Electric Stove Shop: Bodum Electric Indoor Table Grill and Griddle

Product Details

Product Dimensions: 20.2 x 12.6 x 3.5 inches

Shipping Weight: 11 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)

Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.

Shipping Advisory: This item must be shipped separately from other items in your order. Additional shipping charges will not apply.

ASIN: B004S60KAM

Item model number: 11133-294US

Price : $99.99
You Save : $100.01 (50%)

Product Description

Color: Red
There's just some thing about cooking correct there on the dining table together with all the guests. It unquestionably creates far more of a communal feeling than when the host is stuck in the kitchen even though the guests are having a fantastic time in the living space. This versatile electric table grill is extra like two grills in one particular. The even side of the grill is ideal for pancakes, crepes and bacon. The wavy side cooks meats, fish and vegetables to perfection. It is so quick to switch amongst surfaces since the grill and griddle plate is a single strong piece- just choose it up and flip it more than to change sides. Each surfaces are made from non-stick coated aluminum, the handles from heat-resistant plastics. The table grill can be set to six temperatures, and it comes with a double-end heat-resistant spatula-one particular for every grilling surface. The effective 1500 to 1800-watt heating element heats evenly and tends to make grilling a breeze. If your are making steaks, grilled cheese sandwiches, or pancakes, the substantial surface leaves lots of room for cooking. The grill itself, as properly as the drip pan underneath it is dishwasher secure. With the electric grill getting fantastic for cooking breakfast, lunch, and dinner-why even own a stove, is the only remaining query. Readily available in black, red, green and orange.

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Bodum Electric Indoor Table Grill and Griddle

