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Comment by dkarl | Hacker News Reader

I mean... I consider myself a versatile home cook, and I've owned and used more products similar to the Thunder Mixer than products similar to the George Foreman grill. Sometimes it's a mystery what people buy. Why would you buy a separate appliance rather than a ridged grill pan for your stove top?

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Some friends of mine back then had a reason I think may have been pretty common: they lived an apartment building that didn't allow combustion grills on the balconies. And coincidentally this sort of rental property is exactly the type to have an absolutely fake junk "extractor" for handling smoke in the kitchen. So they could put the Foreman on the patio and do an okish job with some steaks or burgers without smoking up the whole place.

This was exactly my reason when I lived in a tiny apartment in Boston having no exhaust or fan in the kitchen itself. Put the Foreman Grill by a window with some burgers cooking, job done.

There's warm weekends in Boston when strolling along one can look into the alleys and see a dozen Foremen Grills in action on the fire escapes. Fond memories of those days.

Apartment dweller here who misses his Weber and Blackstone.

A regular pan on a hot plate or portable induction hob makes a far, far better steak than a Foreman.

I'd be a crime to put a decent steak on one of those things.

People were cooking burgers and chicken on these things, no steak.

Also, George Foreman grills were popular in the late 90s/early 2000s, before induction hobs were really much of a thing.

I have both a cast iron grill pan and a Forman. I use the Forman frequently because it heats up fast, cleans easy, and reliably cooks both sides at once…without oil, butter etc.

The grill pan has none of those attributes and can’t press a grilled cheese.

Yes it takes up counter space and is ultimately going to the landfill. I wish that were otherwise, but for me, they aren’t deal breakers.

Maybe precisely because the guy endorsing one product is much more relatable than the guy endorsing the other.

Nothing against Hulk Hogan, he is certainly one of a kind, but when it comes to my food I'd take advice from a down to earth type like Foreman a thousand times over that from a persona as detached from real life as Hogan's.

Because it knocks out the fat, obviously

I asked my ex once why she owned a bullet blender instead of a normal blender, and her response was "not for drugs, I just saw the infomercial"

Normal blenders have substantially more cleanup work involved.

But they also don't break as often. And can hold a larger capacity. And don't spill. Admittedly, the thought of cleanup has put me off the occasional late night margarita...

If you have a powerful enough blender like a Blendtec or Vitamix you can just put soap and water in it and run the blender itself to clean it.

Yep. I paid something like $650 for a Vitablend at a restaurant supply store about 20 years ago. That's the commercial version of a Vitamix. Thing is a tank, and has blended many many gallons of soups, smoothies, grain into flour, etc. over the years. Cleanup is hot water and a couple squirts of dishwasher liquid and run it on high a few seconds. Had to replace the jar a few years ago, but the base will outlive me.

The other huge advantage: you can get parts for decades. With good kitchen gear you want to buy it once for life. Need a new cap, or jug, for a 2001 model? No big deal. You dont get that with the stuff from Target. (It is also not correlated to price, eg my zojirushi rice cooker offers the same capability but was way cheaper than the fancy korean rice cookers in the store.)

Past the edit time, but I had the name wrong. It's a Vita-Prep 3, not Vitablend, that's the commercial model I bought.

The downside is they’re louder than a prop plane doing a run up.

There are some with sound insulation covers.

But the blendtec is one of my best purchases ever - especially in “I never have to think about this again”.

Doesn't it cook steaks on both sides at once?

yes, and it also drains all the juice out through little grooves. The very concept is completely mental. No one should abuse a piece of meat that way.

Isn't it equivalent to an actual grill in that regard? I haven't heard anyone say that a grill is abusing meat.

I always sear meat on a flat top first anyway, but the advantage with an actual grill is that it has flames which help seal the outside of the meat quickly. Much more so than the heat radiating from the Foreman Grill grooves. Without a quick sear, you end up with a rubbery and dry piece of meat.

The foreman grill was not meant for seasoned steak cookers, it was typically for college kids or first time apartment dwellers. It had it's time and place and it was obviously not meant for you in this current time and place.

Meats don't really seal unless you're literally tarring them with char, and besides, juices leak from the side just fine. You really want to steam off the water content of a steak to get a better texture and fewer grease-runs. The entire meme about searing is literally just a decently crunchy texture. Flip steaks as much as you want.

