Hamilton Beach 25475A Breakfast Sandwich Maker
Forget the fast food drive-through. With the Hamilton Beach Breakfast Sandwich Maker, you can enjoy a hot, homemade breakfast sandwich in under 5 minutes. Simply place the ingredients inside, build the base of your sandwich in the bottom layer, place the egg on the cooking plate and close the lid. Slide the cooking plate out and your sandwich assembles itself. Open the lid and your hot breakfast sandwich is ready to eat. The included recipe book provides a variety of breakfast sandwich options, from the traditional egg, ham and cheese to the unique cheddar, apple, bacon and egg croissant sandwich.
Product Features
- Ready in 5 minutes, cook delicious breakfast sandwiches in the comfort of your own home
- Use your own fresh ingredients, including eggs, cheese and much more
- Make sandwiches with English muffins, biscuits, small bagels and more
- All removable parts are dishwasher safe; surfaces are covered with durable, nonstick coating
- Quick and easy recipes included
So good I have two! About six months ago I purchased my first sandwich maker as an impulse buy. I’m a bit of a gadget guy so i succumbed to the impulse. My usual weekly routine was to stop by the McD’s on my way to work and buy a McMuffin with egg or sausage each day. The coffee comes with me from home, so its a single purchase stop.My first attempt at making a sausage sandwich at home was mediocre at best when compared to my drive through experience. The issues were;1. The muffin was too small and did not contain the egg and sausage properly.2. The egg stuck to the maker leaving a mess to clean up.3. The egg leaked a bit around the sliding plate making a small mess.4. The precooked sausage and Canadian bacon was not heated properly.5. The egg was tough from over cooking.After a bit of experimenting all the issues were solved and I have been enjoying breakfast sandwiches each morning, and know whats in them. Here is what I learned.The first problem of too small a muffin was solved by carefully selecting which brand you buy. From my experience, the cheaper the muffin, the smaller it is. You want a full size muffin that will fill the makers cooking chamber. Since I live down the street from a restaurant supply company, I buy my muffins there. They are full size and come in 10 packs. Surprisingly, they are cheaper per muffin than my local grocery store.The next problem was solved by giving the egg cooking chamber a spritz of cooking spray after preheating the maker. This means the sliding plate as well as the sides of the ring. I use an olive oil based spray I get at the local Wally World. No more sticking and torn eggs.The leaking was solved by first preheating the maker a little longer. I plug it in first and then go get my ingredients. The extra minute or two of preheat after the green light turns on makes a difference. Another thing that helped was the cooking spray. I apply it when the maker is hot. This seems to make a seal between the plate and ring.The sausage not being hot enough was solved by not using a frozen patty or bacon slice. I now keep the ingredients in the refrigerator so they are cold, but not frozen. This change eliminated the issue completely. Again I have found the best deal on the ingredients at my local restaurant supply, but the Wally World sometimes beats them. If you buy a big package, just take a weeks worth and put them a plastic bag in the refrigerator and keep the rest in the freezer.Finally the tough egg. This issue was a show stopper for me. I hate tough eggs and not solving the problem meant the maker was getting returned. It turns out the solution was rather simple. Preheat the maker a bit longer as mentioned earlier and shorten the cooking time to 3 minutes. The result is a perfect egg (for me) with the rest of the sandwich thoroughly heated.Clean up was a breeze after using the cooking spray. I remove the cooking rings and wipe down with a damp cloth or place in the dishwasher. The maker body gets a quick wipe down and that it.If you are a bit adventurous, try making lunch or dinner sandwiches by substituting the breakfast meat with corned beef or pastrami from the deli. In the egg chamber place a thin slice of onion and a bit of swiss cheese.After six months, I am thoroughly satisfied. In fact I have bought a second so I have one at home and one to take with me for my regular extended hotel stays required by my job. The cost savings was amazing. This product paid for itself after two weeks just in drive through savings.Good Job Hamilton Beach.Since my initial review, I have found one more trick to using this product. If you load the maker as recommended, you will have the cheese against the egg. This makes the egg want to slide around on the meat especially just after cooking. I now place the cheese between the bottom muffin and meat. Problem solved.Another tip for those using it in