Stupidest kitchen-gadget purchasing decision you've ever made

[Fat Guy]

I'll start:

Permit me to introduce the "Automatic Knife Maintenance and Sharpener with Mountable Stand" sold by DealExtreme.com. I confess this is the biggest piece of junk I've ever purchased with my own money. Not a lot of money, but 100% wasted.

In my defense, if there can be any defense for such idiocy, we've been in temporary dwellings -- moved out of one apartment, waiting to move into another -- for the past three months. And the only good kitchen gear I have with me is a Forschner chef's knife and a Sani-Tuff cutting board. Everything else, including all my knife-sharpening equipment, is in a 10'x20' storage room at a facility in the Bronx somewhere off the Major Deegan Expressway.

When my knife started to get dull I didn't want to spend a lot to get it sharpened, so when this gadget popped up in a search result I figured, hey, maybe it will be okay as a temporary solution.

Wrong. I can hardly do justice to how completely useless the "Automatic Knife Maintenance and Sharpener with Mountable Stand" is. It's inconceivable that it could ever sharpen anything. The stone is total junk. There's no good way to run a knife through it without cutting the counter (or your hand), not that you'd want to run a knife through it.

Ultimately, I wound up taking my knife down to the French Culinary Institute where I got Dave Arnold to sharpen it -- a nice perk of being an adjunct there.

It occurred to me, we must all have deep, dark secrets of moments of kitchen-gadget-purchasing weakness. I look forward to hearing your confessions.

[Dakki]

T-FAL pressure cooker. Bought without knowing anything about pressure cooking with a vague idea of canning in-season vegs. This piece of junk does not reach the 15 ft/lbs of pressure required in many, many pressure cooking and canning recipes and should be renamed T-FAIL.

[David A. Goldfarb]

Good thing you figured it out before it was 2000% wasted money. My father used to have something like that and ruined a number of good knives with it. He was a fine cook with great knife skills, but sharpening was not among them.

I bought this french fry cutter at a supermarket once--plastic thing with metal blades in a grid. The circle was too small for most potatoes that you would want to turn into fries, so it was easier just to cut the fries with a knife. I ended up tossing it to save drawer space and to avoid looking at it every time I opened the drawer.

[helenjp]

Not exactly bought, but DH sent in coupons enthusiastically for a beer server. I think he used it once when a friend of his came to stay for a while....you stick a large can of beer in it and it sends the beer through tubing that resembles the map of some major urban subway system and pressurizes it so it comes out "just like draft beer". Just like soap suds, more like, and the large can of beer simply got warm sitting on the table while they wrestled with the pour nozzle. The guys got a good laugh out of it anyway, and DS1 took it upstairs to his magpie's nest of "useful junk", thinking that he could make a mini rocket launcher out of it...son left for college, taking only his soldering kit with him, so there it lies, along with all the bicycle parts and "useful bits of wire".

[HungryC]

I bought a plastic pineapple peeler/corer/spiral slicer off the dump table at the back of Williams-Sonoma for $1. It wasn't worth the buck. Perhaps the metal version of this tool is heavy & sharp enough to dismember a pineapple, but in plastic, it was a disaster.

[qrn]

T-FAL pressure cooker. Bought without knowing anything about pressure cooking with a vague idea of canning in-season vegs. This piece of junk does not reach the 15 ft/lbs of pressure required in many, many pressure cooking and canning recipes and should be renamed T-FAIL.

If you put 3 quarters(coins) on top of the valve thing it will get to 15 psi (without blowing the other safety valve)...Mine gets to 245º that way..Been doing it for 20 years with no problems...

Bud

[Porthos]

Do you remember the Egg-Stracter egg shell remover. The most wasted money I ever spent for a kitchen gadget was buying one of those.

[LizD518]

A v-slicer with a half-dozen interchangeable blades to juliennes, different thicknesses, etc... Either the blade isn't nearly as sharp as most mandolins, or I am a total chicken, but it only worked if you use a certain amount of speed and pressure and I like my fingertips too much to be that careless. As with most mandolins, the guard is next to useless because you waste a lot of product in the guard. I'll use my knife, thanks. I rarely want to get that uniform or super thin slices anyway.

