What's your most useful and useless kitchen gadget?

I love my stick blender (goodbye lumpy soups and sauces) and the most useless has to be, a quesadilla maker (bought for me) - how hard can it be to sandwich two tortillas together with cheese!

Totally agree with Nora R about the stick blender - mine also has a chopping blade and plastic container for it which I find invaluable for making breadcrumbs and things like that. The blender gets used for everything from blending soups to sorting out lumpy sauces!

Most useless? That's harder as I've made a vow not to buy stuff that I'm not going to use (or at least, not buy it intentionally!) but my Mum bought me a plastic tube thing to rub the skin off of a garlic clove. I'm afraid I threw it away - it's much quicker to do the job with a sharp knife and my fingers!

I also agree about the stick blender, before I had it blending soups in a food processor or liquidizer was a nightmare!

I also use my zester a lot, pestle and mortar, but have never found a really good cherry / olive stoner. Anyone any suggestions?

Most useless, the microwave stirrer to make scrambles eggs etc. I just doesn't hack it.

Happy to agree with you all re the stick blender!

Another 'gadget' that I love and use is my range of soft bladed spatulas.

Most useless? A potato cutter which (allegedly) cuts spuds into even chips. The amount of physical pressure you need to apply to get the blades to go through the potato makes it an exhausting and time consuming exercise.

Most useless piece of kitchen gadgetry for me is the pineapple peeler and cutter, followed closely by the waffle maker and the cucumber deseeder.

I love my Gaggenau Indoor BBQ and use it frequently for grilling steaks, flattened chicken and vegetables etc.

I also love my Cherry Stoner! Although only in use while the cherries are in season, it makes light work of stoning the cherries. So much easier than the handheld one if making cherry jam, tarts and cherries in brandy.

FYI Rosti

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