Presto 07039 Electric Griddle, 22-Inch

I guess not all griddles are the same...
Normally, I hate to give bad reviews since I think most products are disproportionately represented with negative reviews already. On this product, however, I feel that the exact opposite is true.

This review ran longer than I meant it to, so here is a quick overview if you don't want to read it all:
1) Uneven cooking surface (horrible for things like pancakes)
2) Doesn't heat evenly (it is very hot around the outside and cool in the middle)
3) Heats up slowly (probably to make sure the middle is at least a little hot)
4) This is specific to mine, but the grease tray broke in half on the third use when I wasn't even touching it.

Now, on to the details...

We got this griddle about 2 weeks ago to replace the unit that we've used for the last 15 years (although we've really only been using it heavily for the last couple of years). The teflon was coming off the old griddle and the heating unit was starting to go out. When ordering...

Elegant Simplicity
I really like this design. It has a slight raised lip running around the outside edge which contains any batters, grease, or other liquids which might run over the edge and create a mess; the grease drain is only on the front edge and is treated with the same sturdy non-stick coating as the rest of the surface, making for easy clean up. Indeed, the lack of plastic attachments make cleanup easy, and I really like the simple design, a very large cooking surface, two plastic handles and a removable plastic grease catch.

The only thing keeping me from rating it a five out of five is that I would have liked to see a thicker aluminum used, the base is only about 2mm thick, though I've been unable to find anything thicker

Uneven heating
I purchased this item as a result of the positive ratings on this product. I was very disappointed in the quality in that the cooking surface is very thin and the heating element is a single loop that is attached to the bottom of the surface. This causes the heat to be concentrated primarily in the area of the heating element which results in extremely uneven heating on the cooking surface. I allowed the unit to preheat and when I cooked pancakes there was a dark streak in the area where they were over the heating element. I would not recommend this product.

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