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What piece of kitchen equipment do you regret buying, and why?
What piece of kitchen equipment do you regret buying? Why?
I bought a garlic masher. (I don't think it was anywhere near £26 when I bought it!) https://www.amazon.co.uk/royalvkb-VP303-370-Royal-Garlic-Crusher/dp/B000OW58D8/ It looks really heavy, but it actually isn't. I regret it because it's not nearly as much fun to use as it looks. It's safer than mashing garlic with a knife, and it's easier to clean than a press. But other than that it's not worth the money. The garlic cards (credit card sized bits of plastic with embossed letters) that you rub garlic over are better.
It's not so much any specific item, but, as a general rule, I regret buying cheap things.
When I first moved out and started my adult life, I didn't have a lot of money, and so of course the stuff that I purchased was bottom-of-the-line. Cheap cutlery, cheap pans, cheap utensils, cheap cutting boards, cheap everything. You can find them everywhere. Your grocery store, the clearance aisles of a department store, those stores that seemingly exist only to sell things that won't sell in other stores.
The items I got all worked, sure, but they weren't great. My cooking trays got warped in the oven, my pans started peeling, my knives were only ever sharp for about fifteen seconds. Everything did what it was supposed to do but something was off about it, or it did what it was supposed to do for a limited time before needing a replacement.
I now have a rule that if I buy something, I'm going to buy something of good quality even if it means paying more, as I've had to replace all that cheap stuff I initially owned, which makes those options considerably less "cheap". Heck, some of the items I even replaced multiple times! Cheap pan after cheap pan after cheap pan!
Granted, financially it was what worked for me at the time. I wouldn't have been able to get anything classy or high-end, so I bought those out of necessity. Nevertheless, I learned the lesson that small repeated costs over time can add up to more than a single large cost for something that lasts. That's now what I try to get instead.
A Nespresso Essenza Mini pod coffeemaker.
I'd sworn I wasn't going to fall for the disposable pod life, but the spouse mentioned a hankering for espresso, and we didn't really have the counter space for a full-sized espresso machine. It looked like it was possible to refill the Nespresso pods. So I gave in and bought him the kit as a holiday gift, based on reviews that suggested the output actually tasted like espresso.
So... no. Not only does the machine pierce the pods so it's impossible to refill them, the coffee is ghastly and tastes nothing like real espresso. Every flavor or variety tried has a weird chemical aroma and aftertaste, the brew is thinner than espresso even on the most concentrated setting. Normally, I'll drink anything coffee-like, but this machine's brew wasn't palatable.
Thanks to delayed delivery and some other impediments, I didn't attempt return to Amazon on time. Also, the spouse simultaneously decided to cut his caffeine intake...
The machine has been gathering dust for a year, as has the pod pack. I'm hesitant to attempt resale, but I'll donate to anyone willing to make a further go of it than I did... PM me if interested.
IIRC you need to purchase a special pod if you plan on using your own coffee. But yes, the prefilled ones are all one-time use only.
Agreed, we grind beans for regular drip or French-press coffee, but pressure-expressed is a different thing. I'd had hopes that since the Nespresso machines were supposed to provide up to 19 bar pressure (typical espresso machines run at 15 bar or higher), the results would be comparable. The cups produced had good crema, but the coffee capsules just don't contain enough grounds to make real espresso.
As to New Mexico Piñon Coffee, we get it online every few months as a treat, and it's awesome.
Thank you! We have one of these in the office, at a place full of management-type people. A manager friend keeps bugging me that it makes “actual coffee” and that “you just haven't tried the good pods”. No. At this point I've tried about ten or so different kinds of pods, both Nespresso™ and third-party. They are all rubbish and taste like burned plastic.
Is there any actual consumer-positive aspect to these machines that actually beats using an Aeropress or making your own espresso? What's the supposed selling point here?
I am halfway convinced that they buy it at least partially in spite of coffee snobs. Coffee culture has gone kind of crazy in the age of the Internet.
