Best Sunbeam Electric BBQs

Gets hot, works well – The ReversaGrill was given to us for testing. The ReversaGrill strongly reminds me of the Sunbeam electric frypan that my mother has been cooking… Read more

the family roasts in for about 50 years - and yes, the frypan has actually lasted that long. The probe on the ReversaGrill that you plug in is almost identical to the one on the frypan, and the ReversaGrill - particularly when it has the flat side up - simply looks like a larger version of the frypan but without a lid (and more on that later). Whilst the cooking area would be about twice that of my mother's electric frypan it'd have about 40% of the cooking area of my hooded gas BBQ and is probably a bit smaller than something like the Weber Baby Q.

In line with YouTube video protocol my children forensically unpacked the grill and reported to me that it was well protected but without excessive packaging. They also quickly worked out how it went together, including the safety latch.

We used the Reversagrill indoors (under the oven's rangehood so that the house didn't fill with smoke) for a variety of meals - bulgogli (which worked really well on it), sausages, chicken, sliced vegetables, fish and the real test, some fairly thick steaks. We mainly used the flat side and not the ridged one. My concern with the Reversagrill was whether it would spatter oil all over the place (as it doesn't have a lid) and if it would get hot enough to put a char on the meats. The concern in relation to heat was unwarranted as, when the control probe was turned up to "Max", it quickly charred the chicken we first tested out on it. We'd usually use a hooded gas BBQ for steaks so I was interested to see how they'd turn out on the ReversaGrill - the answer was really well: the grill got hot enough to char the outside of the steaks but have the inside medium rare. I was quite impressed by it - I'd usually have the gas BBQ at over 200 C to get that type of char so it suggests that the grill did get at least that hot.

There were a couple of areas for improvement with the ReversaGrill that became apparent when we did the steaks. Whilst I was impressed by how they were cooked (charred outside, still juicy inside) which indicates that the ReversaGrill got to a high temperature, I was surprised to discover that my family were less impressed with the steaks - they said that the steaks were less tasty than when done on our Weber Genesis hooded BBQ: because speculated one, they weren't being smoked as well and the flavour was going up the extractor fan. That mirrored my own thoughts when we first unpacked the grill, which was that it could do with a lid to stop spatter and keep heat in - so, more like my mother's electric frypan. The other issue is that of temperature control - the control probe simply has markers of "Min", "Med" and "Max" along the dial, without any indication on the grill to explain what temperatures those settings, or any between them, equated to. (On checking the manual I note that it says that at "Max" it's approximately between 195C and 250C - that's really not precise enough, and it may not be doing those temperatures in any case - without an accurate gauge you simply wouldn't know.). As I noted above, when we do steaks there's a minimum temperature that I'm aiming to get the grill to but with the ReversaGrill there was no way of knowing if I was anywhere near that so I turned it up to "Max" and waited to see how it worked. I'd considered seeing if I could borrow an infrared thermometer to check the temperatures at the various settings and I may yet do that. The manual does say that the grill is 2400W (NB, the online description says both 2200 watts and 2400 watts - which is it?), which given that a single bar heater is 1500W suggests that the ReversaGrill can get pretty hot.

The "DiamondForce" part of the name relates to the non-stick coating, which purportedly includes diamonds. Whatever the case, you shouldn't be using metal implements on it and my experience with non-stick surfaces over the last 30 years is that I'd prefer to just have a plain metal surface that I can season, as all of the non-stick surfaces have eventually peeled or worn off.

So, it's big enough to do a BBQ for a small family or a grilled breakfast, the reversible sides give you the option of putting grill marks on your food or cooking things like eggs on the flat side, it heats up quickly and appears to get very hot and it works well for grilling. Cleaning it is pretty straightforward. It also appears to be pretty durable and you could probably take it with you if you went away for a weekend and wanted a non-gas grill. But you'll need to use it outside or under an extractor fan and it would be an improvement if there was some indication of the actual temperatures it's at and if there was some kind of lid for it. I also think that for safety it needs a warning light when it's on, as the red light only cycles on and off to show when it's heating and there are no visual cues - unlike with a gas or charcoal BBQ - that it's actually at a very hot temperature, so I'd be keeping it well away from little kids fingers.