Enjoy Your Favorite Foods Grilled to Perfection with the Help of the Precision Grilling T-Fal OptiGrill

Thank you to T-fal for providing a complimentary OptiGrill sample for us to base this indoor grill review upon.  All opinions expressed are my own.

I like to eat meat. I would say “who doesn't?”, but I'm friends with enough vegetarians to know better. That doesn't mean I can't talk about how much I love meat! There is nothing worse that improperly cooked meat, and conversely, there’s nothing better than perfectly cooked meat.  As much as I consider myself a decent cook, I don’t think I have ever been good at cooking meat. I always seem to get it a little bit wrong . . . a little too well-done or a little too pink. Trying to get it right for 5 different tastes in the same household doesn't make it any easier either!

We have owned a variety of indoor grills, all of which were decent and worked as advertised. None of them, however, helped my inability to judge whether a piece of meat was actually cooked properly or not. Luckily, there is a new indoor grill that does just that, and I got to try it.

At first appearance, the T-fal OptiGrill is not a great deal different than many other high-end indoor grills. It looks like two heated griddles on a hinge that cook both sides of the meat at the same time. We have seen that a 100 times, but the OptiGrill does something that no other indoor grill can do: It tells you exactly when your meat, regardless of the variety, is cooked to your taste. Really.

I am not going to waste time talking about the removable non-stick griddles, the ease of cleaning, the stainless steel body, or the high quality construction of the OptiGrill. We expect all those features and T-fal delivered them as expected. What I will discuss is the grill’s ability to cook a piece of meat perfectly every time and without the need to stand over the grill monitoring it.

The OptiGrill uses a colorful lighted circle to indicate when your meat is cooked to your taste. There is also a beep that indicates each level of doneness so you do not need to be near the grill to know exactly where your meat is in the cooking process. Sound like a gimmick? Well it works, and it works very well. The grill measures the thickness of the meat and adjusts the temperature accordingly.

Operation of the OptiGrill is intuitive and simple. Turn the grill on, select the type of meat or fish you want to cook and hit OK. That's it. The lighted color indicator will let you know exactly what phase the cooking process is in. You can also choose manual operation for a traditional indoor grill experience. The OptiGrill even has a defrost and a sandwich setting! Also, for the veggie-lovers out there, you can grill vegetables on the manual setting.

Cooking multiple pieces of meat for different tastes? No problem, simply take out the rarest pieces as the indicator tells you to, leave the others in until they’ve reached their desired doneness.

The grill will turn itself off after it determines that it has cooked its contents as well done as can be. If you want your meat cooked even more, just switch over to the manual setting for as long as you desire. The manual cooking does require attendance.

My only complaint about the OptiGrill is that meat within an inch or so from the edge of the grill does not cook as fast as the rest. The fix is simple enough, just rotate the piece 180 degrees at some point. Not a big deal, but the OptiGrill would provide a 100% unattended cooking experience otherwise. Another solution would be to cook a bit less at a time.

The T-fal OptiGrill is simple to operate and it works well. I can finally cook meat exactly to my family’s taste without any guesswork. The OptiGrill gets an easy recommendation from me. I will certainly be using it over using the oven or the frying pan to cook meat indoors all year long.

The OptiGrill indoor grill would make the perfect gift for someone who loves to grill year round, but is not lucky enough to have the weather for it. This grill sells for $179.95 directly from T-fal at www.GetOptiGrill.com.  To learn more about this product or to find grilling tips and recipes, visit OptiGrill on Pinterest, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter.

Review: "Evolve Grill-Bake-Muffin" George Foreman Electric Grill

My husband and I remember when the original George Foreman Grill made its debut. We actually were the proud owners of one. Today, George Foreman Healthy Cooking offers a wide array of electric grills to fit your household's particular needs. For our family of five, the Evolve Grill-Bake-Muffin electric grill seemed like the perfect one since it is fairly large and extremely versatile. It also performs several functions without the clutter of extra pans and accessories we do not have room for in our little shoebox of a townhouse.

This grill is extremely user-friendly. There is not an abundance of different buttons or confusing settings to worry about. If you have any problems, the included manual contains step-by-step instructions for the various ways this grill can be used.

The Evolve Grill-Bake-Muffin electric grill comes with two grill plates, a deep dish baking pan, a muffin pan, a drip tray, a spatula, and a pan handle. Each pan is made with the "George Tough" non-stick coating so there is no need to use oil or cooking spray, which results in healthier cooking.

The other way the George Foreman grills make cooking healthier is the tilted surface that allows most of the oil and grease to drain off from your food into the drip tray. Since this grill is designed for multiple uses, there is a lever that allows the grill to move from a flat position to a tilted position.

You may know from visiting my site in the past that we are huge fans of grilling brats. So what better way to break in our new grill than to cook up some brats to be topped off with some onions and peppers?

The difference in the brats was so noticeable that even our 6 year old son commented about how they were juicy, but not oily.

I also tried out the bottomless muffin pan which sits inside the deep dish baking pan. I had intended to make corn muffins and was a little concerned about how shallow the muffin tin was.

My corn muffins seemed to have baked just fine. I followed the time and temperature on the mix rather than what was suggested in the manual. I put the whole muffin pan minus the baking pan on a metal rack to cool just as the manual instructed. When it came time to remove my muffins, I ran into a problem. They did not come out easily and the edges stubbornly stuck to the the pan. Next time I use this pan, I am most certainly going to grease it.

One thing I remembered about our very first George Foreman grill was how difficult it was to clean even though we tried to do it while the grill was hot. It seems that the brand has made several improvements in this area. First of all, the removable pans make cleaning much easier. Secondly, there seems to be improvements made to the non-stick coating in general. The pieces were easier to clean than a regular grill, but they still needed to be scrubbed like any other non-stick pan that has a greasy mess on its surface.

Other than my issues with the muffin pan, we were extremely pleased with this grill. It heats up very quickly and has enough surface area to cook brats, hot dogs, and mini hamburgers for the five of us all at once. This particular George Foreman grill is definitely family-friendly.

To view the full line of George Foreman electric grills, visit GeorgeForemanCooking.com, where you can order products right on the website. You can also find George Foreman Cooking on Facebook and on Twitter.

This post was written for the Family Review Network & George Foreman Healthy Cooking, who provided the complimentary product in exchange for my honest review.