If, like many, your love for bacon borders on the cultish and can't be fettered, you might need the latest single-use kitchen appliance in your home, Nostalgia Electric's Bacon ExpressTM. Huh. Sounds like a train you take to a cardiologist's office. Toot toot, all aboard! Then again, you might take a page from the kitchen rulebook of most world-class chefs and chuck every single-use appliance and tool currently in your kitchen arsenal out the window.

Let's examine the virtues of the Bacon Express. It can "easily cook up to 6-strips of regular or thick cut bacon in just minutes – no need to flip!" Finally, your days of flipping things halfway through cooking are over! Flipping stuff? Who has the time!? What am am I, Paleolithic Man? Although, Paleo, the darling of the diet world, does occasionally make a strong case for bacon. Sorry pigs. One caveat: it'll do mildly thicker strips, not super thick cut rashers from your deli guy. But, the appliance does drain away grease and fat into a shallow receptacle. That, I'll admit is handy, providing you have a steady hand. Pouring off hot bacon grease always feels like I'm tempting the fates with a potential loss of precious strips of flesh, be they porcine or human (humine?). The bacon express is also non-stick, has cool-touch handles(the hot-touch model wasn't selling), and true to the company's name, has a retro look to it when closed. Kind of like an old-timey bacon radiator (I'm tempted to dry socks on it although I'm certain the manufacturer would advise against that). But do you really need it on your counter (or collecting dust beside the Slap Chop in your cupboard)?

Nostalgia Electric and the Mirror definitely think you do.

North America's crippling, and by now pretty clichéd, obsession with bacon knows no bounds. There's even a term for it, Bacon Mania. Unless you're vegetarian or particularly pious, you're probably easily enticed by savoury strips served at brekkie, diced up on a lunch "salad" or, if you're a lifer, even crumbled on desserts. At the risk of coming off "not woke", I'll admit to owning a cookbook entitled Seduced by Bacon. As if bacon ever had to hustle to woo me. No seduction needed, bacon. I'm yours. I've often morbidly joked that even if a pig learned to talk and cured cancer, his life would still be forfeit if someone from his inner circle of scientists got remotely peckish. I feel bad for pigs. They are truly delicious. That said, I have no need for any single-use tools, bacon-specific or not. My kitchen counter real-estate is far too dear. I've even been giving my microwave dubious glances lately.

Truth be told, a cast-iron skillet, some good knives and tongs may be all you need. Sure, that's a pretty sparse culinary tool box and may leave you feeling naked but staff Food reporter at the New York Times, Julia Moskin, says you really don't need much. Consider yourself officially stocked with the following:

1 big (8-inch) knife

1 serrated bread knife

2 small paring knives

1 10-inch cast-iron skillet

1 small nonstick skillet

1 4-quart pot with a lid

1 9-by-13-inch metal baking pan

Metal measuring spoons

A metal whisk, long wooden spoons and a silicone spatula

A pair of sturdy metal tongs

Plastic or glass measuring cups (a 1-cup and a 2-cup)

2 13-by-18-inch sheet pans

A set of mixing bowls (plastic is fine)

Moskin also suggests a decent food processor, if you can afford it. And kitchen shears. Because, "Cooking is easy. Carving is hard". Don't tell the good folks at Nostalgia Express that. Celebrity chef, Alton Brown soundly agrees. His derogatory term for single use kitchen tools is "unitaskers" and he'll cheekily assert that they're all pretty useless.

But if you're not into the whole minimalist thing, have acres of countertop to spare or you just love the aesthetic of a kitchen that looks like a pawn shop, you may also like Nostalgia Express's Retro Series Single Snow Cone Maker, their 50's style Pop-up Hot Dog Toaster, or their various cake-pop, cupcake and doughnut Bakery Presses.

If you're still low on kitchen tchotchkes after that, you may want to snap up some Ginsu Knives and anything from Ron Popeil's imaginarium of kitchen "helpers" like the Veg-O-Matic, Chop-O-Matic, Dial-O-Matic or Mince-O-Matic. You know Ron. He's invited you to "set it and forget it" several times as you were battling insomnia. But Caveat Emptor (Latin speak for Buyer Beware): I think you may find yourself needing a Yardsale-O-Matic come springtime.

Marc Beaulieu is a writer, producer and host of the live Q&A show guyQ LIVE @AskMen.