The press is a Nostalgia MyMini, rated 520w but only 420w observed with the kill-a-watt. It has a diagonal divider I find a little annoying; others may want a completely flat cooking surface.

Since it cycles on and off it’s hard to get accurate times/energy readings. But in general I find it takes about 20Wh to toast a sandwich.

I usually preheat the griddle then place the food in.

sandwiches

grilled cheese

I assemble the whole sandwich before insertion; otherwise the bottom half gets overdone

biscuits

supermarket canned biscuits

pressed

Walmart Great Value jumbo biscuits. 40-something Wh. My Kill-a-Watt could only show 0.04kWh so it was somewhere between 40-50Wh. Quite tasty, I ate them without butter or jelly. These are the best so far. There’s a stripe in them because the sandwich grill has a diagonal line in it for making triangular sammiches.– lemmy post about this experiment

biscuit mixes

cooling with gravy

70Wh for the whole batch, or ~18Wh per biscuit. Total time 22mins.

Mixes and scratch are preferable to refrigerated tubes of biscuits (see above) because they don’t have to be refrigerated.

I tried the Pillsbury Garlic Cheddar mix in the DBO and on a flat pan already and thought it was time to try the press. Very good, I think this is the way.

Before I made the biscuits I made a cup of white gravy from a Walmart mix. I can’t remember who made it (Pioneer?) but it was in bulk not in packets. I decanted the dry mix into a 1qt bottle for storage.

cheddar drop biscuits

batter baked

based on this recipe

~17.5Wh per triangular biscuit


240g flour
14g baking powder
7g salt
1 stick cold butter, diced
0.75c buttermilk (180g water + 18g buttermilk powder)
shredded or diced cheese


Mix dry ingredients.
Cut in butter with fork or pastry blender
mix in cheese

mix in buttermilk

Cook in sandwich press for 5mins.
    1. A+. Outstanding flavor and texture.

cornbread

hot water cornbread

partially eaten

AKA corn pone, corn dodgers, etc. ~35Wh per patty, or ~105Wh total for three.

v1.0

boi1 1.5c of water
stir in 1.5c (185g) corn meal
5g salt

Allow to sit for ~10 minutes for corn meal to fully absorb water.
press into patties and grill in press, 4-5 mins each
cool on rack
sprinkle with additional salt if desired

Experiments:

20230718 - A. Not quite as tasty or crispy as pan-fried, but easier and no grease spatter. Brushing with oil before cooking might be fun experiment.