[Snadra]

A v-slicer with a half-dozen interchangeable blades to juliennes, different thicknesses, etc... Either the blade isn't nearly as sharp as most mandolins, or I am a total chicken, but it only worked if you use a certain amount of speed and pressure and I like my fingertips too much to be that careless. As with most mandolins, the guard is next to useless because you waste a lot of product in the guard. I'll use my knife, thanks. I rarely want to get that uniform or super thin slices anyway.

Interesting - I love my v-slicer. I picked it up for $2 at a garage sale, so it's only got the large 'julienne' and the reversible slicing plate. It's perfect for large quantities of onions (french onion soup, confit), and for coleslaw, for pressed cucumbers and for potato gratin.

I hate one of my microplanes. It's a wide one that has a plastic suround and there's no strength in it. It buckles when I press ever so slightly hard and the plastic is all cracked. The original one is fantastic though.

And I've got one of those pull-through knife sharpeners as well. Now my knives all have nicks in them and I need to take them in to get properly done.

[gfweb]

A Waring Pro Deep Fryer. Wouldn't reach 350 deg. Why I needed another thing on my countertop I don't know. I'm back to a big pot and lots of oil.

[Pierogi]

...I hate one of my microplanes. It's a wide one that has a plastic suround and there's no strength in it. It buckles when I press ever so slightly hard and the plastic is all cracked. The original one is fantastic though....

YES ! I made the mistake of buying that same model (with the wide slots for "ribbons" of cheese or whatever) and the same thing happened to me. I thought it was because I ran it through the dishwasher (in the top rack, so I *thought* it would be cool)...and was amazed when it had hairline fractures all around the frame ! Plus the thing doesn't "shred ribbons" for cr*p.

I should put the thing in the give-away pile, or more realistically, in the trash, but I keep thinking I'll use it one day....

But as you said, the original, long, fine-toothed one is irreplaceable.

[Chris Amirault]

I must step in to defend two desecrated items.

I bought a plastic pineapple peeler/corer/spiral slicer off the dump table at the back of Williams-Sonoma for $1. It wasn't worth the buck. Perhaps the metal version of this tool is heavy & sharp enough to dismember a pineapple, but in plastic, it was a disaster.

I'm not sure if you mean this Vacu-Vin pineapple corer, but I use mine all the time to great effect. If you line up the corer effectively and have the fruit inside a bowl to capture the juices, it works great. At least, for me.

A Waring Pro Deep Fryer. Wouldn't reach 350 deg. Why I needed another thing on my countertop I don't know. I'm back to a big pot and lots of oil.

I don't think the model is still available -- Amazon lists a DF250 now -- but the Waring Pro DF200 is a staple in my kitchen. I easily get it up to 375F and it recovers quickly. More information over in this topic.

One man's ceiling is another man's floor.

My nominees are every cheese knife I've ever owned.

[andiesenji]

My nominees are every cheese knife I've ever owned.

Have you tried The Cheese knife I have all three and they are great for cheeses that are not super hard and are already cut into wedges (by the store) or blocks.

I was amazed at how well the first (small) one worked so bought the others and also got them for my daughter. Soft cheese does not stick to the blade and it produces neater and cleaner cuts than the other steel cheese knives I have. (Some very expensive.)

For the harder cheeses and for whole wheels I have the big two-handled Wusthof (12-inch blade - it was expensive but I also use it for cutting large melons and hard winter squash, and have found numerous other uses for it) or I use a cheese wire (cheaper solution) I used to buy them from Fantes but since Amazon began carrying them, have bought this one. (Also use for cutting cheesecake, sliding under sticky cakes on a springform base, etc.)

I also have one of the heavy, leaf-shaped "knives" for breaking parmesan and other grating cheeses into chunks.

Edited July 26, 2010 by andiesenji (log)

[Chris Amirault]

Yours look terrific (as always ). Mine have, without fail, sucked, both as cheese knives and as knives in general. Sigh.