All it took was for friend and colleague Nick Morrison to mention that his wife Ceal had brought home an electric griddle for visions of panini to dance in my head. So while wife DeGroot rolled her eyes, I rushed to the store for my own Cuisinart Griddler.
Even the name makes me giggle, but the thing works great and I'm happy with it so far. One project I've tried is Andrea Nguyen's lemongrass grilled pork. I usually make that on my gas grill but was hoping that if the Griddler performed to expectations, I'd never have to go outside to cook again.
"Stein, did anyone ever tell you you're a wuss?" Nancy asked. "You don't want to go outside to grill for a few minutes in the cool?"
Actually, it's not the going outside; it's the cleanup. And not just the gas grill itself, but all the other goo I have to scrape off the thing. Who needs it when I can just drop the Griddler's non-stick surfaces into some warm water and clean'em right off with a sponge?
As it turned out, I was pretty happy with the Griddler's performance on the lemongrass pork, though next time I think I'll go with higher heat and a little more oil on the meat.
Nancy goes way back with electric griddles — all the way to the daddy of 'em all, the George Foreman Grill. So we include an excerpt from her matchup with the two-time heavyweight champion on NPR's "Talk of the Nation":
Nancy: "We found that the thing we love to cook the most on it is asparagus."
Foreman: "Whoa, asparagus! That's my favorite! I learned to love asparagus by way of the grill."
I hadn't thought to try that, but as I told Nancy, if The Champ likes griddled asparagus, then so do I.
"I want to keep fighting because it's the only thing that keeps me out of the hamburger joints. If I don't fight I'll eat this planet."
– George Foreman
