Egg molds are awesomely fun. Useful? Heck no! But who the heck wouldn’t want hard-boiled eggs shaped like bunnies or bears?
devilsknew, you’ve been warned about this kind of crap before. Stop it.
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I was not being vitriolic, That was me trying to be funny and ironic with tongue firmly in cheek… I was referencing the current lindsybluth thread in the pit that has gone wildly off track into comedy about the bourgeois colander. I was also similarly parodying and making fun of myself and my well known dislike of the microplaner. I’m sorry if you misunderstood or took this the wrong way, but I was not trying to be insulting, only bombastic, funny, and ironic (which seems to have failed spectacularly).
My apologies if this was taken out of context or deemed insulting.
I had one for years and barely used it. My wife always harped on me to just get rid of it…then she got the idea to use it as a coffee grinder. It actually worked pretty well.
I’ll also use it for chopping nuts, otherwise for anything that needs to actually get chopped finely or thoroughly I use the cuisineart.
Well, now I want some egg molds for my hard boiled eggs! Trade you …a toaster? I’ll throw in a plastic garlic press that works, if the garlic clove isn’t too hard. And also my hand held ‘chopper’.
This is the greatest invention since sliced bread. Actually it was free with rebate and I bought it because it seemed so over-the-top useless. I would rather use a garden shovel for the intended purpose.
I know, hey? Want. Never knew they even existed, don’t really eat that many hard-boiled eggs, would have no use for this, but WANT.
It’s the little things, really.
They’re cheap as hell from Amazon:
Heart and Star (I just ordered those!)
The only thing you have to watch out for is that some of them are quail egg molds. I don’t think any of the above are, but I have ordered some in the past and when I get them they’re very, very tiny.
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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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I had the same problem. The slider maker itself works great! Fits right on the stove burner and cooks 5 teeny burgers at once; but from the first use the non-stick coating flaked off onto the food, and I had to throw out the first two batches of burgers. After it was “seasoned” (that is, the coating had been scrubbed off) I had no problems with it.
“Most useless” meaning that it doesn’t work is a microwave rice cooker. I can make rice on the stovetop just fine but I want to be able to do it in the microwave. But the thing didn’t work and I got a plastic bucket with uncooked rice sitting in hot water. WTF? I measured, I followed the instructions. Waste of money.
I used to buy these enormous English muffins from Wolferman’s and they had me convinced that I needed one of their muffin splitters. Sure, you can just cut them with a knife but they won’t have that nooks and crannies texture you want in something you will then spread with butter, jam, marmalade, peanut butter, or what have you. You need to tear it apart! Actually it worked just fine but I don’t care to buy expensive, mail-order muffins. Oh well. Waste of money.
I bought a ceramic butter keeper, which is supposed to enable you to keep butter outside the fridge so that it will be nice and spreadable at all times. The butter sits upside down in a ceramic thing that sits in water. Problem 1: Oh, yeah, I don’t really buy butter, because I’m not supposed to eat butter; Problem 2: How do you get a fresh, cold stick of butter into the keeper without making a time-consuming mess?; Problem 3: Unless you keep the keeper totally full of butter at all times, there will be an air pocket and the butter on the surface will go rancid, yes? Are you supposed to just keep scraping the rancid butter off first, every time you go for some butter? Eurgh! Waste of money.
A long time ago there were these commercials for a “dry cooker,” a big pan with a tower in the middle, with holes in the top of the tower, and the heat would cook your food without needing a lot of oil. No idea if it works; never took it out of the box. Waste of money!
I do have a V-slicer and a food chopper that work just great, although since I don’t really cook very often, I don’t really use them very often. I love my Fasta Pasta, though; I can make spaghetti or pasta quickly without big, scary pots of hot water to hurt myself with.
How do those hard-boiled egg shape things work? Do you crack the raw egg into these things and then cook the egg inside? How would you keep the yolk on the inside? If you put an already cooked egg into one of these it would just crush the egg.
They actually work really, really well.