I think the "push a button, get a coffee" aspect is nice for some people. And the "throw the pod away, you don't have to dump grinds into a bin and then wash out that filter" is also nice for some people although I have no idea what the cleaning of those machines is like.
I haven't personally tried it (yet?), but I've heard that it makes okay hot chocolate. Other than that? I'm pretty sure it's a scam.
As I said, I got it as a gift for my spouse to indulge in espresso as a whim. It's basically a quick and lazy way to get the itch scratched during a workday without an invasive use of kitchen real estate for an expensive, fragile espresso machine, or elaborate ritual preparations and cleanup.
If the output was any good, it would have been perfect.
If you ever get the urge for espresso, try the old fashioned Vesuvio stove top espresso pots. Very affordable (under$20) and easy to use. I am originally from Miami, and it is what most Latin families used.
http://www.vesuviocoffee.com/Coffeemaking.html
Thanks - will do, once we have a gas stove in a couple of months. The small base on those pots doesn't work well with electric burners.
I regret buying a deep fryer, and a bread maker. There is actually nothing wrong with either of them... they work fine. I just don't make enough bread or deep fried food to justify having bought them or the space they take up in my pantry.
I was scared to read your comment as I'm thinking about buying a proper deep fryer soon, glad to know the apparatus itself wasn't the issue.
For bread I can totally sympathize. My grandma got one of those and while the bread it makes is honestly pretty good, I can count with my fingers the amount of times I have eaten it, and I visit my grandparents pretty often.
Personally speaking, I would recommend against buying a dedicated fryer. For just a bit more, you can get a very nice dutch oven big enough to fry about anything you want and can also make a ton of other dishes. The only benefit of a deep fryer is automated temperature control, and unless it's got something in the oil to make sure it's circulating to keep the temperature consistant it's not really going to make a huge difference.
Well my plan was to get a deep fryer precisely because I want to control the temperature for double frying. I hadn't considered a dutch oven before. Would you say it's as useful for that?
Absolutely. The large amount of iron helps it keep temperature much better than an aluminum pot. And because you have it on a stove, it can heat up faster than a dedicated fryer (unless perhaps you are in a 240v country I suppose).
My country (Portugal) has 220v outlets, but you still make a solid case for a dutch oven so I'll definitely still look into them, thanks!
LOL, yeah, the fryer works just fine, and is much safer to use than deep frying in a pot or wok. The only disadvantage it has is that it's a bit of a PITA to clean compared to a pot/wok. Ditto with the bread maker... although making bread the traditional way also required a fair bit of clean up too, so it evens out there.
I regret buying the Instant Pot Mini. Not because it's bad, but because it's simply too small. I figured that I usually only cook for 2 people, so I could save some money by buying the smaller version. Little did I know that you need more space in the pot when you are pressure cooking. Not only does it need space at the top to prevent fluids from popping up out of the pressure vent, but if you want to cook via steam, you'll be taking space out of the bottom as well. And of course, lately I have been meal prepping to save money, so it would really help to be able to make more food in it.
Possibly the worst part about it is that it's not actually that much smaller than the "full-size" 6 quart model, but it has half the capacity.
A few years ago I bought a Magimix CS 5200 XL -- a killer food processor. While I use it, I don't use it nearly as much as I thought I would. I figured it'd be handy for quick prep, but by the time I factor in cleaning and whatnot, I can dice (etc) everything in less time with roughly the same consistency.
The second is an ice cream maker. It was the standard Cuisinart one -- not a bad machine, but far from perfect. I did two rounds of ice cream and decided to drop dairy. After it sitting on the shelf for a few years, I gave the machine to my sister, who rarely uses it. Making ice cream is good, but if you really want to do it right, get a machine that will keep everything frozen while you're churning.
Here's the first batch of salted caramel ice cream I made with tuiles.
