The Worst Kitchen Gadgets

Ten tools that each do one job, badly, in the drawer you can no longer close.

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10
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  1. A spring-loaded plastic chopper sitting in a puddle of mushed onion beside a clean chef's knife.

    10. The Slap Chop

    A spring-loaded chopper sold in 2008 infomercials by a pitchman with a headset and a lot of energy. You slap it, the blades spin, and onions become mush in a cup that is hard to clean. A chef's knife does it in the same time and you keep the knife.

  2. A boxy white bread maker on a garage shelf next to a tall loaf with a hole in its base.

    09. The Bread Machine

    Panasonic built the first home model in Japan in 1986 after an engineer trained with a hotel's head baker, and by the mid-90s they were wedding gifts everywhere. Each makes one tall loaf with a hole in the bottom from the paddle, then lives in the garage.

  3. A hand-crank spiralizer clamped to a counter with a pile of green squash noodles beside an empty pasta box.

    08. The Spiralizer

    The crank that turns zucchini into noodle-shaped strands, which peaked with the 2010s zoodle craze. It is a pain to clean, the blades bite fingers, and the result is wet zucchini pretending to be pasta. Everyone knows it is zucchini. The zucchini knows.

  4. A pop-up toaster with two hot dogs and two buns sticking out of its slots, grease pooling underneath.

    07. The Hot Dog Toaster

    A pop-up toaster with slots for two franks and two buns, which cooks them at the same time and to wildly different degrees of done. Grease drips into the crumb tray, where it stays for the life of the machine. The novelty lasts one lunch.

  5. A slotted plastic cup over a bowl, beside a cracked eggshell holding a yolk perfectly by itself.

    06. The Egg Separator

    A small slotted cup that lets the white slip through and holds the yolk. You can also pass the yolk between the two halves of the shell or simply your fingers, which is what professional bakers do. The only gadget here that loses to the egg's own packaging.

  6. A clamshell appliance on a high pantry shelf, a dusty skillet hanging on the wall below it.

    05. The Quesadilla Maker

    A countertop appliance with wedge-shaped plates that presses a tortilla and cheese into six triangles. A skillet makes the same thing in the same time and also makes eggs. It lives on a high shelf and comes down once a year, for nachos, out of guilt.

  7. A metal garlic press clogged with crushed garlic beside a whole bulb and a chef's knife lying flat on a clove.

    04. The Garlic Press

    It crushes one clove at a time, then traps half of it in the holes until you dig it out with a toothpick. Anthony Bourdain called them abominations in Kitchen Confidential. Most cooks agree and smash the clove with the side of a knife, which takes a second.

  8. A halved avocado with its pit next to a three-in-one plastic tool and a plain spoon on a cutting board.

    03. The Avocado Slicer

    A plastic tool that halves, pits and slices an avocado, three jobs a knife and a spoon already do. It is sold as the cure for avocado hand, the knife injury that had UK plastic surgeons calling for warning labels. The cure was a better grip.

  9. A tall white countertop tube appliance with a stick of cooked egg rising out the top like a popsicle.

    02. The Vertical Egg Cooker

    The As Seen on TV gadget that cooks eggs into a tube and pushes them out the top like a sausage on a stick. The infomercial promised breakfast on the go. The reality is an egg cylinder and a nonstick tube you have to scrub with a tiny brush.

  10. A curved yellow plastic slicer grid lying next to a perfectly straight banana that will not fit it.

    01. The Banana Slicer

    A yellow plastic grid that cuts a banana into even coins, assuming your banana is the exact curve the mold expects. Its Amazon page became a famous comedy archive of mock reviews. Bananas can already be sliced by a butter knife, a spoon or a determined thumb.

Honorable mentions

  • A long narrow metal rasp grater beside a zested lemon, a block of hard cheese and a whole nutmeg.

    The Microplane

    It started as a woodworking rasp made by a company that also sold shaving disks, until cooks discovered it zests citrus and grates hard cheese and nutmeg better than anything built for kitchens. The rare gadget that came from the garage and earned a drawer.

Dishonorable mentions

  • A sleek white countertop juicer next to a pouch of juice being squeezed flat into a glass by an empty kitchen vise.

    The Juicero

    A Wi-Fi juicer that launched in 2016 at $699, dropped to $399, and squeezed proprietary pouches. In April 2017 Bloomberg showed the pouches could be squeezed by hand just as well. It raised $120 million and shut down that September. Squeezed, by hand.

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