Walk into any well-stocked kitchen store today and you will feel it – that irresistible pull toward gadgets that promise to transform the way you cook. Sleek packaging, clever names, TikTok influencers holding them up like holy relics. It is genuinely hard to resist. Whether it was an impulse buy near the register, an ad promising the ultimate answer to your meal prep woe, or an influencer raving over a new kitchen tool that single-handedly changed their life, novel kitchen gadgets can be a temptation too strong to resist.
The problem? Most of those gadgets end up collecting dust in the back of a drawer within weeks. Professional chefs have seen it all, and they have strong opinions about what is genuinely useful and what is simply clever marketing. These gadgets were most likely bought on a whim because they seemed like a good idea at the time. The majority of kitchen tools that get used once and then forgotten are marketed as saving time or increasing convenience. But actually, they’re awkward to use, hard to clean, only serve one very limited function, or take more time to use than if you had done it the regular way. So let’s dive in.
1. The Bread Maker
Few kitchen appliances feel quite as exciting as a bread maker. The idea of waking up to freshly baked sourdough every morning sounds dreamy. The bread maker market is currently valued at around $8 billion, and the value is expected to increase to $11.1 billion by 2032. Interestingly, North America alone accounts for about 32% of market share value as of 2024. That is a staggering amount of money spent on machines that most households use for a few weeks before they retire to the garage.
A bread maker is a bulky and expensive appliance that you’ll likely store in the garage for a year. Why not use your oven and get better results? With the rise of no-knead bread recipes, it’s easier to make bread at home without a specialized appliance. Chefs are blunt about this one. Bread machines are an upscale kitchen gadget ranging from $80 to $150 or more that simply aren’t worth the price or the counter space for most people. Your oven was literally designed to bake – trust it.
2. The Garlic Press
Honestly, the garlic press might be the most divisive tool in the kitchen drawer. Half the home cooks in the world swear by it. The other half have already thrown theirs away. Professional chefs tend to fall firmly in the second camp. Garlic presses, which solely exist to squish garlic cloves into small pieces, aren’t seen as crucial tools by professional chefs. One head chef finds that when using a garlic press, the garlic comes up round the edge, makes a mess, and takes longer to clean than the time you supposedly “save” crushing the garlic.
Garlic crushers might seem like nifty little tools; however, for the most part, they’re more hassle than they’re worth. Little garlic chunks cling to every nook and cranny, meaning they’re a waking nightmare to clean – and you end up wasting some of your ingredient, too. The alternative? A chef’s knife and a pinch of coarse salt. Smash, mince, done – in about 30 seconds flat, with zero cleanup.
3. The Full Kitchen Knife Set
Walk into a kitchen store and those gleaming knife block sets look absolutely magnificent. But here is the thing – most professional chefs would tell you it is one of the most inflated purchases you can make. People often spend between $20 and $200 on a kitchen knife set. Meanwhile, some high-end sets are priced between $500 and $2,100. It would be extremely frustrating to invest hundreds to thousands of dollars into a group of knives just to realize that day-to-day, you’re only really using one or two.
Instead of spending so much money on a set of items you’ll likely never use, you’ll probably enjoy greater savings by purchasing a very good chef’s knife instead. As one Business Insider writer noted, knife sets are often full of “filler knives” that won’t get used all that often but drive up the price of the set. I think this is spot-on. One great eight-inch chef’s knife and a decent paring knife will take you further than a 16-piece block that mostly gathers dust.
4. The Vegetable Chopper and Spiralizer
The spiralizer craze swept through home kitchens a few years back, promising zucchini noodles and carrot ribbons for days. Generic vegetable choppers take up a whole lot of space in your cabinet. For those with physical limitations, vegetable choppers can be a lifesaver. But if you’re able to master some basic knife skills, they might just be a big use of valuable space. That sums it up rather well.
These kitchen gadgets that only serve one function just get in the way, and they are hardly ever used due to their specialization. All the various “chopper” style gadgets usually replace what could be considered a basic knife skill, and it’s better to just use a knife rather than clutter up your kitchen with more plastic junk. Want vegetable ribbons? A simple julienne peeler sits flat in a drawer and does the same job in minutes.
5. The Egg Cooker
It sounds almost too basic to even discuss – a machine designed specifically to boil or poach eggs. Eggs remain an extremely popular food staple in the United States. As of 2025, the average American consumes about 276 eggs per year, per Statista. The egg cooker is a kitchen gadget designed to leverage that popularity. Clever marketing, when you think about it.
