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Review: George Foreman Lean Mean Fat Reducing Grilling Machine – G5

Cooking Meat, Electric Grills

This particular unit is the highest end of the George Foreman Grilling machines. It’s big and heavy and has a temperature control knob and removable plates for cooking different types of foods. We’ve had it now for about six months, and for the most part, we like it, a lot.

The George came with five removable plates: One each for steak, grilling and baking and two for making waffles. It also came with a little plastic spatula and a special sponge for cleaning and two drip trays.

Before this new George, we had one of the old original Georges. We used that poor thing till the non-stick coating wore off. We figured the new one would last longer, if for no other reason than because it had more cooking surfaces.

We use the George mainly for cooking meat. We’ve grilled steaks, chops, burgers and chicken, and it’s done a very good job with all of them. The meat does indeed look and taste grilled instead of fried and it cooks everything in surprisingly little time. The only gripe being, that the heating surface under the bottom plate doesn’t seem to heat evenly, and thus we wind up having to move the food around to get it all to cook at the same rate. We like the fact that it’s big enough to cook even the biggest steaks, and still gives us room to cook a side dish such as potatoes or onions.

When we’re not cooking meat, we use the baking pan plate a lot. It turns the George into a griddle and is very good at cooking fried or scrambled eggs, potatoes, hash browns, pancakes and bacon and the like. But once again, the uneven heating plate means you have to baby-sit your food or it will cook unevenly. A couple of negative things though. One is that since we bought this machine, we’ve noticed that that the competition has made it so their unit can unfold completely while in griddle mode, thus giving you twice the cooking space. The other is that since you have to keep the lid open the whole time you are cooking on your griddle, you have to remember to hold on to it while turning your food or worry the thing will suddenly drop down on you, grilling the flesh off the back of your knuckles.

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We’ve also tried the waffle plates several times, and have been quite pleased. The results are very much like we used to get with the old fashioned waffles made in those big iron grills of yesteryear. Very nice. And for some reason, despite our results with other foods, they come out cooked evenly all over.

We also love the fact that you can take the plates out for washing. With our old George, this was one of our biggest gripes, that you had to try to get it clean while wrestling with it on the counter top. Now, we just whip off the plates, shove them in the sink, scrub them down, dry them quickly and then put them away. Very easy. One note, while it does seem nice that they included the special cleaning sponge, we abandoned that approach after just a couple of tries. It didn’t seem any more useful than regular sponges and why keep another sponge around if you don’t have too?

Finally, there is the temperature gauge. It has four settings: OFF, L, M and H. We’ve never had it set to anything other than H, for high, of course, and I don’t see how we’ve ruined anything by doing so. To tell you the truth, I’m not even sure what the makers of this unit recommend we cook with the other settings.

Same deal with the Plate Position Lock. This is a little knob on the back of the machine that allows you to make the whole bottom of the unit lean forward more as it’s cooking. The idea is to make more of the drippings roll off the plate and into the hand little drip tray that also comes with the unit. It’s nice they sent us two of these, because the George is pretty much useless without them. Nobody would ever cook anything without them, because the drippings would drip right onto your counter. But I digress. We’ve never used that little knob. We understand that this grill was intended to cook foods in a way that lessens the fat in your meals, but we also understand that we like a little fat in our meat. So, we’re happy we’ve been given the choice.

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As I mentioned at the beginning of this article, we are very pleased overall with our new George and would heartily recommend it to anyone else considering purchasing one. The price was a little steep, but in our minds, it was well worth the cost. The George allows us to cook a meal very quickly and without messing up the whole kitchen in the process.