Products
George Tough Nonstick Coating
Feature Focus: George Tough™ Nonstick Coating
It’s time for another look at how George Foreman grills are designed to help you cook healthier without a hassle. This month, our Feature Focus takes a closer look at the George Tough™ nonstick coating.
While almost any contact grill you buy nowadays will have a nonstick coating, the quality of the coating can be drastically different and can affect the performance and durability of your grill. A bad nonstick coating can peel after washing or scrubbing and a low-quality nonstick coating may still require oil or butter to prevent delicate foods from sticking to the plate during cooking. These two factors make getting a grill with a high-quality nonstick coating vital to grilling healthier and to extending the life of your grill.
Every George Foreman grill comes with our George Tough™ nonstick coating, which provides several benefits in the way it’s designed to work.
George Tough Nonstick Coating helps prevent sticking on delicate foods
First, the quality of our coating helps ensure you don’t need to season the cooking surface with oil or butter when cooking your foods – even for delicate foods like veggies and fish. You can simply put the food directly on the grill and avoid the added fat and calories of the oil or butter.
The second benefit comes in our multi-coat system. Our George Tough™ nonstick isn’t just applied once. Instead, it’s coated multiple times to help protect against cracking and peeling. This extends the life of your grill, plus allows you to wash the grill plates in the dishwasher if your grill has removable plates. In other words, you spend less time cleaning and get more uses out of your grill, overall.
We believe in our nonstick coating so much that we had it tested against a major competitor to see how the coatings stack up. The test was done using the Next Grilleration G5 with the George Tough™ triple nonstick versus a major competitor’s grill. Each grill plate was run through the same abrasion test that scrubs the plates back and forth to test the wear. The competitor’s coating wore out after 7000 scrubs, while the George Tough™ triple nonstick on the G5 was still good after 150,000 scrubs.
So, the George Tough™ nonstick coating is specifically designed to help you cook healthier without oil/butter, extend the life of your grill and minimize cleanup – it’s three benefits from one feature.
Temp to Taste™ Grill
Controlling Temperature for Better Results
If you like cooking a lot of different types of food on your grill, then variable temperature is almost a must. Although you can use a grill with no temperature control to cook things like fish and veggies, you need a thermometer to measure the internal temperature and avoid overcooking. Temperature control allows you to set your grill more precisely to the type of food you’re cooking, leading to better results on your table.
Our Temp to Taste™ Grill series is designed with just that in mind. An easy to use slide temperature control lets you set the temperature specifically for the type of food, so it’s easier to get the best results. The extra-high floating hinge automatically adjusts to the thickness of food, so you can do anything from sliced zucchini to lamb chops in the same appliance, cooking each to its best with the precise temperature control. In short, it’s got the versatility to fit your versatile tastes.
In addition to these features, the Temp to Taste™ Grill series also features our signature Healthy Cooking combination. This includes our patented sloped design, George Tough™ nonstick coating and Signature Foreman embedded heating elements. These features together allow you to cook without oil or butter, while allowing unhealthy fat and grease to drain away from food. The embedded heating elements also help in providing better heat across the entire surface of the grill plates, plus faster temperature recovery once food is placed on the grill surface. This temperature recovery helps to better maintain your desired cooking temperature to ensure the results you want.
The grill size is 80 Sq. In., which fits 4 servings of chicken breasts, burgers or most other grill items. Other grill features in the Temp to Taste™ Grill series include an on/off switch for added peace of mind, plus dishwasher-safe accessories for easy cleaning. You can get the grill in silver from a number of major retailers – online or in-store. There is also a black version that will be available next month at select retailers.
Super Champ Value Grill
New to Market: Super Champ™ Value Grill
Need cooking space for up to 4 people without a lot of bells and whistles? Look no further than our new Super Champ™ Value Grill with an attractive black finish. As part of the Super Champ series, this grill is as easy as they come – just plug in, preheat and you’re ready to go!
With an 84 Sq. In. cooking surface, this grill easily accommodates servings of your favorite grilled foods like hamburgers, hot dogs and chicken for up to 4 people.
Knock out the fat on 2 steaks (plus garnish) or up to 4 burgers
The cooking surface features our Healthy Cooking Combination, so you get the patented slope, George Tough™ nonstick coating and Signature Foreman heating elements. This combination helps knock out the fat for healthier meals without a hassle.
In addition to the part they play in the Healthy Cooking Combination, the Signature Foreman heating elements provide even heat distribution, which means you have consistent heat from the center to the sides of the plate. They also promote faster temperature recovery once food is placed on the plate, so you get better results.
Additional features include a set of drip trays and custom-fit spatulas. Both of these features are dishwasher-safe for easy cleaning. The attractive black finish on the grill is glossy to add a bit of elegance to your grill and looks great on any counter – particularly if you have a lot of stainless steel / black accent products.
