Last year I bought the George Foreman grill model GR35TMR and must say it was a big dissapointment. I had heard mixed reviews on this grill and since there are sometimes you just want to cook a steak, burgers, or chicken without firing up the grill, I figured I would give it a shot.

The first thing wrong with this grill is there is no on/off switch! If this machine is plugged in, the grill is on full blast. In order to shut it off, you must unplug it. Im sorry, but even Thomas Edisons’ first lights had a lightswitch. This was the first red flag thrown up when I took it out of the box. I mean, who looks to see if an appliance has an on/off switch? Is that considered an option these days?

I decided to try a london broil the first time I used the grill. Following the directions to the letter, resulted in a cooked steak to my preferred medium rare, but that was as close as the grill got to getting it right. There was absolutely no browning of the meat, it was grey. This, after preheating the grill as specified by the instructions. I could have gotten the same results by steaming or microwaving the steak.

I tried burgers, hot dogs, everything and found it to be the same bland cooking method.

The next dissappointment came in cleaning the grill. The grill has a teflon coating that appears to have been painted on with a watered down solution because after the first use, it started peeling off. I followed the cleaning instructions exactly, but it continued to flake away. Now at the time, this machine was over $100 and I expected it to at least not fall apart when cleaning it.

The grill does work as advertised when it comes to grease. It all falls into a slippery tray that if you are not careful, will end up on the floor because it is not attached to anything. This is not a new revolutionary technology, my gas grill does a better job with grease than this thing because it falls on to the coals and burns away. If you cook anything on this grill that has more than few drops of grease, expect not only a messy and difficult cleanup, expect greasier food than what you get off the grill because grease still sits on the “teflon” coating.

I will say that I was happy in the way that it cooked seafood. I cooked some salmon fillets on it that came out great. I also cooked some jumbo shrimp that was adequate. I suppose if you are into cooking vegtables on the grill, this might work well due to what seems to be a steaming action it performs on food.

Perhaps they have improved this machine since last year, maybe not. At this time, if you are reading this wondering whether you should buy the George Foreman grill, I would not recommend it at all.