The high "sear" temperature mostly implies a faster (and easy-to-follow) cook-time, but it still requires salting the steak to drain as much moisture as possible. It's certainly the smarter texhniwue, but not because it seals juices in.

(Also, "searing" a steak does in fact slow the rate of water loss, so it is easier to control cook-quality and easier to cook whilst distracted. But this undermines my main point that water content actually ruins the steak, and that you can get the same texture and taste with a different technique.)

First of all, I'm talking about searing on a flat top. Which doesn't char. And it does keep in the moisture. Especially if you've got fat on the side of the meat. But the best reason to do this is not to hold in the water, but to get a consistently even temperature in the final steak.

It is not a fast process. The steak needs to be rested at room temperature for an hour. Then seared 2 minutes each side, maximum heat, seasoning before you turn it down. Taken off the flat top or cast iron pan, which you deglaze, and pour over the steak. Rested another 30 minutes. Return to a cast iron pan and put in the oven at 450F for 8 minutes for a 1" steak rare, plus 2-3 minutes to medium rare. (11 minutes for a 1" ribeye to MR).

What happens is that the outside is seasoned brown, well cooked and most of the juice stays in, but the interior fat melts down and you end up cutting through a piece of meat that is exactly the same color and temperature from the inside to the very edge of the outside.

If you do want to cook on a grill, obviously don't grease-stain it by flipping it a lot or trying to sear it there. Put your cast iron pan on the grill, sear it in that, and then finish it on the grates for flavor and char.

I'm just pointing out you can get the same food with a quarter (at most) of the prep time and twice the flipping if you approach it experimentally at the same heat. Very much including basting. If you think steakhouses let steaks sit out before cooking them you're nuts—they might get nuked for five seconds for approximately the same effect. Letting them sit is just a convenience while prepping the rest of dinner.

Also, tenderizing the meat is about 10x as effective as letting it rest at room temperature. Not only does it warm the meat much faster, it reduces cook time, draws moisture out, and improves the crust. A minute of beating the shit out of the steak can trivially improve on an hour of sitting out (as if we have the time most days!). The grid-slice pattern is also very effective, even if it looks trashy. It's trashy because it's cheap and it works so well any cheap steakhouse will do it to obscure the shitty produce. Just make sure to do the tenderizing before you apply the salt.

Of course if you enjoy cooking, don't let my advice ruin it. Food is a lot more enjoyable if you feel satisfied eating it. Not everyone needs to optimize for cook-time.

Steaks being cooked naturally drain juice. The entire concept of searing a steak "sealing" the juices in implies a cooking paradigm that simply doesn't hold up to experimentation. You want to cook off water mass from a good steak—it's better flavor, better texture, and you're left with far less grease in your soup-catcher.

If you cook enough steaks, it's quite hard to get a dry one, and you can get excellent texture and taste despite draining the "juice" (which is like 80% of why you salt the steak to begin with—moisture = less even and harder to control cooking which results in a chewier crust).

We had one on a yacht I crewed that did ecotour sorta sails. When we'd catch a small tuna, after the trips I'd butterfly it and George Foreman it. No added oil just right on the Teflon cooking surface and texture and taste would come out sorta like fried chicken. It was great

I think the issue is that the weight of the lid and top grill pressing down on the steak squeezes a lot more juice out than if you grilled the steak on regular grill that heats from below.

You usually press down on it or use a weight with a regular grill. You want a crust from a Maillard reaction on the outer surfaces, with a less-cooked interior.

I do not do that. I use the reverse sear technique popularized by Kenji Lopez-Alt. This involves heating the steak to near-doneness over indirect heat, followed by an intense sear over direct heat. A brief rest period in between allows an even better sear, as the surface has a bit of time to dry out and the internal temperature to drop a bit, enabling more time over high heat.

A ridged grill pan like OP suggested does the same, or to the extent it collects underneath it steams part of your steak, or if it fills to the point it is touching the steak again it partly boils it for some of the cook time. The Foreman grill sears it more like a real open grill by letting the water drain away instead of having to boil off for part of the cooking. A regular flat pan does some of this too since the water is pushed out to the sides faster and boils off away from the steak letting it sear better.

I used to only use one side of the grille and usually not close it for most things where I cared about retaining the moisture

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