Apparently these are only sold by Walmart and my wife says that locally they are hard to find in stock, I wouldn't know. Well she was excited that finally found them and bought 2, 1 for us and 1 for our daughter and her family. Imagine my surprise to see a new piece of cooking equipment
. They also make a 22" version.I wasn't real happy with it because I already have pots, pans, electric skillets, etc. that will do everything that this will do. But she was excited about her purchase and I was going to use it a few times and give it a legitimate chance to impress me.
So after about 6 weeks of use, here's my likes and dislikes....
Likes
It has a non-stick ceramic coating and is very slick. It cooks bacon, eggs, omelets, pancakes well. Anything that can be cooked with only a flip, it does satisfactorily. I imagine that hamburgers and hotdogs would do well, but I always cook them over coals.
The heat seems to be evenly distributed around the surface, but it's just a square heating element underneath similar to what you would see in an oven.
The digital readout is nice.
It is small enough to store out of the way when not in use.
The hood and cooking surface easily detach for cleaning.
Dislikes
When trying to sauté things such as mushrooms, onions, and peppers, browning meat, they will slide out the grease drain opening on the back very easily. The opening can be blocked with a cutting board scraper, but....
The sides of the cooking surface are too short, get even shorter towards the front, with the front edge being the shortest and is angled out. This allows for food to easily be slid off the front onto the counter or floor when trying to either pickup or flip. Also difficult to work against the sides when cooking.
We don't have one, but they make a carrying case for it. It's just not big enough to include the hood and the description states that. Kind of strange, but if I wanted to carry it with us on vacation, we'd either have to leave the hood at home or pack it separately if we had the case.
It's really not big enough to cook on for a large group. Maybe the 22" version would be better, but that ain't happening.
In summary, my wife loves it, so oh well. But she does very little of the cooking and I doubt that I'll ever pull it out to use here at home. It would be easy to carry with us on vacation/camping trips.
For $117 I'm just not overly impressed with it, even with the Blackstone name, but did I say that my wife loves it?
