George Foreman (25051) Electric Grill – Non-Stick Indoor Griddle, Panini & Sandwich Maker, Stainless Steel, 1850W, Grey – 1-Year Warranty

Best Buy
Good Quality Product! Money Worth!

Serves it’s purpose
It could be better if there was a better way to clean it. Everything else about it is perfect!

Recommended
Perfect product. Wide plate for grill or toast.

This model is not a good grill. I cooks the meat not grill it..it is not cast iron
This model is Not at all good gril

Second purchase as upgrade. Used first some years ago. Love this as really easy to use and clean. Chicken/turkey/beef in an instance, and cooks developing char flavours. I sometimes line it with baking paper before use if not marinading meats. Salmon cooks well too – just comes out flat ish!During sunny days, simply treat it as a bbq in the garden!Best to clean when hot as makes life a whole lot easier and is gentler on the grate – e.g less scrubbing and scratching.Highly recommended

I owned a family size George Foreman grill years ago, it was a decent enough and useful addition to our kitchen and I used it plenty until the non stick coating started to peel off, then in the bin it went.Later I bought a Tefal Actifry, I like my gadgets, and a contact grill with auto meat thickness sensing, auto temperature setting for the food you are cooking, auto timing, multiple programs and a coloured light which told you at what stage of the cooking your food was at, rare, medium, well done etc, was right up my street, unlike the “dumb” George foreman grill, the Tefal is a “smart” grill, although it is a tad on the small side, a larger version is now available.Then this recent black friday week I saw this new Foreman grill, on offer at £۳۲, a bargain I thought, as the RRP was £۹۹, so decided to take a look as I was curious to see how this latest addition to the burgeoning Foreman contact grill stable had evolved from the one I had years ago.Its largely of metal construction, though the casing is quite thin steel, it feels quite well made. it’s billed as a 7 portion “entertaining” grill, so right away I’ll say take that “7 portion” bit with a pinch of salt!, Im certain this one is smaller than my old “family sized” Georgie.If you look at my photos you will see I was able to cook a lot of sausages on there…but they are small thin chipolatas, look at the bacon, good sized thick cut smoked back bacon, but you will only get six on there not 7, you will get five good sized chicken breasts on there (not 7?, nope!),You can get six 8 inch kebabs (nope not 7), but eight if they are smaller 6 inch kebabs, you will probably get six good quarter pounder burgers on there…nope not 7!.Ok so how well does it cook?, pretty good to be fair, but its not great at everything…Our first trial was as part of a good old fry up, now this is a “dumb” grill, no programs or presets and no temperature control, and unlike the old one I owned years ago this one doesn’t even have a timer!.So a good place to start is in the instruction manual, now those sausages you see in the pic, according to the manual they should take 5 to 7 minutes, the ones in the photo I cooked for 12 minutes, turning them once because otherwise you only get grill marks on two sides, and the other two sides look anaemic, to be honest I do prefer my usual way of cooking sausages which (if they are fresh, chilled) is to seer them in a hot pan or skillet to caramelise the outside then finish off the cooking on a wire rack on a baking tray in the oven, if they are frozen sausages (cook from frozen) like our favourite Debbie and Andrews brand, then I cook in the oven for 14 minutes then chuck them in a hot pan on the hob to caramelise the outside, lovely!, I am going to try some good quality thick sausages to see how they turn out, and will sit them on the grill vertically instead of horizontally as above. (when I say good quality, Im talking high meat content of at least 70% meat, not the so called “family favourite since blah blah” Richmond, which are around 47% meat with loads of smelly fat which leaks out when you oven cook and stinks your kitchen up!.Next up was the bacon, I generally use thick cut smoked bacon from Tesco, which is usually good, So I cooked some on the Foreman… and thought “well where’s the grill marks?”(see attached pic), Unlike my Tefal optigrill, on the Foreman your meat (or veggies) have to be of a certain minimum thickness to get those grill marks both sides, because at the front lower edge there are raised bits which keep the plates a certain distance apart when the lid is closed, to show the difference in results between the Foreman and my Optigrill I have attached a photo, my “opti” only fits four rashers of bacon, but it does a better job of cooking that bacon as you can probably tell from the pic, bacon on the foreman still cooks nice enough, but the Tefal cooks it better!”.Now I do like a bit of french toast (eggy bread anyone?), dip your bread in seasoned beaten egg, stick it on the grill, close it and three minutes later you have french toast, non greasy and very tasty, so, well done George!.Then a few days later I tried homemade kebabs, four seasoned chicken only kebabs for my son, the rest of us had marinated “gunpowder” chicken kebabs, they took about six minutes to cook, smelled lovely while cooking, and tasted great, so Georgie cooks them very well!.We have not tried good steak burgers, or a nice bit of serloin yet, so can’t comment on them yet.In a few days I’ll be cooking Brazilian marinated pork loin steaks, if I remember I’ll upload a pic and a comment.Cleaning, it is reasonable easy to clean while still warm, a sponge with hot soapy water does the trick, sometimes you can use good kitchen towel, but some of the cooked on residues can be a bit tougher to remove. there are dedicated shaped cleaning pads available, not cheap though, you would have thought one would have been included in the box to try out.The plates, unlike my Optigrill, are not removable, this is a big advantage with the Tefal, once the plates have cooled, press a button on the side and off pop the plates, put them into a bowl of hot soapy water, rinse off after cleaning then just clip them back in, easy!, but with the George you have to clean on the machine.Final thoughts… is it worth buying?, yes if you can get it for £۴۰ or less, I really dont think its worth anywhere near the RRP of £۹۹, if you want a “smart” contact grill, then check out the Tefal optigrill, but be warned those (two sizes) are a lot more expensiveMain differences between this new Foreman and my old one?, the new one has a floating hinge at the back so the top cooking plates will lift and level so they contact the food more evenly, second is a flip out flap under the back which allows you to cook with the grill at an angle so fat and juices run out and into the drip tray, or you can have your grill flat for cooking toasties, paninis etc (can’t do that with the Tefal!) the omission of even a basic timer is questionable though as timing, as with most things cooking, is important.Also the ridges on the cooking plates seem to be deeper and more pronounced than on my old one, giving better grill marks.So all in all, this recent addition to the George Foreman range is decent enough, if your on a budget and see this at a good price it might be worth a punt, but if you have a bit more cash to spare and want more features then you should look elsewhere (not just at Tefal either).Happy cooking!