How to choose a sandwich maker: important features and model reviews

A sand­wich mak­er or sand­wich mak­er is a fair­ly sim­ple kitchen device that allows you to pre­pare a hot sand­wich break­fast in a mat­ter of min­utes. There are many options for such devices, and in order to choose a reli­able mod­el, it is impor­tant to be guid­ed by a num­ber of para­me­ters that will be dis­cussed lat­er.

Parameters for selecting the instrument type

Many choose a sand­wich mak­er based only on the cost, but it is rec­om­mend­ed that you first decide what tasks you set for the device. This will allow you to decide which mod­els to choose from. So, to decide on the type of sand­wich mak­er, it is worth con­sid­er­ing 5 para­me­ters.

Power

There are devices with three pow­ers:

• small — 600 W;
• medi­um — up to 850 W;
• pow­er­ful — over 850 watts.

The high­er the pow­er, the faster the sand­wich will fry. So, with a pow­er of 850 W, a sand­wich will be cooked in 30 sec­onds, and with 650 W — in a minute (it should be borne in mind that when prepar­ing dish­es, ready-made prod­ucts are tak­en that do not require long cook­ing!).

Of course, a dif­fer­ence of a few sec­onds / min­utes is not so sig­nif­i­cant, but the dif­fer­ence in price can vary by a thou­sand rubles or more. On the oth­er hand, if you do not lim­it your­self to sim­ple sand­wich­es, but want to cook Vien­nese waf­fles, cook­ies, shawar­ma and oth­er del­i­ca­cies, it is bet­ter to pur­chase a more pow­er­ful appli­ance. As a rule, the best option is a medi­um pow­er sand­wich mak­er.

capacity

Depend­ing on how many sand­wich­es you want to cook at a time, the num­ber of forms (com­part­ments) will be deter­mined:

• if you cook only for your­self, choose a mod­el with 2 com­part­ments;
• for a fam­i­ly of 3–4 peo­ple, a device with 4 forms is suit­able;
• if you want to pam­per your­self and your guests with a vari­ety of sand­wich delights, choose a device with 8 com­part­ments.

Form of branches

Here the choice is made based on per­son­al bread pref­er­ences. Love loaves — a mod­el with round plates is suit­able. Mak­ing bread sand­wich­es for toast? Get a sand­wich mak­er with tri­an­gu­lar or square plates.

Housing material

Two types are com­mon — plas­tic and stain­less steel. The first ones look bright, and in terms of cost they are often infe­ri­or to their coun­ter­parts, in fact, as well as in qual­i­ty. On plas­tic, scratch­es are more pos­si­ble, and such a sand­wich mak­er is poor­ly pro­tect­ed from shock. In addi­tion, often plas­tic mod­els do not close com­plete­ly, which allows the fill­ing to flow out. Cheap mod­els from unknown man­u­fac­tur­ers may have an unpleas­ant syn­thet­ic smell.

Sand­wich­es with a stain­less steel body have more sig­nif­i­cant advan­tages. These include not only dura­bil­i­ty, but also impact resis­tance. Such char­ac­ter­is­tics com­pen­sate for the rel­a­tive­ly high cost.

Accessories

It is worth pay­ing atten­tion to them in the case when it is sup­posed to use the device not only in the prepa­ra­tion of sand­wich­es. So, you can pur­chase a sand­wich mak­er with aux­il­iary remov­able devices:

• a plate for mak­ing Vien­nese (soft) waf­fles;
• noz­zles for mak­ing omelets, shawar­ma, hot dogs with sausages and oth­er dish­es;
• noz­zles for mak­ing cook­ies in the form of nuts with con­densed milk.

It is worth not­ing that there are mod­els “3 in 1” — with the func­tion of a waf­fle iron and grill, as well as “4 in 1” — in addi­tion, they are equipped with the “hazel” option.

Qualitative characteristics

Hav­ing decid­ed on what type of sand­wich mak­er you need, you can choose a qual­i­ty mod­el based on the fol­low­ing impor­tant char­ac­ter­is­tics:

• Auto­mat­ic over­heat­ing pro­tec­tion. The sand­wich mak­er must be heat­ed to a cer­tain accept­able tem­per­a­ture. This not only pro­tects the pre­pared sand­wich­es from burn­ing, but also pre­vents the appli­ance itself from heat­ing up.
• Heat insu­lat­ed han­dles and hous­ing. Mod­els of the appli­ance with a ther­mal insu­la­tion lay­er are many times safer, since the like­li­hood of burns dur­ing cook­ing is min­i­mized.
• Ther­mo­stat. Adjust­ing the tem­per­a­ture regime will allow you to cook not only sand­wich­es, but also oth­er dish­es. In addi­tion, thanks to this func­tion, you can reheat already cooked dish­es to the desired tem­per­a­ture.
• Reli­able lock. Dur­ing cook­ing, the top and bot­tom pan­els must be con­nect­ed secure­ly and firm­ly. This not only pro­tects the cook from burns, but also pre­vents food from spilling out or spread­ing dur­ing cook­ing.
• Oper­a­tion indi­ca­tors. There are only two of them: one indi­cates the inclu­sion (red col­or), and the oth­er indi­cates the readi­ness (green col­or). So, there is no need to stand near the appli­ance and con­trol the cook­ing process, so as not to overdry or over­cook the sand­wich. It is enough to focus on the indi­ca­tors.
• Cord length and com­part­ment. Often, man­u­fac­tur­ers make the cord no more than 50 cm. If the prox­im­i­ty of the device to the out­let is impor­tant to you, pay atten­tion to this item. Here it is worth con­sid­er­ing that if you choose a device with a long cord, then it must have a com­part­ment for stor­ing it.
• The shape and mate­r­i­al of the legs. They pro­vide sta­bil­i­ty of the device on a table or a table-top. So, it is worth choos­ing mod­els with rub­ber­ized legs. They are sta­ble and do not slip on the sur­face.

There are also sand­wich mak­ers on the mar­ket with a timer, auto-off, and even a dis­play that shows cook­ing infor­ma­tion. Such addi­tions sig­nif­i­cant­ly affect the cost, so here you should pro­ceed from your own finan­cial capa­bil­i­ties.

Overview of popular models

The most pop­u­lar mod­els among buy­ers can be found in the table:

Video: choose a sandwich maker

The pro­gram “The For­mu­la of Qual­i­ty” tells in detail about sand­wich mak­ers, as well as how to choose the per­fect mod­el:

When choos­ing a sand­wich mak­er, the fol­low­ing video will also come to the res­cue, in which 3 dif­fer­ent mod­els are clear­ly com­pared — Red­mond, Moulinex and Tefal:

The sand­wich mak­er will become an excel­lent assis­tant in the kitchen, with which you can pre­pare quick and tasty break­fasts, as well as desserts and snacks. Tak­ing into account sim­ple rec­om­men­da­tions, you can choose a mod­el with an ide­al price-qual­i­ty ratio.