How many times have you put a beautiful piece of meat on your grill only to overcook it? It’s happened to me. T-Fal, has come out with the OptiGrill™, a tabletop electric grill that takes all the guesswork out of grilling and yields perfectly cooked meats, fish, fowl and sandwiches every time.

What’s so great about T Fal Optigrill?

I was skeptical when the OptiGrill arrived at the realfoodtraveler.com offices. The stainless steel grill is big and beefy, measuring about 14.5 inches in width, 13.5 inches in depth, and 5.5 inches high and I thought, “Oh no, here’s another large, useless cooking appliance.” The OptiGrill proved me wrong. It’s easy to use with pre-programmed cooking selections as well as a manual override and even frozen food function and a warming selection.

After wiping down the OptiGrill’s removable cooking plates, we turned on the OptiGrill, selected the program for the type of food we were cooking (indicated by little pictures), hit okay and the grill automatically began to pre-heat. This took a few minutes (4-7) to get to cooking temperature. There’s a color-coded dial that lets you know the temperature as well as a chime that sounds when the grill reaches a certain temperature. When it’s preheating, it pulses a pleasant purplish color. (Green indicates the grill is ready to cook; yellow is rare; orange is medium, and red is well done. The indicator dial shows both the color and has the words so you can just look on the dial if you forget what the colors indicate. There’s also a keep warm function.)

The OptiGrill uses sensor cooking to produce perfectly cooked foods.

The cooking plates, which are die cast aluminum and feature non-stick coating, are angled so that grease flows away from the food and is deposited in a removable drip tray that sits just below the plates.

When the Opti-Grill dial turned green and the chime sounded, we opened the stainless steel grill with the beefy handle, placed lamb chops onto the cooking plates and closed the grill. The handle is heavy duty and the cooking plates are sturdy and large (measuring approximately 12.5 inches x 8.5 inches), big enough for a couple of large steaks or four lamb chops. The sensor cooking automatically adapts to the thickness of foods.

The 1800 watt OptiGrill is hot and fast. It didn’t take long for the cooking programs on the OptiGrill color dial to turn to yellow and chime, indicating the meat was rare.  We let it cook a few more minutes and pulled the chops off just as the dial turned orange (medium). For us, they were the perfect rare medium. The chops had attractive grill marks and were cooked perfectly pink inside. The meat was amazing juicy without being greasy as the lamb fat had dripped off into the pan below.

The OptiGrill indicator light glows different colors to show the food’s cooking doneness.

T-Fal Optigrill: Easy to Clean Too

After letting the OptiGrill cool (open the grill as the heavy construction of the grill holds heat for a long time), we pushed a single button on each side, releasing the two grill plates. The plates are dishwasher safe and cleaned up without scrubbing.

The T Fal Grill comes with a nifty little cookbook. There were recipes for panini-style sandwiches so, following the same pre-heat steps (setting the program to the sandwich icon), we easily and quickly grilled a couple of cheese sandwiches. They came out crispy and melty with no fuss.

The removable grill plates are large and easy to clean.

You can also use the OptiGrill cook fish and vegetables. One evening, we used the T Fal Grill on manual to cook veggies–fresh, from-the-garden broccoli shoots and small sweet peppers and spot praws. We lightly oiled the broccoli and placed it on the cooking plates for three minutes. Then we put it on a plate and covered it with oil. Then we prepared cleaned shrimp that had been marinated in sugar/salt/parsley/olive oil, patting it dry and threading the shrimp on skewers and set them aside. We cut the little peppers in half and seeded them and placed them lightly grilled on the OptiGrill with the broccoli until the veggies were hissing. When the vegetables were ready, we placed all the veggies back under the foil.

We placed the shrimp skewers onto the OptiGrill and used the fish program. We were nervous about overcooking the shrimp, but they came out perfectly–moist and delectable. Served over rice, they made a terrific entree.

By the time the shrimp was ready to serve, the vegetables were perfect too–al dente with just the right char. The sweet peppers had beautiful grill marks and came out sweet and cooked just right.

The T-Fal Grill is super easy to use and effortless to clean. It would make a perfect grill for people who live in an apartment who don’t have the space for an outdoor grill. The T-Fal OptiGrill would be terrific for folks in an RV or trailer who want the results of grilling without the mess. It’s also super for grilling food when the weather prevents outdoor grilling or you don’t want to mess with firing up the outdoor grill.

Our lamb chops came out pink and juicy with no fuss.

The T Fal Grill’s large size prevents it from earning a permanent spot on my kitchen counter. However, it’s definitely a high-performance table-top grill that we’ll use whenever we want fast, easy, no fuss grilling. – Bobbie Hasselbring, Former RFT contributor

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