The tap and sink are definitely overlooked! We moved a year ago and I gave up a kitchen of my own design with a large, deep double bowl sink and inherited a tiny, shallow single bowl. I hate it with a passion. It also has a crappy faucet that sits low over the sink. Washing anything large is a nightmare. I can’t wait to remodel!
After reading everyone’s suggestions I’d agree with the slow cooker being over rated for sure. But my knee jerk answer was a garlic press.
Under rated - I love my salt tub and pepper grinder. As soon as I’m in a vacation kitchen I fill a coffee mug with kosher salt and have been known to pack my pepper grinder.
4 Likes
is that like a salt pig?
Yes. Same as a pig. But mine is wooden with a swivel lid. Should have just called it a pig.
1 Like
I love my garlic press. I have even 2.
I love my ice cream maker but mostly make frozen yogurt and don’t have too high of standards for ice cream/frozen yogurt texture.
When I put in the countertops I made sure to go with a giant sink! The faucet is also great and I couldn’t be without the power cleaning spray function.
3 Likes
Many posters think a good knife is underrated. Surely not. I’ve never heard any keen cook say “Good sharp chef’s knife? Nah, not for me”. I reckon it would be at the top of most people’s must have lists, unless they only bake, maybe.
For me: Underrated is a simple skewer, which I find unbeatable for testing doneness in potatoes and other veg.
Overrated are glass cooktops. The internet isn’t big enough for me to give my poor opinion of these foul curses on the kitchen. I have two.
1 Like
I think if you ask them, they will surely say “yes, I want a good knife”, but if you look at most people kitchen, their knives are not very good.
Kind of how I look at exercise… everyone say exercise is important, but if you look around, most people don’t exercise nearly as much as we should… You and I probably just define “underrated” differently. 
Why don’t you like glass top stove? They do seem very easy to clean. I never own one, but I lived in a temp apartment for a month, and I do think it is easier to clean.
1 Like
Cool. You have two kind of salt in this salt pig/salt box? I always thought about getting one… I have a jar for my salt, but it takes a little effect to open it. So maybe I need a salt box/salt pig which is very easy to open the cover – or… without a cover.
I agree with the old school electric type - they are truly awful. However, I am seeing more and more rave reviews for induction cooktops and I’m considering one myself, whenever I get around to replacing my crappy stove. You get the easy cleanup of a flat top but with consistent heat, which is my biggest complaint about the electric type.
Oh Chem! Where do I start? They need proper cleaning after even boiling an egg, otherwise they look truly awful, and you can’t clean them until they’ve been turned off for at least 15 minutes because they’re too hot. They’re not difficult to clean, but it’s way more time consuming than other cooktops would be as they need proper wiping with a damp soap free cloth after cleaning and then drying with another cloth otherwise you’ll leave streaks. You’ll need to do this multiple times in a day. And if your drying cloth has been hanging in the kitchen for any length of time it will have acquired enough grease content to make streak free drying impossible. Also any very minor fat/sauce drops from frying or other cooking will sit on the cooktop and be transferred to the bottom of the next pan to be put on an adjacent ring, spread around by any movement of that pan, and burn on to both the pan and cooktop. Putting a pan with a greasy bottom on another clean surface is also a problem created by this. This means you have to constantly wipe the cooler bits as best you can during cooking. Temperature control when going cooler is terrible. Gas tops do of course need cleaning, but in my experience a quick damp wipe with no drying required, once a day, with maybe a weekly full clean, is perfectly adequate.
1 Like
Yeah… you are true. You cannot really clean them until they cool down a little, but isn’t that the same for a gas stove or an electric coil stove? I cannot clean those until they cool down too. [quote=“RobinJoy, post:34, topic:10984”]
they need proper wiping with a damp soap free cloth after cleaning and then drying with another cloth otherwise you’ll leave streaks
[/quote]
Oh, I didn’t know that. You may be right. I only lived with a smooth gas top (radiative) for a month. I should also add that I had household service, so they come in once a week to clean the gas stove for me, and I did have streaks on it. 
I’ve never used induction, so I’ve no axe to grind against them. However, I suspect that the issue of spattered grease getting on to the bottom of the next pan to be put alongside a frying pan will still exist. With gas the spatters just drop through the pan supports and sit unburnt to be wiped from the relatively cool under-surface after cooking.
The bits that need cleaning on gas or coil cooktops get hot-ish, sure, but nothing like as hot as a glasstop, and not too hot to clean.
I don’t find cleaning the induction cooktop requires a lot of work, just a damp wipe when there are spills and at the end of the day. If oil accumulates with heat, it’s not so easy to clean. From time to time, I miss having real fire, but there are much more work to clean the old school stove.
Supposedly this is less of a problem with induction because the glass top doesn’t get hot in and of itself, other than the heat that is transmitted from the hot pot to the glass.
“Cleaning” coil and gas–no cleaning of coil or grate required. Run the pans/liners through the DW every month or two. Wipe down any enamel surfaces as you like, but no worry about streaking or polishing.
