Top 11 Crappy Kitchen Tools To Avoid

There are like a billion gajillion kitchen gadgets out there, and they all look so nifty and useful, especially as an impulse buy at the checkout while grocery shopping and at three a.m. on QVC after you've gotten paid. How do you know which will give you the world's worst case of buyer's remorse?

Follow my advice and you'll thank me one day. Here is my Top 11 list of kitchen doodads you should avoid like the plague. Why 11? Because I've been biting off the Nostalgia Critic for this long, might as well roll with it.
But hey, at least I added a link, right? See, I can be nice when I want to. Now go fuck yourself.

Well, you can read my countdown, and then you can go fuck yourself.

11. The Garlic Peeler
The point of this little hoozajammie is to peel the skin off garlic cloves without getting that garlic smell on your hands. I guess you just roll it around and the cloves magically come out as seen in this picture. This thing is quite literally a hollow tube you're paying anywhere from $6 to $15 for. Is it too rough for you to smash it with something, or roast it in olive oil so the skin just peels right off with a wet cloth? You don't need this.

10. The Flour Sifter
This is a nifty little gadget to sift your flour, weeding out any impurities and giving your flour a lighter consistency, more like cake flour. But unless you're a caterer or run a bakery, you don't need it.  I use a rice strainer, it's easier to clean, and considerably less expensive. I've seen these babies run for as much as $40 a piece.

 9. The Egg Slicer
Ugh, really? Do I even need to go into why this thing is useless? Use a knife. Get your chopping/precision skills down. And if you're making egg salad, use a goddamn fork, for fuck's sake. Or flush $15 down the crapper, see if I care.

8. Citrus Segmenter
This doohicky chops a half a grapefruit, orange or lemon into wedges for $20. Listen... if you can operate a knife well enough to cut a fruit in half, it wouldn't be much of a stretch for you to cut it down the rest of the way, would it? C'mon, people. Seriously.

7. Cake Tester
I'll admit, I fell for this one. I have this exact same model and paid $6.99 for it several years ago. Before I bought it, I used toothpicks which were equally as effective, and available at a 99 cent store. The only time this thing came in handy was for my superbowl party football cake, which was nearly an entire 12" tall. (Too tall for toothpicks) Now, half the time I can't find it in my utensil drawer and end up using toothpicks anyway. Stupid fucking investment.

6. Melon Ballers
Do you really need your melon served in tiny uniform balls? Depending on where you go, these dumb things can set you back up to $20, especially if they have cute little melon shapes as handles. Gawd, they saw you coming, didn't they?  This goes for the melon baller's retarded cousins, the avocado scooper and the meat baller. Lazy schmucks, use a spoon!

 5. Apple Corers
Just. Say. No. Do you have any idea how many apple-related dishes you'd have to make in order to justify a purchase like this?

4. Pasta Measurer
I can kind of see this working if you get into a fistfight outside a restaurant, but inside, real chefs call a pasta measurer your hand, plus a dash of judgment and pinch of common sense. Besides, making too much is also that awesome thing called leftovers. We like that, don't we? Don't be the dildo that blows $12 on this.

3. Kiwi Scoop
If you get this, you're the tool. They make this awesome kiwi scoop that looks a lot like what you already have-- it's called a spoon!

2. The Shrimp Deveiner
Otherwise known as the paring knife. The commercial grade ones can devein, butterfly or fully split up to 100 shrimp per minute. The one for regular kitchens looks exactly like a paring knife, which is funny. The Shrimp Butler is a crank-type thing that does similar to commercial grade machines only slower. It'll set you back about $35 bucks. Just use a friggin' knife.


And by far, the number 1 most useless and wasteful kitchen tool is....

*DRUMROLL*
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1. The Garbage Disposal
I know a lot of you suburban housewives, co-op and condo owners will want to skin my hide for this, but garbage disposals are the epitome of useless. Not only are they dangerous around idiots and drunk people who like to put glass bottles in there because they like the sound it makes, but according to an independent study by WETA, (an environmental impact group based in Arlington, VA) wastewater that contains a high amount of organic matter is harder to break down in a septic tank or at the sewage treatment plant. As a result, the use of garbage disposals has contributed to increased nutrient loads in rivers and streams, along with erosion, runoff of overused fertilizer. This causes algal blooms and other undesirable effects, like "dead zones" in the Gulf of Mexico. Is it too difficult to peel your vegetables over newspaper, or in a bowl rather than contributing to global pollution? I think the garbage disposal, along with other environmentally irresponsible things need to be banned. I support home composing because whether you're creating more biogas or methane from solid waste in landfills, it has a negative impact on the planet. Composing may be a little more work, but for the future generations, it could be crutial. Besides, there's an old saying that nothing easy ever pays off in the end, and nobody ever meets any resistance going downhill.
Learn more about composting here.  Go ahead, laugh off this blog. Call me a hippy. But in 20 years when the Gulf of Mexico is so toxic that it makes the Volga river look like the Mediterranean, and your grandkids are eating Soilent Green, you'll wish you had put in the extra effort while it still mattered.

Whatever. You can go fuck yourself now. See you at the dinner table, bitches!