it a lot when I first got it but then I realized I was eating too many potatoes and it has lived in the bottom of a cabinet for about 20 years now.
I also have a couple of those plunger choppers and a single pancake maker but they were given to me. The plunger choppers work best for nuts (you’re gonna love my nuts!) because you can stop yourself before you make nut butter which is what happens when you use a food processor to chop nuts. I keep meaning to get rid of at least one but they never seem to be in the same room together for me to figure out which one looks better for keeping. Now I’m afraid that two of them together could cause a rip in the space time continuum.
That’s what I was about to say. Only the cheapest ones do what Dogzilla describes, and the newer fuzzy logic ones are terrific! They take monitoring the rice away as a kitchen task, and it’s perfectly done every time.
Back to the OP… I’d say the most useless kitchen item I have is probably the freaking cake stand/server thing that we got for our wedding.
Sure it’s gorgeous, but it’s huge, made of fragile glass, and gets dirty if you blink at it. Plus, (and more importantly), I think we’ve used it exactly one time in 3.5 years of marriage.
My sister gave me a v-slicer and I have to say it works quite well! Several times I have used it for making gratin potatoes, it works great. But never, and I mean never ever use it without the blade guard. Or you will be scraping up the tips of your fingers.
You can do it with the lid, if you’re dextrous. That’s what I do if I’m somewhere without a colander or big strainer.
Personally, for me a colander is near-essential. It’s great not only for draining pasta or stocks, but also for rinsing greens and other vegetables, as well as for steaming (fit it inside another pot and, voila, you have a steamer.)
Don’t forget, because of their fragility and the way they’re shaped, there’s really no easy way to store them either, so they just end up taking a lot of space in your cabinets.
My wife bought one of those at a flea market once. But really, we just don’t have that much use for it. When we make cake, we usually use a rectangular pan, so it wouldn’t even fit on the round stand. And typically we don’t even take the whole cake out of the pan. We just cut it up in there and take out a slice whenever we want one.
And when we do make a round cake and take it out of the pan, it’s just easier to put it on a dinner plate so we can stick it the fridge. Unless you plan on eating the thing quickly, it’ll just dry out on the cake stand. I guess it makes sense if you do a lot of entertaining, but we rarely have guests over.
Anyway I think we’ve used it once.
Speaking of Micro-Plane, I have one of their box graters. I’m scared to death of the damn thing. Sure, I’ll zest a lemon or grate a little parmesan, but you need chainmail gloves to protect yourself if you grate anything you would do on a normal grater. It’s like a mandoline with no food holder. In fact, one side is just a naked blade that I guess I’m supposed to jam a potato against with my bare hand.
Should’ve bought a regular $5 box grater.
I actually just tried some of these a couple weeks ago. I ran a test using banana’s (I hate mushy banana’s) and while the ones outside the bag were suitable for making banana bread those I kept inside the bag were still firm enough for me to eat.
Mine aren’t green though - they’re clear, look just like plastic bags but claim to absorb or block the release of ethelyne gas.
Sounds to me like it’s a nut grinder but you’re missing a part to it. Does it kind of look like this?
And I’ve come to add to the pizza stone love. I have one and it’s never left the oven, and never been cleaned. I used to work at a pizza place in Albuquerque when I was a kid, and we baked the pies on a slate ovens. All we ever did was brush the slate with a wire brush to get the burned crap off of them.
Those who complain of the V-Slicers have never made many batches of latkes with a box grater or used a super-sharp potato peeler, I take it? Those bitches will take your thumbs and nails and cuticles right off.
Points to the above point about microplane-style graters – I live on a good Pecorino, but those things are too sharp for me to be blasé about.
I shave my hard ingredients real fucking fast, and a microplane is too fast for me, as I learned when I was taught how to cook and eat a wolf.
I couldn’t cook without a collander. I don’t get how you could - not just pasta and potatoes, but what if you’re doing something like fine parboiled julienned veg - you want to get that stuff out of the heat instantly and under cold water. If you tried to pluck it all out with tongs, half of it would overcook. Collander, instant sploosh of all the shit you’re cooking, then whack the collander under the cold tap and stop the cooking process so everything’s still firm and tasty. IMO anyway.
Anyway, my most useless purchase was a juicer. Not because it didn’t do the job, but because it has about 50 parts that get clogged up with pulp and need washing. The dishwasher won’t do the fine metal grilles, so you need to clean them by hand. Like most exercise bikes, used for a week then discarded. I should really give it to a charity shop but I am lazy.
ETA: wonder if the pizza stone haters aren’t heating them up before putting the pizza on them?
Maybe. It should just live at the bottom of your oven all the time, hurting nothing and nobody. And I don’t get the “cleaning it” talk; it’s constantly being heated to 450 degrees, no creepy-crawlies are living through that. Like someone said earlier, just knock the big crud off and ignore the rest.
Indeed, I don’t have a pizza stone, but pizzas taste best when exposed to some crud. Of course it runs counter to keeping your oven clean to leave the pizza flakes at the bottom of the oven to provide smoke seasoning to later pizzas, but if you can accomplish the same thing with a stone, all the better.
3 onion choppers of varying cost bought when my wrist was broken and then unusuable for a long time. Even the 25 quid one simply didn’t chop.
I didn’t buy it, but my MIL gave me a Salad Shooter. I tried using it a couple of times and decided I’d rather cut stuff by hand. It was a pain in the patoot to clean, too. I think it ended up at Goodwill.
I bought two:
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A slider (tiny hamburger) maker. It actually worked reasonably well, except that the non-stick coating was terrible and an absolute nightmare to clean. I would actually pay more money (this thing was $19.99) for a more upscale version of this gadget with a better non-stick coating if I could find one.
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A Pasta Boat. It worked fine, it was just a pain to maintain. And the hinged top part didn’t work as advertised, making it difficult to drain without hurting yourself.