Customer Reviews

George Foreman GR26CB Family Size Plus Grill with Cookbook, White

5 star:		(106)
4 star:		(44)
3 star:		(18)
2 star:		(12)
1 star:		(16)

 

 

I had wanted to get this grill for awhile, but was still a little leery of its merits. I finally bought it anyway, and so far, have been loving it! I anticipate that during the summer it will replace my oven.

I cook a lot of chicken, either in the skillet, or in the oven. With this grill, you don't have to worry about turning the chicken, watching it, etc. All I really do it watch the clock. The first night I had the grill, I made salmon fillets, and they turned out great.

While I love the grill so far, there are a few things to watch out for. The first time I cooked chicken, I overcooked it..you kind of need to play around with the times in the booklet enclosed with the grill. I also found that I needed to push the grease tray farther back (closer to the grill) than I initially thought. Also, it does get quite smoky, so it would probably be most ideal if your kitchen had some kind of window.

With cleaning, you really do have to do it while the grill is still warm, or it makes it a lot harder to clean off.

I've barely used my oven since getting this grill..in the summer it will be great not having to heat up the whole house.

I bought the George Foreman grill as a joke for my husband (it DOES say "Lean Mean Fat-Reducing Grilling Machine" on it), but we used it for three weeks solid after it arrived. The reason? It's EASY, and the food turns out really tasty!

This particular model is big enough to cook several portions of meat at a time -- it cooks from the top and bottom all at once to cut your cooking time down to mere minutes! The grill is tilted and comes with a trough so that all excess fat is drained away from your food. Pretty nifty! It's also fairly easy to clean up -- you just wipe down the grill and throw the trough in the dishwasher.

We've used the grill for chicken breasts, Boca Burgers, regular burgers, pork chops, steaks, and even bacon strips (it's GREAT for avoiding a bunch of messy bacon grease). It cooks even frozen meat in a relatively short period of time, and it cooks it thoroughly. It's easy to throw something on the grill, sprinkle some seasonings on it (BAM!), and let it cook for a few minutes while you fix the rest of the meal. It is hard to overcook things, and it's fun to have grill-lines on your food.

It took me awhile to believe the hype about the George Foreman Grills, but they are easy to use and deliver good results. In fact, this might be a good way to introduce your older children (12 and up) to rudimentary cooking. The George Foreman grill would be great for people who don't have a lot of time to cook & clean, who aren't yet confident cooks or don't have a lot of cooking experience, or for anyone who wants an easy way to make a tasty meal!

I read the rave reviews on [Amazon.com] and registered for this (on [Amazon.com]) and received the Family size grill with small cookbook as a wedding present.

It's taken me awhile to get the hang of this product but now I love it. Cleanup took a bit of figuring out for me. I now use only damp paper towels (no scrapers or sponge) to just wipe after use. If I don't end up cleaning it until the next day I just heat it up again with a few wet paper towels in it and then wipe clean. This makes it so easy because you don't have to clean up a sponge or scraper afterwards.

I brush on a bit of olive oil onto the grill (very lightly) before grilling any foods. That seems to help make it taste better and also clean very easily.

This family size fit 4 very big salmon filets easily. (Marinated with Yoshida Gourmet Sauce - yum!) I also grilled two very big chicken breasts last night for a chicken quesadilla recipe. It was so nice not to have to drag out a pan and spatula and stand watching over the chicken. All I did was sprinkle McCormick's Grill Mates Roasted Garlic Montreal Chicken spice over the chicken breasts and slap it in there. Very quick and simple and tasted great.

I also grilled sliced sweet potatoes this morning. Turned out great. Again, no fussing with a pan and oil splattering. There was a bit of smoke though so make sure you have ventilation in your kitchen.

