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So recently to save time and not always have to go into the yard to grill something I decided to pick up the Range Mate Pro Deluxe Microwave Grill which supposedly lets you actually grill foods in the microwave. It was far too hot in the summer to turn on the oven as I don’t have an air conditioner here in Southern California so we also wanted something that will keep the pizza crust crispy when cooking microwave pizza or reheating takeout pizza.
What you get is a 5 in one cooking product that compliments and expands what you can cook in your microwave, this is really great for single people who want to cook more natural foods rather than frozen meals and yet still have the same simplicity without dealing with pans and a charcoal or gass grill. The 5 in one set really only contains 4 pieces including the grill pan, a steamer tray, a baking tray and the lid. The cooking instruction book which has 35 different meal instructions on what you can and how to cook the products in the Range Mate Pro grill is a helpful template on how to get started. You will notice there is also a lot of blank and template lines for you to enter your own foods and timings, because this product does have a lot of “try it” and see how long it takes.
One thing to note is that some items you cook you have to preheat the Range Mate Pro grill before you place the items on the grill and actually cook them, this is to heat up the grill itself so that it cooks from surface temperature not just the microwave food and is necessary to create grill marks in foods and cook the surface.
Most items you preheat the grill for 2 minutes at full power with the lid on, then take the lid off and put your food in the grill and microwave. It is best to microwave at 50 percent power for everything unless it says otherwise and then keep adding time as needed. Cooking some left over pizza for example took some extra time, and a normal full frozen 3 minute individual pizza took 7 minutes with the Range Mate Grill but it had a perfect crispy crust instead of a soft chewy crust had I just tossed it on the plate and microwaved it without the grill.
You can steam vegetables by using one of the inserts, putting water below and then having the steam completely cook the vegetables like broccoli (my favorite), spinach, mushrooms, or simply you can grill portobello mushrooms as well. Some foods you can just cook one sided, others you have to flip and may want to grill the other side as well, like when I cooked a bison steak in this thing. Overall I did find it was a bit harder to get internal temperature accurate and right, having rare or medium rare was difficult to assess and it was easy to cook it too little or overcook it to nearly well done by adding just 2 more minutes. But once the experimentation was done, repeating written down notes for the same thickness level of steak yielded the same results so really it is just trial and error until you find the right timing and settings and then just remembering for next time.
Product was a little pricey but if you don’t have to buy a grill and replacement charcoal or gas, you probably would save money over the longer term if you used this Rangemate 5 in 1 Microwave Grill instead. It can do nice chicken and cheese quesadilla’s as you can get the tortilla to be grilled as if it were pan fried as well.
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