We use our panini grill for things other than sandwiches. If we want garlic bread, we’ll brush the bread with garlic infused oo and then grill. From that you can also make croutons. Just cut it up in squares. Wouldn’t want to do without it.
a cast iron waffle baker.
Great American Steakhouse Onion Machine, which is a gadget used to cut onion blossoms. For some reason I received three of them one Christmas, two were regifted and the remaining one has been sitting unused in a closet for the last 20 years or so.
Deep fryer. Stinks up the house and requires a 5 liters of oil so it isn’t worth setting up for the rare times I want to deep fry something.
Showtime Rotisserie oven. Used to use it a lot and it worked well, but it’s much easier to just roast a chicken in the oven so it now lives in the garage.
Gas grill, I just prefer to use charcoal.
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That is too bad. I was considering getting something like that because I believe it is the more traditional way making waffle.
All the fancy silicon cake moulds. I bake much less than I would have dreamed of. And I prefer the metal moulds, coated with butter. Easier to wash and store than the silicon ones.
Others on the list include my non-stick becoming sticky teal pans, Magimix centrifuge mainly for apple and carrot juice (nightmare to wash).
At one point of my life, I stopped using cast iron pots, fed up with the weight lifting sport…
yeah, my LC grill pan that I got as a wedding gift and wanted SO badly, just sits there. sad times.
I donated mine to the thrift store I amost felt bad to pass on the disappointment.
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For years I had a Cuisinart FP which I loved, used the hell out of & wore out every single part. Now I have a Kitchenaid FP which is the most useless kitchen appliance I’ve ever encountered. The bad part is I should just throw it away & go buy another Cuisinart but I’m too cheap…
I tossed mine and got the Breville 
controlling the temperature was the biggest pain. Either too hot or too cold and awkard to flip on the burner.
Most of what I have serves a purpose. But I do remember buying that sandwich contraption once.
You put sweet or savory things in between two slices of bread, then pressed down and it made what was supposed to resemble a type of empanada. It didnt.
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My Actifry. I paid $299 for it when it was just out. I figured it would amuse me for 3 weeks which is what I wanted. I was about to have cyber brain surgery and it was something to take my mine off that upcoming event. I could have gone to a psychiatrist instead but that would have been $150 and hour. So I did get my money’s worth out of the Actifry, but now I only use it about twice a year. The brain surgery was successful.
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I almost never use my mandoline either - like you said, knife for small jobs, Cuisinart for large. Of course, my brother managed to break the stem that holds the blade to my mother’s Cuisinart this Thanksgiving (trying to school me on how to work the slicing blade, despite the fact that I have owned the same exact Cuisinart for 20 years and knew exactly what I was doing), so I was awfully glad she had a mandoline as backup!
The SNACKMASTER!!! We had one of these when I was a kid - I remember my siblings and I saw it at some mall show and begged our mom for it until she finally relented and bought it. We used it a lot, actually - it was a fun gadget for kids and easy to use. I wouldn’t have one in my kitchen now, but in an 80s kitchen in a small town without any interesting dining or grocery options, it was the bomb!!!
I don’t use my mandoline often but when I do nothing else can take its place.
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Here’s my take on mandolines (I have 4):
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Expensive, heavy and lots of attachments mean nothing if they don’t work.
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Plain, simple and inexpensive are JOYS if they do work.
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Thin, fixed, and angled blades tend to work better than interchangeable, thick and perpendicular blades.
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If they don’t do what you want, you won’t use them. Throw them away.
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The combination of my $20 Borner V-cutter and my vintage (1900) triple-blade kraut cutter is all I need.
The following story is typical. I have a very good friend, an accomplished cook, in San Francisco. He wanted to learn to make sauerkraut, and wanted to know if he could do so with his mandoline. He had stashed it away in his furthest, highest cabinet (15-foot ceiling!). It had the dust of ages. He did not remember the make (Bron). He could not remember the last time he’d used it. The straight-cut, perpendicular blade was about as sharp as a a table knife. He did not know how to adjust it for thickness. It was like unearthing an Etruscan sarcophagus.
Don’t be like my friend.
Aloha,
Kaleo
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Is a dishwasher cookware? That’s more an appliance, no? Though I would concur that it’s probably my most expensive and least useful appliance (read: “waste of money”) I have in my house.
For me, undoubtedly, it’s my fryer. It fries well, and makes the process less messy than most fryers I’ve seen, but it is still a PITA to deal with the oil and I don’t drag that thing out until I really, really have to.
The second most useless - my indoor electric grill. It grills ok for what it is, but again a PITA to clean and I won’t use it unless I have no other choice.
My mandolin is ok, but I find that safety holder attachment to be utterly useless. It doesn’t grip veggies well so I still have to use my hand to hold the veggie. I do find mandolins to be PITAs to clean too, since I don’t look forward to shredding my fingers or hands.
My mandolin sits in its drawer, and I use a pseudo-food processor instead. I picked up a Breville all-on-one off the clearance rack and I find it more useful than I expected. Once you cross the threshold of “time to clean” vs. “time saved”, I bring it out. It makes short work of paper think potato slices for Pomme Anna, a mountain of cheese for mac 'n cheese or fondue, or all the prep for veggie lasagna (think cheese grating, vegetable slicing, etc). Otherwise, I just grab a knife or grater.
I also find a rotary cheese grater to be useless — I tried using mine last night (after long hiatus) and was thoroughly disgusted. My least used bit of cookware is a LC ECI skillet. The minimuffin pans are the most ignored piece of bakeware, and anything used for making lattes/capps.
Potato ricer.
It was sold as a gizmo that would be even better for mashed potatoes, than mashing potatoes. it isn’t.