I'm of two minds on food processors. If you are trying to slice/dice/shred/whatever a great deal of food, it's great. It's also somewhat better than a blender for grinding and blending a small subset of foods; if you are making tahini or hummus, you basically need a food processor. But cleanup is almost always a nightmare. There are just too many parts. So while I don't really recommend buying one, It's still an excellent 'special occasion' gift, for weddings and such. I feel the same way about stand mixers.
yeah, its basically a hummus maker for me. haha. The one I got is a total beast. When I got it, I got it on a deep discount -- about $200 off. It's also great for soup.
You could mix cement with this thing. It currently sits on a shelf.. in the dark.. waiting to make hummus.
Yeah, in the US people tend to think of $250-450 Cuisinart models when you say "food processor". There are less expensive ones available, but they are not that common.
This knife sharpening system, although not one quite that expensive, fortunately. Seemed like such a good idea, and it does work, it's just so much faff to use. It takes up lots of space, it's messy and annoying to use and while it's fine if you're completely clueless about sharpening - which I was when I bought it - it turns out it is not that hard to learn. What I ended up doing was buying a decent double-sided wetstone and temporarily trashing a couple of my cheap knives learning how to sharpen them by hand. Now I spend ten minutes once a month putting an edge back on my cooking knives and it's job done. The sharpener is merrily gathering dust at the back of a cupboard somewhere.
I bought a Lansky sharpening system and I agree with you. I'd have done better to just get a couple.of sharpening stones.
I have this stone and it was worth every penny. It doesn't give me the kind of perfect, mirror polished edges that the blade nerds post microscope-imaged photos of on knife forums, but it makes my knives sharp and that's all I care about.
I have one of these and and pretty happy. Barely takes up any space and easy as heck
I don't have anything in particular that I regret, but I am interested to know more about garlic cards. Not sure if they just aren't as common in the US, but I have never heard of them before. How do you use them exactly?
Here's what I'm talking about: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Garlic-Card-Purees-Quickly-Easily/dp/B000EHMR8M
Take a clove of garlic. Peel it. Then just rub it firmly against the card and you get a nice fine puree. It's good for small amounts (one or two cloves).
One problem is that the easiest way to peel garlic is to crush it a bit, and doing that makes it harder to use this card.
Oddly, I got mine from my nephew who was working at Williams and Sonoma at the time.
That's interesting, thanks for explaining!
So I didn't directly buy it, it came from stamps I got from buying groceries, but I hope that's still okay.
It's a serrated knife with a bunch of holes in the blade like so and is super thin and dull, making it practically useless to cut anything that isn't easily cut, and even then I struggle with it.
I kid you not there has yet to be ANY ingredient I can cut with it that I can't cut with any other of my knives, even some of my duller ones that have been in my pantry for over a decade.
Should have gotten the plastic containers with my stamps instead. :(
That's a cheese knife. It's for putting on your cheeseboard and looking pretty. The cutouts are so the cheese doesn't stick to it. They are great for that one thing, but nothing else. You can cut cheese with other knives but the lower the blade area the better. Try chopping up a crumbly cheese with a chef's knife and you'll see what I mean. I have a weird serrated filleting knife for cheese, it's great. No idea where it came from and I've had it forever, it's one of those strange kitchen appearances that seems to happen.
Here's a picture of it that I posted in another comment.
The holes do make it look like a cheese knife, but everything else doesn't, plus the packaging it came in never showed it cut any kind of cheese, it literally just showed it cut vegetables. And the lady who gave it so me never at any point said cheese either.
It really was just being sold as a "kitchen knife", there was no mention of cheese anywhere, hence my complaints when I tried to use it as a kitchen knife.
If this is really meant to be strictly a cheese knife, then they have done the poorest job of selling it. I've even been cutting cheeses since I've had it with other knifes because I cannot deal with this dull thing.
Uhm... are you sure that's not a soft cheese knife? I have one similar to what you describe in my cheese knife set (but with a forked tip) and it works great for that purpose. They're usually not super sharp because they're not meant to cut anything that hard, and the sole purpose of the holes is to prevent really wet/creamy cheese from sticking to the blade after you cut a slice.
edit: It is indeed a soft cheese knife... see:
https://warthercutlery.com/collections/individual-knives/products/soft-cheese-knife
and here is one almost identical to what I own:
https://www.hubert.com/product/85569/HUBERT-Stainless-Steel-Soft-Cheese-Knife---6L-Blade
Edit: here's a picture. If this was really meant to be a cheese knife then it sure as hell pretended not to be one.
