What's the most useless pileofshite kitchen applicance you ever bought/received?

[gobshite]

I'm tired of all these feel-good bargain buy threads. Well, I like them, but I need some counterweight

So .. what's the most useless rip-off aspirational piece of crap you ever bought for your kitchen? And as a bonus for ten, what's the msot useless kitchen thing you ever received as a gift?

I think mine was probably the electric toasted sandwich maker I bought in a fit of madness. Useless fecking thing - took forever to clean, burned the edges of the sandwiches, heated the cheese inside to gum-scarring temperatures, etc.

the most useless gift I got was a thing for pitting olives.

And you?

An Ice Crusher
It was so useless that you had to break the ice cubes up a bit before the blades would be able to move and then you had to shake it whilstt it was on to get it to actuaaly crush the ice

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bananas, i think have an enzyme that encourages other fruit to ripen.
our most useless ... ice-cream maker(wedding present) - used twice in 5 years (one of those was when gift-giver came to lunch), and pasta maker found by dh in Oxfam shop, therefore a bargain - I have have 10p riding on that never getting used...

Tassimo coffe maker - filter coffee much better.
An electric steamer. wsate of space, a pan steamer was much better.
Best thing I have is a pineapple corer - 1.99 from asda, eat loads of fresh pineapple, so handy.

A penguin shaped steamer thingy that is supposed to help clean your cooker. Bl**dy thing is useless unless you want to sit in front of your oven bathing in the steam until the cows come home.

I'm banned from watching QVC now.

My Dh bought me a George Forman grill thing but its way to small to cook anything bigger than a skinny lamb chop.

Oh yeah chucked my george formby out ages ago!

Ooh I love my Tassimo machine, its my best friend every morning. No more yucky grounds that always miss the bin.

Pruni, what is a walnut key??

My parents had a mandolin that my dad brought back from Japan and the knife was super-sharp. The problem was that you got into such a fast rhythm of slicing that if the plastic thing you are meant to use to hold the vegetable slipped, or if you thought you might try not using it and got to the end of the vegetable sooner than you expected, you would have already done several slices by the time you noticed anything was wrong.
I remember much, much blood from mandolin-use before it was decreed too dangerous.

Another vote here for the chocolcate fountainmachine.

There is just something... disturbing about it. We have never even taken it out of the box.

Yes what is the point of those things? I keep seeing them in the shops and wonder who buys them.... and they're not even cheap....

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What are grape scissors??

the thing with the chocolate fountain machines is that I seem to associate them in my mind with some kind of perversion. They look like the sort of thing I imagine they have at swinging clubs.

Either that, or it's the idea of a dozen sticky seven-year-old brats coming and poking their fingers in the runny chocolate and getting it EVERYWHERE.

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bran I can't live without a milk frother

but you could probably guess that from the name...

people keep buying me steamer baskets to put in pans

I throw one out... and Christmas brings another one

I could have made some kind of sculpture

I have to say that my food processor is my most useless and abandoned piece of kitchen equipment though I know from a previous thread that this makes me a weird freak

Pruni ornamental and a bargain

ROFL I thought thatgrape scissors were going to be some new fangled wonderful invention to cut grapes in half for young kids, not some posh thing to cut the stalks to have some

Ah now my dh would love a walnut opener - if it had been £3.50 instead of £35.

Cappuccino, if your frother ever breaks down you're welcome to mine. And I use my steamer baskets all the time.

Pruni, I love my popcorn maker. The popcorn is much nicer than the oil-cooked stuff.

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A couple of wallace and grommit toaster bags that you put cheese sarnies in and pop them in the toaster - thought would be better than using breville - ITS NOT!!

DHs pikey brother bought us a cheap ice cream maker - not the nice one on our wedding list he far too tight for that - I took it straight back as the milk churn thing had to sit in the freezer for hours before you could even start and the size of it meant that all the stuff I would have had to take out to make room for it would have defrosted - am gleefully searching this list for some sort of tat we can buy him for his coming nuptules - other than a years supply of J clothes to wash down his soapy girlfriend.

The George Foreman Grill is languishing in the cupboard and will forever more I suspect, because, erm there's a grill in the oven isn't there? Why didn't I remember that?

I have a walnut key too Pruni - got it in a bag of walnuts funnily enough from the Ocado man - was so impressed I opened them all showing DH just how great it was and then realised I only needed a couple of ounces of walnuts so had to eat the rest.

Yeah, unquietdad, for some reason I also associate chocolate fountains with sad, middle-aged perversions. Now why is that, I wonder? Must have been one bubbling in the background on some BBC documentary once

I forgot my potato baker thingie. It's a metal yoke that unfolds to a stand with four metal spikes on which you can impale perfectly innocent potatoes before putting them in the oven to bake. They cook marginally faster, and have a nasty metal-made hole up the centre.

I bet they suffer more, too.

A melon baller which cost £7 !!!! It doesn't make balls, and dh tried to make potato balls and snapped the head off it!