Nerd Pride Radio

Someone in the food entertainment industry whom I like (but who I can't exactly remember right now) was asked in an interview "what is the most useless kitchen item?" She said the pizza cutter--and specifically she described the traditional pizza cutter wheel-on-a-handle implement. She said why have this thing cluttering up your implements when you have a perfectly good chef's knife.

That has stuck with me, and it nags at me whenever I get out my pizza cutter. A couple times, I've just gotten out the chef's knife, and it rocks back and forth and cuts perfectly well, so I get what she's saying, but the pizza cutter is just so good at what it does, and it's a small thing. It takes up almost no space and is just another implement in our lazy Susan rack.

What do you think? Worth having, or would you rather go minimalist?

And besides, there's way bulkier single-purpose items in my kitchen taking up space. Rice cooker, for example.

The pizza cutter can be used on things other than pizza, and does a fine job. Any time you have to make a long relatively straight cut and a chef's knife isn't long enough. And it's small enough to not take up a lot of space. I think a garlic press is far worse than a pizza cutter, and it's about the same size, really.

If you make large quantities of rice every day, a rice cooker is amazing. But I don't have one, so I just make rice on the stove top.

Brussel sprout corer/peeler, that things pretty not great.

I used to have a ton of stupid kitchen stuff in my previous life, but I got rid of most of it. I'm trying to remember the worst offender.

Ask Aidan what they use. I worked in a pizza place (Anthony's Pizza on Yokota Air Base-- REPRESENT!). We used pizza cutters. Why? They're easier to use than a knife and way safer. Look, you can peel your vegetables with a chef's knife, and you'll probably cut yourself some of the times. Or you can use a vegetable peeler. It's just common sense.

Other single purpose items that I LOVE-

A meat masher (used to brown ground meat):



A potato masher (although we also use it to shred meat in the crock pot):



And of course the wire cheese slicer:



Look- we have a lot of unitask items that we keep because that single task is important to us (the coffee maker). Just because it's a unitasker doesn't mean you shouldn't have it.

We have a couple pizza cutters. I like using them on thinner pizzas that we have. But for the thicker pizzas, we actually have a pretty heavy-duty pair of scissors that we use to cut the pizza. A big knife works well if you take the pizza out of the pan, but we have a deep-dish pan that we use for our thicker pizzas, and the scissors work well in that case.

I don't understand the question. Pizza is already pre-cut (unless you're one of those horrible heathens making your own, and if so, then get your man-bun behind me, Satan). You just tear it with your hands. If you get extra cheese or toppings or whatever, well, that's the way it goes. It's like the better version of a wishbone.

It's like one of the Joneses is not related to THE JONES, and completely gets me forever and ever.

(Seriously, knives always worked fine for me. I'm sure there's a pizza cutter in the house, but I don't think I've ever owned one.)

Bat'leth over pizza cutter.

Incidentally, I had the curvature wrong. Upon research, it's completely ill suited for pizza cutting. I have something similar, but with correct curvature.

But a bat'leth would be good at docking the pizza dough before you top it.

Yes, because also works as quesadilla cutter and makes easy strips of pastry dough for rolling, edging. Multifunctional, inexpensive. Frozen pizza - I don't believe in its right to exist but others do, and then you really need a rolling cutter.