Item Capabilities

Powerful 1800-watt heating element

Non-Stick grill and griddle cooking plate

Dishwasher secure cooking plate

Big 14-3/4-Inch by 9-1/4-Inch cooking surface

Adjustable temperature setting

Customer Reviews

The distinguishing feature of this unit, the Bodum Bistro 11133 electric table grill, is that the big plate that heats up is smooth on one side and "ribbed" on the other. The smooth, or griddle, side is for items such as eggs and pancakes and hash browns, whereas the the ribbed, or grill, side is for, say, burgers or steaks or chops, where you want to sear in those pretty and ever-flavorful grill marks that result from the ever-wonderful Maillard Reaction. You choose which side to use by simply flipping the plate over. It's designed so you can't flip it without unplugging the controller. Also, there's a simple mechanical device that prevents you from using the device unless the drip tray is installed.
Both sides of the plate are covered in a non-stick coating, and both sides measure 14-5/8 inches by 9-1/8 inches, or 133.45 square inches, which is on the small side if you're cooking for six. A similar product I own, made by Presto, measures 14-1/4 by 18-3/4, or 267.19 square inches, or, as near as matters, 100% bigger.
The outside dimensions of the Bodum 11133 are 20 inches by 12-5/16 by 3-1/8. The housing sports four rubber feet that have a gratifyingly high coefficient of friction relative to Formica. The grill plate is substantial, weighing in at 5 pounds 11 ounces when you add in the weight of the handles and their hardware. Those handles do a fine job; even when the plate is at its highest heat the handles are room-temp to the touch.
The two-sided grill plate itself is dishwasher safe, but the drip tray, which of course got gunky after I fried bacon and skinned the grill, according to the instructions "must be washed by hand." It's a stamped sheet of what I'm guessing is aluminum, and I can't quite figure out what would happen if you put it in the dishwasher anyway.
The package comes with a scraper which you use to scrape detritus to the far left side (there's noplace else to scrape to) and into 14 drain holes that drop grease and crud onto the drip tray. Those 14 drain holes are quite small, approximately 1/8 inch by 1/4 inch, and they can clog up easily, which I think is a design defect. The scraper can be used to poke ino the drain holes to unclog them, but it's tedious.
That nylon, non-heat-proof scraper is also designed in such a way that it is impossible, when you're using the grill side of the plate, to scrape up against the near and far edges, which are the two long ones. You can see what I mean by finding the photograph I added to this product's description on Amazon that shows the scraper in position as far left as it will go. Again, I think this is a design defect. On the griddle side of the plate the other side of the scraper, which is straight, does get right up against the edges.
The instruction manual is light on details, such as almost all of the ones I provided above. Except for knowing you can put the plate in the dishwasher and that you can't put the drip tray therein (which seems backwards to me), the manual contains no information you need.
Oddly, nowhere does it say not to use metal tools on the two non-stick surfaces. I don't know about you, but I'm not about to start skinning a non-stick grill with a sharp steel scraper even if the manual doesn't warn me not to. If the coating really is designed to be impervious to the sort of scraping a cast-iron griddle can tolerate for decades then I'm surprised the manufacturer doesn't brag on that remarkable fact. If it is not designed to abide such rough treatment I'm surprised the manual doesn't admit it and warn against it.
And it's not like the manual fails to warn against the obvious. For instance, it does warn against using the grill to light charcoal, and elsewhere it does say, "You will achieve the best results if you use meat of . . . good quality." That's like saying, "You will enjoy your three-week cruise more if you choose a luxury ocean liner and not a rowboat" or "You will achieve the best results if you choose a surgeon for your appendectomy and not a seamstress."
Here's the most disappointing feature of this particular example of an electric griddle. At one point the manual says, "Set the desired temperature." That's all it says. You might think it would say, "Set the temperature to 375 for pancakes" or "Set the temperature to medium for scrambled eggs" or "Set the temperature to 9 for searing a Kobe steak." But there's a reason the manual does not get that specific about temperatures. The reason is that that dial you turn to set the temperature has no useful marks on it. There is only a semi-circular swoosh like the Nike swoosh that tapers from skinny near where it says "OFF" to wide for the highest setting.
I don't understand this design decision.
The Presto griddle I mentioned shows actual numerical temperatures in degrees on the dial, from Warm and then 200 through 400 in 50-degree increments, including the ever-popular 350. A similar type of product I own, a GE electric skillet (higher sides, no drainage, and a lid), shows on its dial Warm, Simmer and then 300 through 450 degrees, also in 50-degree increments.
And even if those two products' temperature numbers are inaccurate, at least they can be used as a substitute for the numbers 1 through 9 that we're used to on stoves. But a swoosh is almost completely useless, especially when there are no obvious noon or three-o'clock or six-o'clock or 9-o'clock positions. If you have learned through experimentation (you do experiment when you're cooking, don't you?) that slider-sized hamburgers should be cooked at 400, or even if all you know is that they should be cooked at number 7, you can use that information to dial in that temperature every time. But with a swoosh you have to guess every time. Take a look at the photograph I took, on the Amazon page desribing the product, to see what I mean.
As a service to anyone who buys this product, as well as a service to me henceforth, I conducted some tests at two temperature settings, the minimum and the maximum. For the minimum I set the dial to the skinniest end of the swoosh, as shown in that photo. For the maximum obviously I cranked it all the way up. In both cases the room temperature was around 71 degrees Fahrenheit. All I did was record the temperature of the surface of the griddle at one-minute intervals, using an infrared thermometer. I also recorded when the indicator light turned off (meaning the thermostat thought it had risen above the right temperature) and back on (meaning the thermostat thought it had dropped below the right temperature).
Set at the minimum, the recorded temperature rose from room temp of 72.1 degrees to 170 degrees in one minute. The light went off 30 seconds later, at a temperature of 175. The griddle's plate's temp rose to 190 at 2:00 and peaked at 203 at 3:00. Thereafter it dropped at a slightly falling rate of 92 degrees in 21 minutes, or approximately 4.38 degrees per minute, till it dropped to 109 at the 24th minute. At 24:30 the thermostat finally turned back on, and the temp had risen to 130 by 25:00. This is a temperature range from 203 to 109, or 94 degrees, before the thermostat kicks back on again.
Set to the maximum, the recorded temperatures rose from 70 to 96 in 30 seconds, reached a maximum of 515 by 7:00, and ended up at 379 degrees at 31:00. Here is a table showing certain temperatures over that period of 31 minutes:
MIN:SEC --- TEMP
00:00 ------- 70
00:30 ------- 96
01:00 ------ 140
01:30 ------ 181
02:00 ------ 238
03:00 ------ 295
04:00 ------ 366
05:00 ------ 411
06:00 ------ 466
07:00 ------ 515
07:45 ------ 515 thermostat OFF
08:00 ------ 515
09:00 ------ 470
10:00 ------ 433
10:20 ------ 425 thermostat ON
11:00 ------ 440
11:30 ------ 436 OFF
12:00 ------ 440
13:00 ------ 415
13:15 ------ 415 ON
14:00 ------ 426
14:30 ------ 430 OFF
15:00 ------ 419
16:00 ------ 397 ON
17:00 ------ 430 OFF
18:00 ------ 408
19:00 ------ 380 ON
19:50 ------ 420 OFF
20:00 ------ 425
21:00 ------ 400
21:42 ------ 375 ON
22:00 ------ 383
22:41 ------ 416 OFF
23:00 ------ 421
24:00 ------ 397
24:38 ------ 375 ON
25:00 ------ 382
25:35 ------ 420 OFF
26:00 ------ 393
27:00 ------ 392
27:31 ------ 376 ON
28:35 ------ 418 OFF
29:00 ------ 420
30:00 ------ 395
30:40 ------ 370 ON
31:00 ------ 379
MIN:SEC --- TEMP
I don't expect you to analyze all these data, so let me do it for you.
Set at its maximum heat, the griddle rises from room temp to 515 degrees Fahrenheit within 8 minutes but never gets anywhere close after that initial peak. The maximum temp it reaches thereafter is 440 degrees at around 11:30, and thereafter it bounces from a one-time high of 430 degrees down to a low of 375. The average temp at this maximum setting hovers roughly at 400 degrees.
And remember that all these temp data were measured with no food on the grill. Obviously if you slap a slab of 50-degree or even 70-degree hash browns on that grill, the temp is going to decrease considerably. When you drop a couple of room-temp T-bones on it, as I did tonight, I can tell you that the temp drops too much; the sizzle that indicates searing went away too soon, and it was worse when I did the first flip. Next time I'll preheat for 8 minutes (the manual says 4 to 6) before dropping the meat, because that appears to be when it's the hottest it will ever be.
This Bodum Bistro 11133 electric grill is sturdily built, and it does offer both griddle and grill. But it falls down in most areas compared to my Presto.
If you have twice as... Read more›

