Grandma Didn't Need Another Gadget
Modern kitchens are packed with gadgets promising to save us from all the little jobs that eat up time during meal prep. Well, we hate to break it to you, but those so-called jobs once barely qualified as work at all. Grandma peeled, chopped, mixed, separated, and prepared entire dinners without dedicating half a drawer to plastic tools with specific purposes. Plenty of today's inventions do cut down on prep time, but these 20 make you wonder whether we've turned simple kitchen chores into bigger deals than they are.
1. Avocado Slicer
An avocado slicer can cut the fruit open, remove the pit, and create evenly sized slices with one specialized tool. It sounds really cool, until you remember that Grandma would've handled things with a small kitchen knife and a spoon without thinking twice about it. Considering how quickly an avocado disappears onto toast or into a salad, dedicating drawer space to the job feels like overkill.
2. Egg Separator
Any baker knows that some recipes only need egg whites, and others specifically want yolks. There’s no guesswork with a gadget that holds back the yolk while allowing the egg white to drip through an opening underneath. However, older generations just cracked the shell and passed the yolk between the two halves until the white fell into the bowl.
3. Garlic Peeler Tube
A silicone garlic peeler is actually pretty handy: you place cloves inside, roll the tube against the counter, and shake out the skins. If you were ever looking to kick it old-school, though, you could just do what Grandma did and crush each clove lightly beneath the flat side of a knife.
4. Herb Scissors
Herb scissors aren’t just your ordinary blades—they turn parsley, chives, and other fresh greens into neat little pieces. Well, we hate to tell you, but a sharp knife did that for generations, especially when the herbs were gathered into a pile and chopped together.
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5. Strawberry Huller
For those unfamiliar, a huller removes the green leafy top of your strawberry along with the firm white center. The best thing about it is that it does the job without sacrificing too much fruit. Before it appeared, though, people just slipped a paring knife around the stem and popped the whole thing out.
6. Banana Slicer
Yes, there's a device for turning a peeled banana into several evenly sized rounds at once. No judgment from us if you have one, but Grandma had the same system with a cutting board and whichever knife was around. Generations of banana pudding survived despite the occasional slice being slightly thicker than its cousin.
7. Butter Cutter
Some modern butter cutters press an entire stick through evenly spaced wires to produce uniform pats. If you’re counting calories or especially particular, it’s a handy gadget, but it’s also something you can tackle on your own. Grandma sliced off however much she needed with a butter knife, and measuring it for baking was hardly complicated either; wrappers have long carried tablespoon markings.
8. Corn Stripper
A corn stripper removes kernels from the cob by running a blade down its sides. That sounds like it’ll save time, but the home cooks of yesteryear did the job all on their own. They just stood the cob upright inside a bowl and carefully cut downward with an ordinary knife, catching the kernels as they fell.
9. Apple Slicer and Corer
Okay, we’ll give you a pass on this one. Pressing one gadget gives you a neat collection of wedges while removing the core in the middle. It’s amazing, even if Grandma could quarter the apple, cut away the core, and continue slicing from there with little issue.
10. Pizza Scissors
Pizza scissors are sort of like herb scissors: they have their own job, but it’s hardly worth the real estate in your kitchen. These combine a pair of shears with a little serving platform so slices can supposedly be cut and lifted at the same time. Well, earlier home cooks merely grabbed a knife and moved the piece onto a plate with their hands.
11. Onion Chopper
Place onion chunks inside one of these gadgets, push down repeatedly, and the blades turn them into uniform pieces. There’s no shame in wanting to protect your eyes against the little buggers, but Grandma would've taken out her cutting board and diced the onion herself. She also didn't have to dismantle a plastic chopping chamber afterward.
12. Citrus Sprayer
A citrus sprayer is exactly what it sounds like: it’s placed directly into a lemon or lime so you can mist fresh juice over salads or fish. We bet that doesn’t sound like something grandmothers did, but that’s not the case! The traditional technique involved slicing the fruit and squeezing it with your hand. It wasn't technologically impressive, but it still gave you juice exactly where it needed to go.
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13. Pancake Batter Dispenser
We’d all like to think we’re pancake masters, but batter dispensers really opened our eyes to just how sloppy our techniques were. That’s why they release measured amounts of mixture using a valve. Grandma, however, was perfectly happy dipping a ladle into the bowl and pouring batter straight onto the griddle.
14. Meat Shredding Claws
Shredding claws let you pull cooked pork, chicken, or beef apart using two oversized handheld tools. That might look good on the shelf, but two ordinary forks managed the same task long before the gadget hit the scene. Grandma could also wait until the meat cooled slightly and shred tender pieces with her fingers when necessary.
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15. Cherry Pitter
A cherry pitter is a useful tool that pushes the stone through the fruit while leaving most of the cherry intact. But anyone who grew up helping make pies will undoubtedly remember Grandma using a small knife, a hairpin-style tool, or even the end of a clean drinking straw to remove pits. It took patience, but we could all use a little of that too.
16. Salad Chopper Bowl
Some salad sets include curved chopping blades and bowls designed specifically to cut lettuce and veggies—but not in Grandma’s kitchen. She simply stuck everything on a cutting board, chopped the ingredients individually, and tossed them in a bowl. That “outdated” method also gave her control over just how thick the vegetable slices were.
17. Potato Ricer
A potato ricer presses cooked potatoes through tiny holes to create something exceptionally smooth. Don’t just assume you need outside help to get the job done, though! Plenty of grandmothers achieved perfectly respectable mashed potatoes with a hand masher, some butter, and several minutes of arm strength.
18. Pastry Blender
Like it or not, pastry blenders are actually pretty nifty. They use curved metal strips to cut cold butter into flour when making biscuits, pie crusts, or other doughs. Grandma, on the other hand, often rubbed butter directly into the flour with her fingers until the mixture reached the right texture. Knowing when to stop came from experience, not equipment.
19. Jar Opener Gadget
Rubber pads, gripping tools, and countertop jar openers now exist to give stubborn lids a nudge in the right direction—which is great for anyone living alone. But grandmothers knew a side trick: tap the edge of the lid gently against the counter, run it under warm water, or wrap it in a dish towel for additional grip. Of course, modern openers are indeed helpful, but the old ways still work well, too.
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20. Egg Cracker
Automatic egg crackers are designed to break shells neatly and, on some models, even help separate the yolk afterward. You won’t catch Grandma with one, though! She needed little more than the edge of a bowl and enough practice to open eggs cleanly with one hand if she was showing off.