The black version of this grill is new and will be available only at Walmart. However, the grill is also available in platinum at a number of other major retailers and online.
Embedded Heating Elements
Feature Focus: Embedded Heating Elements versus Conventional Coils
Last month, we explained how the patented slope worked to offer healthier cooking as you grill. This month, we’re focusing on the embedded heating elements and the advantages they provide over standard heating coils found on most electric grills.
An example of a standard coil heating element
Most people are familiar with coil heating elements, because these are the most common found on a number of your household appliances – rice cookers, deep fryers and even your oven. The heating element is made of an actual metal coil that’s bent to cover as much surface as possible. In most appliances, this works well because it provides effective heat for that type of cooking.
However, grilling is a bit different. Unlike cookers and deep fryers that have a large and deep cooking vessel or your oven that has a big open chamber to cook, an electric grill is cooking food placed on a plate directly above the element. Instead of cooking a large volume in a pot, you’re cooking less food on a flat plane. This is important, because this difference is where the coil heating element loses some of its effectiveness.
Consider it like this:
You have 4 steaks you’re cooking on your grill. You set them all on the plate and expect that they will cook evenly. However, some of the steaks (or parts of them) will be placed directly above part of the coil, while some may be placed on a part of the plate where there isn’t a coil beneath. While the plate distributes some of the heat, it still can’t distribute it completely even. As a result, your steaks are not cooked uniformly.
A fixed plate grill with embedded heating elements
On the other hand, the George Foreman embedded heating element is a flat plate that covers the entire surface under the plane of the grill plate. This flat surface heats evenly; then it distributes the heat evenly from the outset – instead of relying on the plate to distribute the heat. This helps avoid problems like cold spots on your grill where the food doesn’t cook as well. You don’t have to constantly check each piece to make sure it’s cooking the same as the others, because all of them are receiving the exact same amount of heat.
In addition to avoiding cold spots, it also allows you to place food closer to the edge of the plate on your grill. A coil heating element doesn’t usually extend to the edge of the plate because it needs to be covered by the plate for secure usage. However, the plate heating element can extend all the way to the sides of the plate and still be covered. This way, you can put more food on your grill – fill it to capacity – and still get even results.
The embedded heating element as seen with a removable plate grill
The final advantage of the embedded heating element comes with temperature recovery. Temperature recovery is the technical way of referring to the amount of time it takes for the appliance to reach its proper temperature once food has been placed inside. Basically, whenever you preheat your grill (or any appliance) and then put the food on, the temperature will drop slightly because the food is cold. The recovery is the amount of time it takes to get back up to full.
With an embedded heating element, temperature recovery is faster simply because it covers more of the cooking surface. A coil has to do more work because there’s less of it in contact with the plate to do the job. This is an advantage, because a fast temperature recovery ensures that you get the results you wanted in cooking in the amount of time you expected it would take. Slow temperature recovery leads to longer cooking times and less accurate results.
Patented Sloped Design
Feature Focus: Why the George Foreman patented slope works
Since the start of the brand with George’s first infomercial back in 1994, George Foreman grills have featured our patented sloped design. Although the product introduced the concept of a contact grill to the market – an indoor grill that cooks from both sides to cut cooking time – it was really the patented slope that made it famous with calls to, “knockout out the fat”.
Today, all of our indoor electric grills still feature this same technology, but what is it that makes the George Foreman slope so special?
The whole idea behind the slope is that it provides an optimal grilling angle to allow unhealthy fat and grease to drain away from food as it cooks. So whether you’re cooking a piece of chicken or a steak, you get a healthier finished product on your plate than you would from pan searing or by cooking on a flat contact grill. The key to the angle (which is exactly 8 degrees) is that the fat and grease will drain into the drip tray, but the food won’t slide to the front because the weight of the top grill plate keeps it in place.
The slope doesn’t work alone, though. For the design to be successful the grease channels on the plates were also engineered to be a precise height at each point on the plate to allow the fat to channel – otherwise, the fat and grease wouldn’t move because it wouldn’t have anywhere to go. So although the raised channel edges are often seen as a way to get the nice steakhouse marks on the food you grill, they actually serve a technical function, too.
As mentioned above, the weight of the top plate is also engineered to work with the slope to keep food in place. If you’ve ever wondered why the top casing is heavy as you lift up on the handle of your grill, this is the reason. A lighter top plate wouldn’t press the food as well to keep it in place and let the grease drain.
