I can’t think of many pastimes which have such a plethora of gadgets as cooking does. Some are great and fit a specific purpose but some are just plain dumb. Take the humble peeler, now you could just use a paring knife to peel your spuds but the peeler is simply more efficient and is a good example of a very useful little gadget which has a place in every kitchen. Yet even this simple idea is taken to the extreme with the infamous apple peeler and corer, a Heath Robinson device which I’m sure goes down very well with the Steam Punk crowd as an objet d’art. The term “over engineered” has never been such an apt description.

An awful lot of these awful gadgets are for cutting, from a device for cutting toast into soldiers to the pizza scissors which have a tray attached (no I can’t work out how you would make the first cut with them either!), I found multi-bladed herb scissors for sale, and yes they may save you a small amount of time using them to cut herbs over standard scissors, but how long do you think it would take get them thoroughly clean?  None of these genius ideas has anywhere near the form and function of a good old fashioned knife…

The mind boggles as to why anyone thought to invent or invest in some of these “helpful” devices, a recent one is called the 3-in-1 banana split. Now the key beauty of this is it can peel the banana and slice it, it looks like if you buy this it could go very well with the banana box which was recently on TV, now with these two simple devices you can keep a banana in a box and slice it at work. Erm…the banana is famous for having it’s own protective case called it’s skin, also I don’t know about you but I am lucky enough to have both a portable peeling device called “hands” and a slicing tool I always carry with me called “teeth”. So struggle as I do I cannot think of a single advantage of owning these items.

Even something like a zester I admit is practical but to be honest I have a multi-sided grater that can do the job adequately so why do I need yet another thing littering my kitchen?

Kitchen gadgets really do go from the sublime to the ridiculous

I do think it would be hilarious to have a kitchen stocked with all of these wonderful gizmos, a tool for everything you can possibly imagine even a strawberry stem remover…you must be getting through a serious number of strawberries to warrant that one!

Is this an addiction for some people, an “I must have one regardless of what it is” attitude? Perhaps the big selling point is you need to buy someone a present and I bet they don’t have one of these. That’s how I got my most useless kitchen gadget, a present kindly bought for me (I am grateful for any gifts no matter how useless ). It is a shaker for crushing herbs and spices which was heavily endorsed by a certain celebrity chef, I only had to use it once to know my pestle and mortar of ancient design out performs this modern gadget hands down and is much easier to clean. Now it has been laid to rest at the back of a kitchen cupboard taking up valuable real estate.

So I’ll be sticking to the old fashioned way of doing things until the wheel has been well and truly re-invented.

What can’t live without or completely useless gadgets do you own? Please share below and either you might be doing someone somewhere a big favour!

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The Food Curator

The Food Curator (AKA Michael Robinson) is an aficionado of all things food and bon viveur based in London. A passion for cooking and dining has driven him to put fingers to keyboard to bring you his thoughts on the world of food. When not writing, eating or cooking he has a love of American muscle cars. Pop on over to my Facebook page and let's start a Facebook food revolution together: http://tinyurl.com/thefoodcurator

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