The peculator is still around. Ma bought a new one a few years ago. She uses a drip at times too. The electric knives don’t get used, because you can’t sharpen them, and a dull one is worse than a butter knife. They do cut through stuff without smushing it and in cramped spaces, if you have one with a sharp blade.
The thing I don’t use is the double boiler. I now microwave fussy stuff that easily scorches.
They have an electric jar opener on the market now, and is great for people with weak grips.
I don’t think any kitchen hand tool will ever be completely abandoned.
The bacon press is a wonderful thing. It’s fabulous for keeping the bacon down and flat, and keeps it cooking even.
My mom makes her coffee in an electric percolator like this . I couldn’t say it makes better coffee, but it’s certainly just as good, and ridiculously easy to clean.
They’ve also got an electric skillet which is actually really easy to cook in. Their stovetop doesn’t cook well unless the pot sits totally flat so their cast-iron has been retired.
-Lil
My parents will never buy new stuff to replace old stuff, no matter how difficult it is to use. They still have an aluminum ice cube tray with that lever, and the thing sucks. I got used to drinking room-temperature tap water (or as cool as it could possibly get from the kitchen sink) because I hated fighting with that thing.
Also, like an idiot, I saw Alton Brown make gnocchi from scratch on Food Network and ran out and bought my own potato ricer. I’ve used it once, and my gnocchi sucked.
I have an electric knife. I can’t say I use it a lot, but certain things work much better with it - specifically stuff that needs to keep its shape. I bought it for Beef Wellington, because cutting it with a traditional knife, even a really sharp one, proved problematic.
I have a potato ricer, too. I use it for gnocchi. Don’t use it a lot, but once again, it’s a nice tool to have when you want it.
If I had a smaller kitchen, I could live without both of them. But I have a big kitchen, so they stay.
OOOOOOH! We have two and they are excellent for campfires. I need to pick up a couple more so we don’t have to have too many peeps wait for toastie sammiches or fruity pies.
If these things have an actual name, I’ll be hornswaggled.
Well, I am hornswaggled.
They are called pie irons Know what I haven’t seen in years, and it isn’t kitchen related, but it was in every health club thirty years ago or more. Those jiggle belt things that a material belt went around your middle or butt area and it vibrated you like nobody’s business. The contraption was about the size of an outboard motor standing upright.
Another gadget I never see anymore, besides the flour sifter which I have one but never use. is a potato masher and the little ‘valves’ that you could stick in an orange and suck out the juice. I loved those as a kid and haven’t seen them in years.
I still have all of those! Although, the potato masher is a newer design with a metal plate that has holes in it, instead of the thick wire loop thing my mom had. And my juice valve is yellow (for lemons, ha!), and I never use it. But the masher and sifter get used frequently.
I have to agree on the aluminum ice trays… Like my potato masher, the device remains, but replaced with a better material and design. Gosh, remember the first time you got ice from a plastic tray instead of the cracked, splintered mess you’d always get from the old metal ice trays?
You really don’t see potato mashers? How do people mash their potatoes then?
The new style potato mashers (the “grid” design,) sucks ass-cock. They are a bitch to clean, all the pieces of starch and potato crud get stuck in the grids. The old style, with the “wavy lines,” are far superior. My mom recently found the oddest masher I’ve ever seen. Instead of being either wavy lines, or a grid, it’s a star shape, exactly like this: *. The handle is in the middle of the “spokes”, as it were.
For the people that haven’t seen an aluminum ice cube tray, they had hinged dividers that you pulled up on a handle to release the ice. One thing that happened occasionally was that your hand would be damp and your fingers were all stuck on the aluminum lever.
The old refrigerators had an aluminum freezer box, so you could get your whole hand stuck on the freezer metal, and be stuck. You can’t get water to pour on your hand because the sink isn’t in reach when you have your hand stuck to the freezer compartment. I’m sure there are a number of people that can remember this happening. I haven’t seen it used as situation comedy for decades.
Of the aforementioned items, I have (and use) a potato ricer, an electric knife, and a meat grinder. My dad still has mom’s old double boiler - but DDG is right, the microwave melts chocolate or warms up things so much more easily.
ETA: I used to have a flour sifter, but the kidlets broke it. Now I use a wire strainer and shake the flour through it.
We never had a store-bought hot dog electrocuter. However, inspired by the TV commercials, I’d sneak down to the shop with a hot dog and a truncated electric cord with bared leads.