This was a tough review to write. On the one hand, my Mom LOVED this grill. On the other hand, it is WAY over priced for what you get, at retail, or even with Amazon's discount.
The idea is great: an indoor grill that has a griddle on one side and a traditional grooved grill on the other. And, it is incredibly easy to switch between the two plates. You quite literally lift and flip (see my pictures). The grill plate cannot be flipped while plugged in, which decreases the chance of trying to flip while it's still hot. And, it was easy to clean, by hand, and in the dishwasher - we tried both. The non-stick surface is exactly that, and while a larger surface would have been nice, this also fits comfortably on a countertop without taking up too much room. It's not too heavy either, so it can be moved around with ease. Plus, it comes in several colors to go with most any kitchen.
We tried several foods on this. My mom grilled T-Bones, Mahi Mahi, scallops and even did an entire London Broil on it. For size comparison, it will hold two large T-Bones, or 4 medium sized New York Strips. The steaks got a very nice sear, with grill marks, and were easy to come to the desired wellness using some common cooking times, such as you would for a frying pan (a medium thick steak needs about 3 minutes on high heat, per side, for medium). We cooked all these foods on the maximum setting. My mom seared the London Broil and used a temperature probe to check doneness - as she would have done in the oven also, despite knowing what temp the oven is at! We had no problem with the grill holding heat. This would be an ideal appliance for a couple with a small kitchen - another cook top, that doesn't heat up a room the way an oven can.
Despite how great it cooked for us, $200 (or even $140) is outrageously expensive, especially considering it has a couple basic flaws. The temperature dial has no numbers. This is an issue if you need to cook something slowly at a low temperature. This wasn't a big negative for us, but for the price it's unacceptable. Some foods are best prepared at a particular setting (like 350 for pancakes), and there's no way to tell with this. Another problem, the entire thing can go into the dishwasher EXCEPT for the drip tray - the item most likely to get the messiest? Finally, Wolfgang Puck has a very similar product, Wolfgang Puck WPRGG0010 1800-Watt Reversible Nonstick Grill and Griddle, that is $50 cheaper, has numbers on the temperature dial and is from a better-known brand.
Overall, this was very useful, and we will definitely use it a lot. I would not hesitate to recommend it if it were less than $100, but I can't recommend it for $140. Those who are tempted might want to try the Wolfgang model at the lower price point.
UPDATE We've had the grill quite a while now, and have realized that it really is an awesome appliance that we WOULD pay $140 for! We use it 2-3 times a week, every week. Everything from hotdogs to steaks to fish to pankackes comes out wonderful. Though I still wish the dial had temperatures listed, I would still not hesitate to buy this again.

Electric Stove Shop

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Bodum Electric Indoor Table Grill and Griddle

Product Details

Product Description

Bodum Electric Indoor Table Grill and Griddle

Item Capabilities

Customer Reviews

Bodum Electric Indoor Table Grill and Griddle

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