a hotel room or at work, I have found that Wally World sells small bags of per diced onions, bell Peppers and jalapeños. I keep some in my hotel room fridge and instead of a plain egg, I will scramble and add some veggies. Either zap the veggies for a moment to defrost first or just not keep them in the freezer.To mix things up a bit, I have been using sour dough, wheat, and cinnamon raisin breads instead of English muffins. The rings make a great “cookie cutter” when pressed into the bread slice. After shaping the bread I spread a small amount of butter on the side of the bread contacting the heating surfaces. The result is a nice crunch! Try spreading a bit of pesto on the other side for a savory treat. Use little to no butter when using pesto otherwise it gets a bit soggy. My favorite is sour dough, pesto, havarti cheese, sliced…
Use it every weekeday I bought one of these from the manufacturer’s website on the day of its release because Amazon wasn’t yet selling it. I love it!I’ve found that English muffins work the best. I tried one full-sized bagel and made a mess, but I will try again to see if I can get it right. I imagine the Bagel thins would work very well.Once you plug it in, it takes about 5 minutes to heat up. Add your bread, cheese, meats, veggies, and egg, close it up, and set a timer for 5 minutes. The sandwiches come out hot with the muffin nicely crisped, the egg well cooked, the meat/veggies nicely warmed and the cheese melted.Clean up is really easy, too. Remove the center section, clean it off with a brush or scrubbie pad in the sink, then wipe down the other part with a damp cloth or paper towel.Highly recommended!
Great, for what it is First things first.This cooks one sandwich at a time — most people will find this silly to mention, but there are negative reviews on here that mention that as if it were a surprise.It takes 5 minutes to cook — this is stated on the product marketing material, and being electric, it takes additional time to warm up like-every-other-electric-heated-appliance. That warm up time is less than 5 minutes, after which you can make sandwiches back to back at 5 minute cooking intervals. Cleaning between sandwiches is a snap, I usually just use a napkin.It only accepts sandwiches that fit in it — really? Yes, this is mentioned in negative reviews as well. Believe it or not, if you want to make a sandwich in this appliance, you will have to find bread that fits in the thing, say, like, english muffins or mini-bagels. Oh the trauma!Now some caveats… you’ll need precooked meat to go in the maker. It will not fry bacon. If you looked at the picture and thought that it could fry bacon in the position it’s in, in the same amount of time it took to do an egg on top, you might need to reassess your culinary expertise. My work-around for this… precooked bacon that I place in the machine by itself during warm up, the meat is crispy by the time the maker is ready to go. No time wasted. Also, it will not make the inside of the bread crispy, since this is not touching any heated surface… see bacon remark above. I have not found this to my disliking, and rather like how it melds the sandwich altogether into one eggy, cheesey form. Others that want each item perfectly segregated might have to look elsewhere.I did find that if you are finicky like me and prefer the traditional breakfast sandwich arrangement… bread-cheese-meat-egg-bread, that you will have to cook your sandwich upside-down, in other words, in the bottom compartment place the top bread, then cheese, then meat; close the tray, and in the top compartment crack the egg and place the bottom bread. When finished, slide open the egg divider thingy, open the machine, and turn the sandwich right side up, and voila.As mentioned, cleaning is easy. The middle part completely comes off, it just unhinges and can be washed separately. If cooking sandwiches back to back, I don’t find this entirely necessary, I just quickly wipe all the surfaces with a napkin and get going. (my pre-cooked bacon routine above has the added benefit of making it even easier to clean) However, the non-stick surface alone does its job terrifically, with or without bacon grease.Overall I love the maker. I have a delicious breakfast sandwich in about 9 minutes from turn-on to finish, and have only one small item to clean afterwards. If I were feeding a family, of course I wouldn’t depend on a single maker, but if you assumed you could, I’m sorry, but you’re not so bright. An on-off switch would be nice, as I feel like the wear and tear on the plug would eventually be too much, but I paired my maker with a simple outlet switch I already had so I can leave it plugged in all the time, similar to this: http://www.amazon.com/Leviton-1469-W-Plug-In-Switch-Non-Grounding/dp/B000MXMH6U/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1386270922&sr=8-7&keywords=leviton+outlet+switch