One last thing I wanted to mention... I've only had this item for a month now so I'm not qualified to give feedback on the durability of the teflon yet. Right now it is going strong and I can't imagine it peeling ever but because of the other reviews mentioning the problem I use only chopsticks or some other wooden utensils when removing food. But I'm very good at holding heavy pieces with chopsticks so I don't know if that solution would work for everyone. Chopsticks do make really good cooking utensils though because they are small and easy to clean and don't scratch the nonstick surface.
The other thing I do is not to apply wet paper towels on the grill until it has cooled down a bit (from hot to warm) because I think cooling the grill too fast can be tough on the nonstick surface... maybe make it crack.

BTW, my husband doesn't rave about this product, it's just a good product to him but he wouldn't run out to buy one if he didn't have it he says. But I would. Also, this family size is good for cooking meat for 2-4 people. However, I recommend getting as big a size as you can stand because vegetables take up more space per serving so if you like grilling onions or other vegies, the bigger the surface area the better. It's just the right size for my husband and me with a bit of room to spare in case we have a guest or two over. Thanks everyone for the helpful reviews that led me to this product!

First off, let me state that I never buy anything that I see on television or any mass-marketed, "must own" product. With my wife being 8 months pregnant, it suddenly became a priority for me to pitch in and take care of some meals. We purchased the George Foreman "Family Size" grill, thinking that I could grill some things up without trudging outside to fire up the gas grill, cooking it, and scraping the grill, etc.

Well, we have now had it one week and thus far I have already prepared: chicken breasts, salmon, cod, hotdogs, hamburgers, grilled cheese sandwiches, potatoes, and even ostrich (the most nutritional red meat there is)! Each of these things were among the best I've ever tasted. The quality of the grilling rivals that of any I've ever achieved on an outdoor grill. Each meal took under 10 minutes (including pre-heating) to cook, and 5 minutes to clean up. I cannot say enough about this product.

I recommend buying at least the family size grill. It's perfect for easily getting multiple items on at the same time. For example, I grilled three burgers and some sliced, red skinned potatoes at the same time. This size seems perfect for 2 or 3 people, despite claims that it can hold enough for 5 or 6 people.

You know how you go through an infatuation period with a new kitchen appliance? Then it gets put in a storeroom and falls out of your life like an old boyfriend or girlfriend. It happened to our pastamaker, our ice-cream maker, but I don't think it's going to happen to our George Foreman grill. I really think it's going to occupy prime kitchen counterspace forever.

The main reason is that it is extremely versatile. It grills meats easily; everything comes out firm on the outside and juicy on the inside. But it is also a dandy sandwich-maker - it makes the world's best grilled cheese; the cheese and bread undergo a kind of spiritual transformation and become as one.

Do yourself a favor buy a really good loaf of bread, spread it with a little olive oil, and make the world's best toast.

But - although it does an excellent job with fish fillets, you use it for this purpose at your peril. Even though I scrubbed it daily it took five or more days before my toast did not taste like Charlie the Tuna. So no fish would be my advice (or, get the newer Foreman grill with the removable grill plates, which presumably could be de-salmonized in the dishwasher).

...though it ain't THAT bad, either!

Pros: quick, easy, no-brainer way to cook, at a very appealing price. Cleaning is easy: let it cool, then pour hot water over it and wipe down with some paper towels. The plastic cleaning utensil supplied is useless unless you use it while the grill is still quite hot, which puts you at risk of burning yourself.

Cons: the drip tray needs to be bigger...it can be pretty messy having to move the full one out of the way and put the empty one in place.

If you are cooking more than one batch at a time, you will need to clean off the gunk on the grill in between batches, or else cooking time and evenness will suffer greatly.

Despite its double-heating-surface design, the bottom surface is much hotter than the top surface, so you WILL need to flip your food, especially if you're grilling anything thicker than say half an inch (chicken breasts, steaks, etc.).

The only way to achieve the nice browned/charred lines you see in the pictures is to apply addtional pressure to the grill from the top so that the meat will be pressed more tightly against the heating surfaces...this was easy for me since I use it on my balcony floor, so I just put on (shoed) foot on top of it.

