Ed from over at Tomatom has started an interesting thread on the least useful kitchen items that one owns. I tend to veer away from any single-use item – I wrote about this in Cambodia as a rare victory over acquisitiveness. Buying kitchen gear does not make you a better cook. Spend your hard-earned cash on better ingredients and travel.

Having been reunited with my lifetime collection of kitchen-related paraphernalia that had been in storage after returning from Cambodia, I realised that in the packing process, all of the useless items had already been discarded. I was a little horrified that I wasn’t horrified at the amount of crap that I own. That is except for one item that for some reason I can’t bear to throw away

This is the most useless kitchen device I own. It’s a Mexican tortilla press (tortilladora in Spanish), cast from iron. It weighs enough to be used to anchor a respectable dinghy. I’d like to spin a tale about how I picked it up from a little tortilleria in San Jose del Cabo on the Baja peninsula and carried it lovingly back to Australia but that would be a bald-faced lie.

Like much of my kitchen gear, I found it at the Savers thrift store on Sydney Road in Brunswick, Melbourne and was lucky enough to be one of the few people who knew what the hell it was. I think that I’ve used it less than ten times, simply because I rarely need to make more than about six tortillas in a single hit and by the time I get started rolling them flat with a rolling pin, I’ve forgotten that I own the damn thing.

Where to buy a tortilla press in Australia

If you’re not in a hurry and can wait for postage, tortilla presses are ~$15 on Amazon.

Otherwise, if you’re in looking for a tortilla press in Melbourne, La Tortilleria at 72 Stubbs St, Kensington has them for sale.