Kitchen full of useless shit
Expresso maker - offloaded by in-laws. Used once, occupying precious counter space.

Tesco Value Steamer - As a steamer this thing does what its supposed to. Sadly the entire concept of steaming is complete arse and easily accomplished through other means. I'm thankful it only cost €20 which is a lot less than some steamers which IMO would be just as bad.

Cheese grater - it's a rotary drum and feeder. You put a hard cheese in to grate except after about 3 rotations the cheese is smeared around the outside and you spend the next 20 minutes cleaning it.

Electric pepper mill - someone bought this as a gift and I loathe it. It's 2x the height of a regular pepper mill and 5x as inconvenient.

Pizza stone - this is my own fault. It's a ceramic dish designed to evenly cook a pizza especially home made ones. I bought this thing expecting to cook delicious pizzas every week. I cooked one and the stone has sat in the cupboard ever since.

Juicer - juicers are a waste of time. Feed a bunch of apples & fruit into 20,000 watts of whirring death blades and you'll be rewarded with half a cup of juice and 30 minutes scrubbing pulp out of the blades.

Electric peeler - the wife bought this and its just bollocks. A peeler blade moves rapidly up and down but manages to do a worse job than a regular peeler.

JML manual food processor and box of plastic attachments - connect one thing and it tosses salads, attach another and you can grate veg, connect another and you can make delicious smoothies, all with a hand operated crank! Except it bloody doesn't work at anything and there must be 20 bits. Don't buy anything from JML even it appears to do something useful. It won't.

Onion chopper - stick an onion in the container, mash the button on the top and hey presto chopped onion. Except you have to cut and peel the onion first so it's more effort than chopping the bloody thing yourself.

Of the contraptions which are moderately to fabulously useful:


Jamie Oliver Flavour Shaker - I'm mixed about this. The concept is good and it's great for pounding peppercorns but the volume is so pissy it's just no use for things like pestos.

George foreman grille - it is useful for grilling and fat does drip away from the food. Biggest issue is cleaning the thing.

Slow cooker - takes up a lot of space but produces some really nice meals.

Toaster bags - my kids are coeliac so these things are invaluable. Stick the GF bread in the bag and toast away without contaminating the toast with crumbs.

Microwave rice cooker - if you buy one gadget in your life get this. It cooks rice and pasta and it can steam veg too. It's easy to clean. It costs £10. Mine has lasted me 15 years and is a little yellow but still works great.
(MagicMoose, Thu 29 Sep 2011, 21:48, 6 replies)

JML is the bastard child of RonCo
They're both the retail arms of the Ministry of Fucking Useless Objects.
( His Popiness the Hole Invaded Poland on, Thu 29 Sep 2011, 22:06, closed)

Stick the pizza stone on the bottom shelf of your oven
It will help keep the heat more constant throughout the oven by acting like a big storage heater.
(gordonjcp, Fri 30 Sep 2011, 12:09, closed)

Cheese toasted sandwiches
George Foreman grill makes awesome toasted cheese sandwiches.

Enough squashing of a cheese, mushroom, onion, pepper and chilli sauce sandwich with space round the edge to let some run out and grill to make cheese crisps (or cheese-plosion as it's official known in our house)

MMMMMMMM
(Wooden meal is. Or is he?, Sat 1 Oct 2011, 18:56, closed)

Jamie Oliver Flavour Shaker
A great bit of kit, until the threaded lip starts to break apart randomly leaving little splinters of plastic in your mixed herbs or whatever.

Seriously, do a quick internet search on this and you'll find it's quite a problem. Ours went in the bin after only being used around half a dozen times after we started finding bits of plastic....
(FF_Sam is currently on call...., Mon 3 Oct 2011, 11:18, closed)

George Foreman Grill
Again another invaluable bit of kitchen furniture, clean it while it's still warm, it cleans easier...

God I sound almost domesticated.....
(FF_Sam is currently on call...., Mon 3 Oct 2011, 11:19, closed)

We call ours
The George Formby grill cos everything you put in it "Turns out nice again"
(andythepieman Is surfing the waves of indifference on, Mon 3 Oct 2011, 15:42, closed)