I had wanted an electric skillet for some time. I remembered how well the fried potatoes my paternal grandmother made tasted coming out of her Sunbeam electric skillet something that I could not emulate on the gas stove and oven I have in my flat. I wanted those fried potatoes so much again that I could taste them.
So when holes and cracks started appearing in the stone age oven my landlord had put in my flat to replace another stove and oven that had too started to crack I decided to get an electric skillet. Not only did I want the taste of grandma's fried potatoes in my mouth again but I did not want my landlord to put a new gas stove and oven in my flat since he would not put down floor covering to protect my apartment and keep in clean when he moved in the “new” stove and oven in. At 69 I am simply no longer able to clean up the inevitable messes landlords leave in their wake and I don’t think gas ovens and stoves are particularly kind to a person’s physical health, particularly the physical health of an elderly person with asthma like myself, in the first place. So when the landlord refused to do the gentlemanly and easy thing and put down runners to wheel the “new” stove and oven in on and when he refused to buy me an electric oven and stove as a replacement I decided to opt for the electric skillet instead for stove top.cooking.
I wanted a Sunbeam electric skillet just like my gran used to have but Sunbeam like so many American corporations thanks to deindustrialisation and globalisation, no longer make home appliances save for irons and have moved into the ever growing health care appliance market. Whether or not Sunbeam like other once well known and well regarded American corporations have sold their once good name to a fly by night bargain basement company making cheap knock offs I do not know. So on 3 May I bought the Presto 06620 electric skillet from Target Online. I had done a lot of homework before I made the purchase and I found many ratings sites singing the praises of the Presto 06620 as the best bang for your limited American buck.
The skillet worked quite well initially and I have almost been able to replicate my gran’s fried potatoes. Hopefully more practise will make perfect. There was a problem, however. I soon began to notice that thermal cracks were appearing in the corners of the “innovative” plastic cover after less than two months of use. I saw that one could buy a replacement top from Presto and contacted them to see if the 06626 tempered glass top would work on the one I had purchased. Presto informed me that it would and that the replacement lid would only cost $19.99, half of what the skillet cost in the first place. And that was not even counting the wonderful additional shipping and handling costs which added another $9.00 dollars to the bill.
Needless to say I was not happy paying for a replacement cover of a cover that was clearly inadequately designed for the purpose it was made for. Target, thankfully, refunded me for the lemon and I bought a Walmart electric skillet with a tempered glass cover complete with a steam vent to release pressure which the Presto 06620 does not have, which is perhaps why thermal cracking may be appearing on the Presto lid in the fist place.
Presto I bid you adieu forever. I hardly knew ye.
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