There needs to be an on/off switch, so that you don't have to plug/unplug the darn thing every time...what a pain! A "ready" light to tell you when the grill has been preheated enough would also be nice.

The recommended cooking times on the cookbook were often way, way off...which means you have to fiddle around for yourself.

While food grilled this way is still much better than what you get from a microwave, and equal to a conventional oven, it still is not anywhere in the same class as a charcoal or gas-fired grill.

In a nutshell: buy it for the price, speed and simplicity, but don't expect much more than that.

I am a big fan of the Foreman grill machine. The problem is, I use it.

I am on my third machine now in less than two years, and the surface is hopeless - again.

No matter how much they tell you to use the plasticware, etc, if you use salt or other seasonings in the cooker, you will lose the surface like so many other coated devices.

If there was an all-stainless cooker for triple the money - even quadruple - I'd buy it.

I work at a butcher block at a major grocer. One of my suppliers brought me one of these grills to use for demo cooking. My first thought was "Yeah, right. I can kill this in a week." That was 19 months ago, and its still going strong. Since then, I've bought 5 of this very model for myself, my kids, and my parents. A no-nonsense appliance. Best thing since the toaster.

I always made fun of this grill in the past when I found out people I knew had one. However, I got one for Christmas and I really like it.

If you're a fan of grilling, this will not take the place of your outdoor charcoal or gas grill. But for indoor cooking or grilling in the winter when it's cold or snowy outside it's really convenient. I have found some very nice recipes that are in the cook book that comes with it. I really like it for cooking chicken breasts. I recently made some chicken quesadillas that turned out great. Another reviewer mentioned problems with meat that has bones in it and I agree. The grill doesn't close properly with a big 'ol T-bone or porkchop in it. Next time I will buy the boneless pork tenderloin instead. Also I agree that it can be a tad messy to clean up if you cook something that is marinated or barbecued.

Overall I am very pleased with the grill and my wife loves it since I've cooked dinner several times since I received it!

I wish I could give the George Foreman grill 50 stars....... I originally got this as a gift from my mother. I'm an entertainer and am on the road a lot, but she knew that when I was here I cooked for myself, my grown foster son and his two kids.

What a great gift! This is one product that EXCEEDS the promises made by its advertising. There are a couple of reasons why you should order this grill immediately...and realize this is coming from someone who is NOT a professional cook (in fact, I'm a professional ventriloquist...and I'm not kidding...check my reviewer's profile):

1)COOKING EASE: All you do is lift up the top, plop the food on it, and the cooking is underway.
2)EVEN COOKING: The top and bottom of this grill are heated so it cooks evenly.
3)RAPID COOKING: Anything you cook on it will cook a lot faster since you have the upper and bottom grills cooking it. Your cooking time in some instances is half what it would be on another device.
4)LOW FAT: George Foreman was not exaggerating. YOu can see the fat, excess marinade, etc. drain out.
5)FOOD QUALITY: Everything tastes better on the grill.

I've used this grill to cook grilled cheese sandwiches, hamburgers, veggieburgers, steaks, etc. Chicken comes out sublime. You can slit a hotdog or sausage in half and it grills beautifully. So do vegetables.

I also now like two things I never liked before due to the grill. On the advice of a local health food store, I cooked fish marinated in a fresh Italian dressing on it. I don't like fish..and this was GREAT! I also marinated boneless pork chops (also not my favorite) in Italian dressing and used it on the grill. In both instances the grill cooked the fish/meat evenly, quickly, and excess marinate was grilled off so I had truly juicy, quickly made, absolutely delicious food.

This is the BEST investment you can make for a modern-day kitchen. It's so easy you can teach older kids (fifth, sixth grade) to cook on it. Again, this is even better than it's advertising says it is. A MUST to own and great to gift (I can attest to both of these claims!).