A Marijuana grinder. I like foraging for foods, so I tend to use the grinder on things like Staghorn Sumac, or Spice Bush to make a course grind. It allows a lot of control on how much you want to use and how fine, unlike a blender.
Before it's asked, I actually have never smoked weed. It was listed as a "spice grinder" and I never thought it was for weed when I got it.
Small set of whetstones so I can keep my kitchen knives absurdly sharp. Sharp vs "meh" vs dull knives make a huge difference in speed, comfort and safety. I've scuffed my knives a bit getting into things, but at least they're sharp as hell and touching them up only takes a few minutes.
Also it's hardly unconventional, but a quick read thermometer (fold-out type) is almost a must.
Weirdly, a dough scraper. It's not because of the measurement conversions, I don't think I'd ever noticed them up until now actually. It's just a really solid dough scraper. I use it for dough, but I've also used it for so many other things, like assembling/disassembling furniture, patching holes in the wall, wrapping furniture in a vinyl sheet. Loads of various tasks.
Every so often you find that you need a solid, flat, steel thing, and this comes in handy every single time.
A garlic press - saves so much time and effort over mincing garlic with a knife because I'm not a pro chef, and can be used in about 95% of situations where you need garlic. I don't use it when I want the garlic texture, but otherwise I just adjust the amount or the cooking time versus minced garlic. There's some hate floating around from professional chefs, but I bought one a few years ago to try it and haven't looked back.
I use a mandoline. It used to take me easily 5+ minutes per onion to dice. Now I can get 2 onions diced in about 2 minutes. Less dramatic time savings are available for other veggies too, depending on how finely I want them chopped up.
A danish dough whisk. Somehow it’s easier to mix dough and it won’t have so much gunk sticking between the wires like in the balloon shaped whisks. It can be cleaned easy by hand. It’s pretty large though.
Probably unconventional now, but one of those old can openers. Not the turning ones, the manual single-piece ones. Every can opener I have had dies after a year or two, but this one has been going strong for like.. 50+ years.
Steel tea pot - I drink a pot every day but last couple pots were both glass and only last a couple months before breaking (both my fault) so upgraded to steel and so far my clumsiness hasn't yet managed to break it
Can't get medium eggs in nice slices on sandwiches so well with a single point of pressure on the egg. That is even with a really sharp knife cutting soft-ish eggs is annoying and just not as good.
A microplane grater - it's been really great for dealing with ginger, and even garlic (although for garlic I mostly prefer to just squish it with the flat side of my knife). I've also used the slicer end to make chips out of baby potatoes and turnips.
Another go-to for me is a conventional pressure cooker - I use it when I'm feeling lazy, I just chuck everything in it - lentils/beans + rice + veggies + condiments, and it's all done in one go, only takes 15-20 minutes and there's no need to soak stuff beforehand. The best part is that I put all my ingredients in just a single ceramic bowl, so cleaning the cooker is super easy (just rinse it with water), and I can eat directly off the bowl, which saves me from having to use a separate dish.
Strawberry cutter. That stupid looking plastic strawberry with the little blades in it? Turns out it can do basically evening I don't like cutting, mushrooms, berries, olives, all in tiny perfectly uniform cuts.
Souper Cubes, which are basically silicone containers with a lid for freezing food. I’m trying to do more batch meal prepping, and 1 cup sized blocks are waaay easier to store in the freezer than a bunch of freezer bags whose contents may or may not have frozen completely flat. It makes portioning easier too. I haven’t tried baking in it but I do like that they’re oven safe too if I ever want to do that.
I got this one weird ass meat mallet from a Brian Lagerstrom video and I use that shit for my black bean burrito filling. It works like a dream chopping and mincing anything especially if you are cooking it.
Pizzelle maker - like a cookie iron. It was the only thing I asked for as a HS graduation present, my parents thought I would never use it. 20 years later, I still whip up pizzelle every few months
Huh. No one has said ground meat breaker/chopper.shen my wife got one, I said it was a waste, a spatula was fine, etc etc. Then I used it once....holy crap so much better and easier to get exactly the chunkiness you want from ground beef, turkey, etc. Love the the thing now.
Box cutter for removing can labels. That way, they don't get soggy and awful when you have to rinse the can before recycling. Or rinse before opening, if you store your cans in a semi-outdoor environment like me.
I don't know about unconventional but I use the absolute heck out of my half width spatula, the skinny one.
Also got a silicone fish spatula and that thing rocks. I thought it would be too bendy to work, and I don't have any nonstick pans (cast iron all day every day and one steel pan we call the stick pan, sometimes you want fond) so usually use metal but the edge on this thing is knife sharp and it squeezes under fried eggs like nothing else.
I really want a stovetop milk steamer. Sure would use it every day.
My boiled egg slicer. It seemed really frivolous when I bought it, and I probably only use it five or six times a year at best but man if it doesn't cut down prep time for any salad with boiled egg in it, it also works with avocados!