You don’t even need to peel it. The press will only pass the pulp through.
Presses are fantastic. I don’t understand the need for a peeler at all.
Mrs. Duc has one, but it doesn’t belong in the kitchen…
I dunno if this qualifies, but once I got what I **thought **was a kitchen “gadget” but turned out to be just wonderful.
It was a potato ricer. Easiest and bestust way of making mashed potatoes I ever saw. I only later found out that this is actually what used to be a kind of “mainstream” utensil; it’s just not so common any more.
A tomato shark.
I thought you’d just made that up, but now I’ve googled it, I want one. I tried using a melon baller on things other than melons (pears for example) and it was hard work.
Yeah, I know. But it’s such a pain to clean the skins out of the press when doing multiple cloves that I prefer to skin 'em first.
I thought the mango pitter would be useless, but it works quite well. Although, you need to stand up to use it to apply the proper pressure.
A grapefruit knife. I just got a second one for the office so I wouldn’t have to constantly carry it back and forth from home.
This is funny. I came to this thread to say “my garlic press!” and not only did everyone else beat me to it, but just before I came back I took my dog for a walk. I am currently listening to the audiobook Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain on my iPod while walking the dog and he just got to the part where he describes what home cooks should have in their kitchen (in his opinion) to make their food more like “restaurant quality” food. He went into a rant about garlic presses, how bad they are and even said:
and
LOL. I don’t care and still love my garlic press, but had no idea there was such a hatred of them by anyone. Oh and I have decided that Anthony Bourdain is a pretentious ass-hat. 
The other kitchen gadget that I love (and is surprisingly Bourdain-approved ;)) is my mandoline. My husband swore I would rarely use it, it would gather dust or I would slice off my fingertips, but I have found a gajillion uses for it and at this point probably couldn’t cook without it.
Micro-plane, eh? I might have to invest in one of those - I have a banana-orange loaf recipe that calls for the zest of an orange that is to die for. 
I must be doing something wrong with mine - I wind up with a flattened blob of stringy mush inside the press, and nothing outside of it, even if I’ve peeled it first.
Mine is an older aluminum one, with a rectangular “chamber” that’s just big enough for one large clove of garlic. I haven’t used it for garlic in years.
It does, however, do a nice job of cracking peppercorns and whole allspice when I’m fixing to brine a turkey
We’ve got the Pampered Chef version and while it’s not an everyday item (usually when I’m chopping I need to chop more than will fit in that thing) it is deucedly useful at times.
Interestingly the thing I use it for most of all is ginger. You can grate ginger and have most of it wind up stuck to the “teeth” of the grater… or you can put a small chunk of it on the cutting board and slap the heck out of it and wind up with a nice fine mince which is much easier than grating.
! That’s brilliant.
My contributions:
A digital probe thermometer. VERY handy.
An apple peeler / corer / slicer (the mechanical kind that twirls the apple through a blade). Prepping apples to make pies and pancakes and such is an annoyingly time-consuming process. Using one of these things makes it INSTANT, and they’re pretty cheap. Doubles as a potato peeler, too, although not perfectly.
Electric Rotato. This thing WOULD be junk, but it actually works great at peeling potatoes and (more importantly) turnips. I HATE peeling turnips by hand. Breaks easily, though – mine lasted less than six months before the clip that holds the blade in place broke.
Two-cup mini food processor. Works great, works fast, and easier to clean than a full-size processor (especially since it fits very neatly in the top drawer of my dishwasher).
Some presses are better than others. I got the one that Cook’s Illustrated rated most highly, the Kuhn-Rikon Easy-Squeeze Garlic Press. Leaves all that skin behind and minces the garlic up nicely.
Considering that some people mash the garlic with the blade of their chef’s knife and even puree it up with coarse salt on the cutting board, I fail to see how a good garlic press can “ruin” garlic. (Maybe he’s only seen the shitty ones in use, I dunno.)
The microplane zester is like a grater, right? I can see how that would be good, but my conventional zester is still going to remain a favourite, because sometimes (well, quite often) I want long, decorative strands of zest.
Absolutely. But a lot of knife sharpeners are total crap, and that includes just about anything you can by at a department store. At best they’ll put on a very rough edge that seems sharp at first (because the rough abrasive put in microscopic serrations), but that will dull really fast. Overall, though, you’re really just damaging the knife by removing the hardened edge.
I suppose a bad sharpener is a bit better than no sharpener at all.
IIRC, Alton solves this problem by covering the grater with cling wrap before grating, then it all comes right off.
Here’s my vote for the most unlikely but handy kitchen tool:
A pastry scraper! BTW - There are many brands and I’m not necessarily advocating Oxo as the only maker.
Probably my main use is for transferring food from cutting board to pot/pan. One of the few things that I probably use everyday.
You can get fairly long ones out of a Microplane grater by grating more slowly and using long strokes. Just like grating cheese.
For other items, I’ll add Silpat non-stick baking sheets. Miracles, is what they are.