T-fal OptiGrill Indoor Grill

Purchased this online just over a week ago. Had a Foreman grill been using awhile. I liked the Foreman grill ok but many times I would overcook my food or the chicken would be a bit dry (probably cause I overcooked it too). The Forman Grill worked well enough. It was the Next Gen version with temp controls. I did like the removable grates which this one has as well. The build quality of the T-Fal is at least 1 order of magnitude better than the Foreman. You can see some of this when you pull the grates or open and close the lid. The grease trap is much larger on the T-Fal. The controls on the T-Fal are fine I would had liked a bit more solid feel to them for the price but they are not bad at all. Just use with some degree of care and feel. Cooked a 1.5" thick NY Strip for my 1st cooking. Turned out FANTASTIC! Used Weber Chicago Steak seasoning and PAM high Temp Non stick spray. It cooked the steak to a perfect med rare and fork tender n juicy. I may or may not have made a better steak on my Weber charcoal grill but that takes about 30-45 mins of prep. This prep took 5 mins. Next I cooked a Frozen chicken breast. Using the same PAM high Temp spray again, set the grill to defrost, poutry and then OK. After a short preheat put the frozen chicken breast on and seasoned it with some Weber kick-n-chicken seasoning . Now doing it this way will take about 3x longer than cooking a chicken breast from thaw. Once it was done I immediately pulled it and cut and tasted it. It was pretty darn good from frozen I will say. Much better than when I use warm water or microwave(microwave thawing I think makes it a little tougher and slightly chewy). By far best same day frozen to done chicken I ever did. I also cooked a thawed chicken breast. This was a Cilantro Lime pre-marinated breast from Wal-Mart (about $5.98). I set the grill to just poultry - then it preheated a bit longer, sprayed on the PAM High Temp Grill spray and let it rip. It was done a good bit quicker than the frozen and was absolutely marvelous! Very very juicy and fork tender. While the results were "good enough" on the frozen chicken to eat and enjoy cooking from say an overnight thaw should produce excellent results. Anytime you quick thaw something you tend to lose a bit of tenderness in either beef or poultry. I have to say I dont think I have made a chicken breast this good over open flame. While I miss the charcoal twang in the taste just a little, the fork tender and evenly cooked state of the breast is simply fantastic. I did burgers from Frozen. I used SAMS Choice Jalapeno Black Angus frozen patties. They are 1/3rd pound thick. I used PAM High Temp Grill spray - Turned out perfectly! Now these were tender and juicy unlike poultry ground beef does pretty well from frozen. My sister came over and made her Salmon on it and LOVED IT! Now if your doing fish DONT use the Pam High Temp cooking spray, Use your normal olive oil or regular spray as I believe the grill presets begin at a lower temp. Use normal olive oil for grilled veggies,shrimp and other stuff. So what is the huge advantage vs the Foreman? Well in a busy schedule it removes a lot of the guesswork out of the time to grill and uses temp presets ,auto thawing, temp change programming and thickness of the selected item to predetermine time to done. And it really does work great! The only caveat to it and they mention it in the guide is if you want a medium rare steak, you cook it to Medium Rare but then let it sit say 5 minutes before eating it , most likely carryover cooking will take it to more Medium done. So stop your cooking about halfway between the Rare and Medium rare color change as I have started doing, let it sit 5 minutes and it will be perfect. This is a great grill for a college student, elderly or someone who needs a fast efficient cooking grill that takes a lot of uncertain guesswork out of cooking. Pros SUPER EASY! Takes a lot of guess work out of cooking meats to desired doneness Efficient - 1800 watts - about the same power as a hairdryer - lot less power than the oven Removable grates - Cleanup isnt bad at all about the same as the Foreman Fairly compact - fits easily and for me permanently on my counter Cons A little pricey - I paid $89 for my Foreman 4 or 5 years ago. This was about 2x that price Alert beeper - Could be a little louder if your in another room or have noisy kids around Soft Touch Controls - I prefer more solid feeling controls