>> Oh, yeah, I don’t really buy butter, because I’m not supposed to eat butter;
Well, that’s YOUR problem. I’ve adopted a diet that says butter is good for me and am much happier (and healthier!) for it. 
>> How do you get a fresh, cold stick of butter into the keeper without making a time-consuming mess?
You don’t. You take a stick of butter out of the fridge and let it come to room temperature, then put it in the butter keeper. Butter takes days in hot weather to go rancid. Letting it sit out for the time it takes to get soft is not a big deal.
>> Unless you keep the keeper totally full of butter at all times, there will be an air pocket and the butter on the surface will go rancid, yes?
There’s not enough air for it to go rancid. I suppose if you leave it there for months at a time, it eventually will, but I’ve never had it go bad and I’ve left it there for several weeks.
The only issue I’ve ever had with the butter keeper is that the water in it can get icky if crumbs and such get in it. I change the water every couple days (or if I see crumbs) and that problem goes away.
You hard-boil your eggs, then peel them while they are warm and put them in the mold. When they’re warm, they’re pliable, and they readily take on the mold shape.
Maybe it’s because I’m still learning about cooking, but buying a garlic press was a terrible mistake on my part. I had a Thanksgiving turkey recipe that called for 8 BULBS of garlic. You had to heat 'em in the oven first. The smell and the mess that resulted from that incident almost put me off garlic for the rest of my life. I ended up throwing it all out and using a cranberry glaze instead.
I’ve since discovered Trader Joe’s frozen garlic cubes and I really can’t imagine being desperate enough to use a garlic press ever again.
I wondered if anyone else shared my shame. Here’s the kicker: I never even opened the box. I heard so many horror stories I decided to spare myself the agony.
Hey, thanks Athena!
I’ve never understood the need for a garlic press. If I want my garlic fine, I peel it and whack it with the side of my French blade and then mince it. If I want it large, I peel it and whack it. No little bitty holes to clean, and it’s much quicker than when I watch friends wrestle with a press.
Another vote for the George Foreman grill. There is nothing that thing can do (except maybe act as a panini press, although I’m not sure if it has enough weight to really do that) that you can’t do just much better on a stovetop. Unless you don’t have a stovetop, if you use one of these, I’m going to assume you’re a terrible cook. Plus, they’re a pain in the ass to clean, even with the wet paper towel method.
I was ready to order the heart and star egg molds, but then I saw that they’re hand wash. Nope, not for me.
As for the Foreman grill, the idea behind it is pretty good. It’s easy to use. But again, you have to hand clean it, which is why ours is in storage and not in daily use. Oh, and just for the record, if you ever want to turn round steak into leather, put it in a Foreman grill. My husband tried this once.
I would have mentioned this if Hampshire hadn’t beaten me to it (by quite a large margin). “Perfect pasta in minutes!!!” — an inordinate number of minutes for pasta that was almost but not quite entirely unlike perfect. Hope Goodwill got at least two bits for the contraption.
I bought a coffee bean grinder about 10 years ago with the idea that I would try some of “bean only” blends the store has. It is still sitting unopened under the kitchen sink.
Well, how filthy can an egg mold get, anyway? I’d think a quick rinse would do it.
I’ve ruined more chicken breast on a George Foreman grill, talk about leather - overdone outside, still raw inside. I’m going to dig it out and see if I can make paninis, and if it f’s THEM up, off to the thrift store with it!
You are definitely missing out. I have used my coffee grinder every day for at least 20 years.
Best $12.95 I ever spent.
The Rule is that I don’t buy ANYTHING that needs to be washed by hand, if it needs to be washed every time I use it. Rinsing is included in washing. I am not interested in doing any hand laundry, or any hand dishwashing. I especially don’t buy stuff that I don’t need if it requires hand washing.
Yeah, I’ll occasionally buy a coat or something that needs dry cleaning. But there are so many products and garments out there that won’t require me to hand wash them that I have decided to use this rule as part of my shopping decision. Maybe I miss out on the occasional heart and star egg mold…but I’ve managed to struggle on through life without them thus far.