I should have posted a picture of it, but it is not a cheese knife, or at the very least all the packaging it came in showed it cutting everything but cheese (iirc it mostly had vegetables being cut on the packaging), and even the lady who gave it to me didn't at any point mention cheese.
When I say it's serrated, I don't mean it has pointed spikes on the blade, they're more rounded "spikes", making it even more useless, it's a super weird knife and does not look like any typical cheese knife I have seen.
I'm sure it probably can cut a soft cheese, but if that was its purpose then it sure as hell didn't try to sell itself as such.
Ah, yeah you're right... those are definitely not being sold/marketed as cheese knives:
https://nutrifresh.com/collections/prep/products/nutrifresh-prep-15cm-6-kitchen-knife
So unfortunately it looks like you really did buy yourself a gimmicky, subpar kitchen knife. But hey, at least you can probably just ignore that and use it as a soft cheese knife instead. ;)
Oh wow they even have a website! Nice find.
You're right, it probably can be used for soft cheese, maybe I'll give it a try next time, it's just I often forget it even exists since I try to purge the thought I ever got it.
I actually still have my crock pot. Even though the instant pot has a slow cook mode, it's not quite as good for slow cooking because it doesn't let moisture escape like a crock pot does. That's important for a lot of recipes because it allows the stuff above the water line to roast and brown, and that creates a lot of flavor.
I've made hummus with garbanzo beans made three ways; from a can, slow cooked via instant pot, and slow cooked via crock pot. While the instant pot version was better than the canned version, the crock pot was miles ahead of both of them.
But I really don't blame you for getting rid of yours. it just takes up way too much space! The only reason why I had mine to begin with was because I gerry rigged it as a temperature controlled water bath for sous vide cooking.
You can set the pressure release to stay open and then it'll lose steam just like a crock pot.
A thin silicone (rubber?) sheet; the idea was to replace cling film with something reusable.
It turns out it doesn't cling to my container, so it's useless. Maybe I can repurpose this as an anti slip surface?
My new best friend when baking is a silicone mat. Size: large enough to work as a work surface. The benefit of it is it's easy to clean and easier to stow away semi-dirty. When I'm working with dough, I don't usually leave behind a giant mess, more like a little bit of flour on the mat. Pat the excess into the trash, roll the mat around the rolling pin, presto. Mess sorted till I bake next. Of course don't let it sit out dirty-ish for too long, but that doesn't usually happen to me.
Considering yours was meant as a replacement for cling film, I suppose yours is way thinner. I'm not afraid to cut firm dough with a dull knife on mine.
Is it heat-resistant? You could try using it as non-stick reusable parchment paper for the oven.
You might find this write up interesting on the negative effects of using a silicon mat for baking.
That's interesting. I wonder if it's possible to still achieve the same result on a silicone mat by modifying the recipe a bit.
Clarification: I don't use mine for baking at all, don't even know if it's oven-safe. Mine is just a work surface to me. I use it because it's less sticky and I can roll it up to hide/dispose of a mess.
Nevertheless an interesting read, thanks for bringing that up.
I haven't bought enough kitchen equipment to regret any purchases, thankfully. The few tools I have serve me pretty well!
Oh, I just remembered...I regret getting this can opener as it rusted up fairly quickly and is very hard to use, now. Thinking of ditching geared can openers and just getting something like this.
Having watched a fair number of people use gearless P-38/51 style can openers (MRE reviewers and Survivalist Youtubers), I wouldn't recommend them for home use... unless you enjoy taking ~5 minutes to open a single can. ;)
If rust is a concern, why not just buy yourself a stainless steel geared one instead? E.g. this or this
I got a digital thermometer before I'd heard about Thermopen(?). It takes so long to read/update the temperature that I just don't bother.