You see, my parents live in a condo in Virginia Beach, VA and were recently informed by the fire marashall that they were no longer allowed to have grills with open fires on their patios. Bummer!  The builder had designed the patios with sprinklers and such, but a new change meant that propane and charcoal were now out of the question.  While my parents were ready to give up on grilling, I wasn’t (we spend a descent amount of time down there in the Summer) – so after a lot of research I bought my dad the Meco 9320 Electric Grill so he could continue to get his grill on.

The fully assembled 9320 Meco Grill, Ready for action!

Assembly

It took my Dad and I about 45 minutes to put the grill together.  Everything was pretty straightforward and simple… not nearly as complex as some propane grills can be.  I’d consider this grill pretty minimalistic, with included accessories limited to just a side rack, utensil hooks, and oil catch.  Its often the ‘bells and whistles’ that can add a lot of time to assembly, and in this case there wasn’t anything crazy that slowed us down.

Pieces to the grill laid out prior to assembly

The grill and hood half-unpacked

More of the grill grates and hood

Finished Product – Angled Grill Grates?

As this was my first experience with an electric grill, one thing struck me as odd.  I’m not completely sure why, but the grates are at a pretty significant slant from back to front.  I’d guess that the grates slope down forward at a 20 degree angle – you can see this in the image below.  For grilling food that can roll, such as hotdogs, sausages, or a number of different vegetables, you’ll need to be clever in arranging the food so that it stays where you want it.

Fully assembled Meco electric grill

I can only surmise that the reason for the angled grates is to help fat drip away and collect nicely in the drip catcher.  From my research into electric grills, it seems a large portion of their consumer base are people who don’t particularly love grilling, but do want a way to eat healthier and cook with less fat.  An electric grill provides a low barrier into healthy grilling (because fueling the grill is of no concern, you just need an electrical outlet and you’re good to go).

So How Does it Grill?

You can only truly tell the quality of an instrument by playing it, and the same goes for a grill.  While I can talk about how easy it is to assemble, and how I’m surprised by the design, that really doesn’t matter.  What matters is, how good of a job does it do at actually grilling?  Pretty good, I’d say.

I actually had very low expectations for this grill (and any electric grill, for that matter).  I thought browning and charring would be pretty difficult qualities to obtain because the heating element, without fire, would have to be very hot to get good coloration.  I was happily surprised to see that I wasn’t completely correct.  We threw some strip steaks onto the grill, and were very happy to achieve a bit of caramelization on the outside.  Its certainly nothing compared to what gas and charcoal grills can do, but its way more than I expected.

Strip steaks on the grill, pre-flip

Strip steaks, post-flip. Notice the subtle coloring - better than none at all!

You’ll notice in the pictures that, after flipping the steaks, we did have have some nice color generated by the heating element.  I think it would be pretty difficult to get really good marks from the grates with this grill, and certainly none from a flame, so in the future I won’t even think about perfect diamond-shaped grill marks.  For this grill, the focus should be to get color anyway you can, and it seems that it generates enough heat for you to do so.

Final Thoughts

I’d recommend this grill to anyone who finds themselves in a pickle similar to my parents.  Ideally I’d have gotten them a tricked out charcoal grill and smoker, but this situation didn’t allow it.  Instead, we research a reasonably priced electric grill with good reviews/ratings and simplicity in mind.  This Meco grill does just the trick for my ‘rents.