Eggs are one of the easiest foods to cook, which makes it funny that entire appliances have been designed to handle them. Sure, the first batch might come out fine, but the machine doesn’t actually save time once you factor in setup and cleanup. The water pot you’ve used for years already does the job, and it doesn’t need another cord snaking across your counter. Save the counter space. Save the money. Boil some water instead.
6. The Avocado Slicer
The avocado slicer is the poster child of the single-use gadget era. It was born out of the avocado toast craze and has been living rent-free in kitchen drawers ever since. Common complaints center around how difficult these little gadgets really are to use. People talk about how the slicers don’t work on avocados that are even slightly under- or overripe. They can also slip, which can be dangerous.
This one belongs squarely in the single-use gadget category. You don’t need a separate tool just for avocados. Cutting, pitting, and slicing one is just as easy with a knife and spoon: cut the avocado in half around the pit, then carefully use the knife to grip the pit just enough to gently twist it out of the fruit. Then scoop out the flesh from the outer skin with a spoon and slice the fruit from there, if desired. Avocados are pricey to begin with, so don’t waste your money and drawer space on a slicer.
7. The Egg Separator
The egg separator might be the most unnecessary gadget ever invented. It is small, inexpensive, and feels harmless – which is exactly why so many people end up buying one. This tool looks harmless enough, but it takes a task most people can already handle and makes it more complicated. Cracking an egg and tipping the yolk back and forth between the shells works quickly, and even if you slip up, it doesn’t add much time. The separator adds one more dish to wash and one more tool to store for no real payoff.
The problem is that an egg separator just creates more work in terms of fetching it out of the drawer, using it, then cleaning it and putting it away. It’s faster and more efficient to do it with your hands or the shell. You can simply pass the egg back and forth between the two halves of the shell, letting the white fall into the bowl below while the yolk stays in the shell. Hands are, as one food writer put it, the original egg separator. No gadget required.
8. The Electric Knife Sharpener
Good knives deserve good care, no doubt. But spending serious money on a bulky electric sharpener when simpler alternatives exist is something professional chefs find hard to justify. Just because well-sharpened knives can handle just about any job in the kitchen doesn’t mean they warrant a fancy electric gadget to sharpen them. Opt instead for a simple and effective manual sharpener or sharpen your knives like a chef using a honing rod, which both work just as well as an electric sharpener for a lot less and without the fuss.
Electric knives may come in handy on a regular basis for those with impaired hand mobility or folks who work with large quantities of food, but most household cooks will only lug theirs out once or twice a year for family gatherings or holiday dinners. They take up considerable drawer space, have an iffy lifespan, and don’t tend to yield precise cuts. At the end of the day, an electric knife is one of countless kitchen gadgets just trying to mimic what a well-sharpened knife does effortlessly. A whetstone or honing rod takes minutes to learn and lasts a lifetime.
9. The Panini Press
The panini press has a certain romance to it. The satisfying weight, the ridged plates, the promise of a perfectly pressed sandwich. Our consulted chefs generally frowned upon any item that’s only designed to complete one culinary task, as they can contribute to clutter and can often be replaced by items that you already have in your kitchen. One chef from a well-known New York restaurant calls the panini press “not a necessary piece of equipment.”
Think about how much counter real estate a panini press swallows up, and then think about how often you actually use it. A panini press is just a sandwich under a heavy skillet. That is all it is. A cast iron pan and a heavy pot set on top will give you the same grilled, pressed result – and your cast iron can then go on to sear a steak, fry an egg, and roast a chicken. Now that is earning its place in the kitchen.
10. The Food Dehydrator
Food dehydrators have been having a bit of a moment. Homemade beef jerky, dried fruit, vegetable chips – it sounds wonderful in theory. If you’re into food preservation, you might be tempted to pick up a food dehydrator. These machines are basically countertop, low-temperature ovens with a circulating fan that creates the proper environment for removing moisture from foods. While you can use a dehydrator to dry almost anything, from fruits and vegetables to meats, owning one is probably a waste of money if you don’t plan to use it regularly.
Single-use kitchen machines are fairly pointless. These machines are actually worse than single-use gadgets because machines tend to be larger than tools and take up way more space. Plus, machines can break down, and lower quality machines may not even perform the function very well for the amount of time, money, and space they require. Your oven on its lowest setting, door slightly ajar, does a remarkably good job of dehydrating foods – no extra appliance needed. It is one of those kitchen tricks that professional cooks have known for decades.