Now, of course, the slope isn’t the only part of the George Foreman design that makes our electric grills unique. The nonstick coating, the embedded heating elements and even the accessories were engineered for optimal use. About once a month, we’ll be picking out one of these features to talk about, so you can know the mechanics behind how your grill works and understand how to get the most out of it by using our technology to your advantage.
360 Grill™ Holiday Edition
Your secret weapon to making holiday cooking fun, healthy & a little easier
One of the biggest challenges people deal with during the holidays (besides dealing with relatives, of course) is how to cook such big meal and still have everything done at once. At best, you have a double oven in your kitchen and can bake two dishes at the same time, but with all the dishes that require an oven, that’s still barely enough.
A good way to relieve the stress of making so many courses is to use your small appliances to ease up on the number of dishes you’re putting in the oven. The 360 Grill™ is a perfect appliance to fit the bill, since it does the work of three appliances in one. With removable plates for grilling, baking and even quesadillas, you can use the grill to make side dishes, cook alternate main dishes if you have a vegetarian or non-turkey eater at the table, and even feed the kids and football watchers an afternoon snack as they wait for the big meal.
Grilling
Not everyone is a huge fan of turkey, so often you need at least one alternate main dish for the vegetarians, vegans and other non-turkey eaters at the table. Since the oven is probably going to be in use, it may be better to plan for a dish that can be grilled instead.
Simply adjust the bar at the back of your grill to angle the slope, attach your grill plates and you’re ready to make your non-turkey eaters really happy – and a little healthier, since fat and grease will drain with the help of the patented slope. With the 106 Sq. In. cooking surface, you have enough room for around 5 – 6 servings at once, so all your guests can be happy with their main course.
Another great idea for using the grill plates of the 360 Grill™ is to do a grilled side dish instead of a baked side dish. Not only do you free up oven space, but you also give your guests a new spin on their traditional favorites. For a great recipe that gives a Thanksgiving mainstay a little grilled makeover, look at the recipe in this month’s newsletter.
Baking
With an easy-to-use slide temperature control, you can still have the precise control you need for baking, just like you would in the oven. Casseroles and side items can all be cooked using the 360 Grill™, so you can use it to take up some of the slack from your oven. Simply adjust the bar at the back of the grill to lay it flat, attach the bake plate and cook whatever you need. This way, you can have more dishes finish just before the meal so everything is piping hot and tasting its best.
Thanksgiving Day Snacks
While you’re in the kitchen trying to figure out how to get everything done for dinner, the rest of the family is probably busy playing, watching football and enjoying the time away from work and school. So how do you keep massive hunger from taking hold before the big meal? Simply use your 360 Grill™ to whip up a few snacks that will keep the hunger at bay without stuffing everyone before the turkey.
The removable quesadilla plates are ideal for this. With a few minutes of prep time to throw some tasty fillings into the tortilla, you have 6, hot, stuffed quesadillas in just 4 minutes. Simply lay the grill flat using the adjustable angle bar in the back, fill your quesadillas and set the temperature control to medium high. You can also switch out to the grill plates and make up a quick batch of mini-burgers if the quesadillas won’t be enough. Between the two dishes, the family should be satisfied until you sit down to dinner.
Post-Thanksgiving Leftovers
After the big meal, there’s always a lot of food leftover to pack your fridge and it’s always a question of how to get creative so you end up using everything. For all that leftover turkey, you can chop it up with some Colby/Jack cheese and make a tasty plate of quesadillas or slice it thin with some swiss cheese and roasted red peppers for a delicious Panini. You can also do a shepherd’s pie in the bake pan filled with your leftover veggies and topped with the leftover mashed potatoes. For leftovers, it’s all about getting creative with what you have.
Whether you use just one of the ideas above or several, you can free up your ovens for the bigger tasks, cut down on the time actually spent in the kitchen cooking and, most importantly, decrease your stress level in making such a big meal. Plus, with dishwasher-safe removable plates and accessories, cleanup is easy – so you can relax after dinner is over instead of spending long hours in the kitchen cleaning.
Power Grill™ Grill & Griddle
2-in-1 versatility gives you the power
You love George Foreman® for great tasting, healthier grilled food. Now, fall in love with George all over again with our Power Grill™ 2-in-1 Grill & Griddle. The Power Grill™ features 3, 100 Sq. In. removable plates – 2 grill plates and 1 griddle plate. All three plates feature our George Tough™ triple nonstick coating that eliminates the need to use oil or butter for healthier cooking and makes cleanup a breeze.
With an adjustable slope, you can change your Power Grill™ from a sloped position that allows fat and grease drain off on grilled foods, to a flat position that’s perfect for all your griddle favorites. Now you can have healthier food at all your meals, including breakfast!
All this, plus our new convenient on/off switch that lets you control the power of your grill, instead of just plugging and unplugging, which can cause sparking at the outlet.