What they say...
The new Tefal Optigrill Elite is the latest to join Tefal’s Optigrill range, and it is more versatile than ever. Twelve intelligent automatic programmes let you perfectly cook vegetables, fish and meat, with automatic sensors measuring the thickness and amount of ingredients to produce outstanding results. Its new digital interface is a convenient addition and allows for you to take control of your own cooking and the integrated countdown holds your hand through different levels of cooking from rare – well-done. Other features include the searing boost mode which helps retain flavour, frozen food and refill modes which make catering for a party a breeze and a manual mode, if you want to take control, too. The plates are non-stick, removable and dishwasher-safe, taking the hassle out of cleaning up.
What we say....
Our experience so far with Tefal products from the get-go has been really good. From testing innovative pots and pans, healthy air fryers, to the ingenious cake factory, it’s clear that Tefal are trying to help make the cooking experience not just pleasurable and fun but impressive too. Cooking is best when it’s not just functional but pleasurable and let’s face it, with dark winter days setting in, we could all do with a bit of foodie happiness! This new Optigrill Elite (a step up from the standard Tefal Optigrill range) comes with a more up-scale price tag, so is it worth it? At a time of the year with so much indulgence around but the New Year health crunch just around the corner too, we think so.....
The first thing to note about the Optigrill Elite, is that it’s ever so easy to set up. Once you have set it on your kitchen countertop, it’s just a question of detaching the sturdy die-cast aluminium cooking plates (just one click and each plate detaches), giving them a rinse, dry, re-attach, ‘season’ with a little oil and away you go!
Although we dived into reading the manual, which we must say was easy to understand and helpful (we say this as though it was a surprise but we’ve found many manuals these days require you to look at a video online just to get the sense of them!), the Optigrill’s clever digital display is actually very easy to use and quick to understand.
In our testers’ house, cooking steak is usually feared and avoided because of a mixed bag of preferences when it comes to how everyone likes their steak done. The main tester likes their steak medium-rare, the other foodie in the house, well-done - a nightmare! We challenged the Optigrill to live up to the hype and cook our steaks to ‘outstanding results’!
A ‘stand-out’ feature of the grill is that you can place a number of steaks on the plate (we chose a low-budget but less fatty steak, whereas the Optigrill was tested on high quality produce) and it will time the cooking so you can take out each steak individually as you like them - rare, medium, well-done - this way, everyone gets the steak cooked how they want it. It’s an ingenious feature! You place the top plate down over the steaks, the Optigrill Elite cleverly measures the thickness of the steaks and then starts the cooking process. As it cooks the steak, the square-like dial moves around, with a timer letting you know when the steaks will reach a cooking point (like rare, medium, well-done) and beeps as it does, so you know when to take out each steak at the right time. We were sceptical it would work every time but it really did and what is more, even the well-done steaks were still tender (leaving our main cooker red-faced as they realised they’d been over-cooking steaks the whole time)!
The other feature we really liked is the ‘second batch’ feature. This allows the cook to take out the food just grilled and other place more of the same product in or a different one. In our case, after we were allowing the steaks to ‘relax’ a little after cooking, we decided to cook some veggies (peppers and courgettes). After pre-heating for a couple of minutes for grilling peppers, the food was placed on the grill and cooked to everyone’s preferences. We found with some vegetables (we tested a range of them), it was better to use a manual setting option, as some vegetables are not on the pre-set options and needed cooking longer (we kept the courgettes in a little longer, when cooked alongside other veggies). If you are a fan of the Italian Classic melanzane alla parmigiana (baked aubergines cooked in a tomato sauce with lashings of Parmesan cheese, an excellent alternative to a meat lasagne), the Optigrill Elite was excellent for preparing numerous batches of them during the course of making up the dish.
The Optigrill Elite also boats a defrost function, which we found especially helpful when cooking fish. Fish is a big part of our testers household diet and salmon and tuna steaks are often bought frozen. As soon as the defrost function ends, you can straightaway set the grill to grilling fish (so long as they are under 4cm thick, as with all food cooked in the grill) and enjoy the same results as you would expect with steak. We found the defrost function really helpful and time-reducing.
After cooking, the manual advices you allow two hours for the plates to cool fully. After sticking to the guide’s advice, we found another impressive aspect of the Optigrill Elite was how easy it was to clean. Whilst you can put the places in dishwasher, we preferred to hand-wash them. As the plate grooves are not too thin, the grime/food residue generally glided off under warm water and use of a sponge (we used a mild detergent).
Our verdict...
Although a bit pricey, we enjoyed using the Optigrill, as it makes cooking hearty food to perfection a doddle! The grill not only looks impressive but it is packed with technology that is both practical and functional. If you feared cooking steaks or over-cooking fish and veggies, then fear not anymore, as Optigrill is here to help you! It makes cooking food healthier not just a need (especially after all the festive indulgence) but a pleasure..... an investment that’s worth it!
Find out more at www.tefal.co.uk )
Available from Amazon, rrp £189.99