They’re still doing those cooking party demonstrations? I went to one of those once years ago back in 1992. My buddy ended up buying the whole set, and it is insanely expensive as you have seen. About a year later, he got divorced and moved to another city. Before leaving, he gave me the Saladmaster Electric Skillet. It’s a heavy, oil filled monster, but I’m not that impressed with it. In fact, I hardly ever use it. Don’t get me wrong, it does the same job as any other electric skillet I’ve used, but I see no reason to pay the outrageous price for it.
Plus, the SS on the inside discolors easily! And even though they say you can rub that off with SS cleaner, you can’t. I tried everything I could think of to get the discoloration out, and nothing worked. They claim you can cook with no oil, and at the cooking party I went to, the guy did make chicken breasts without using oil in the electric skillet, but when I tried to do the same thing he did with some boneless pork chops, they stuck to the surface like made, and discolored the surface of the skillet
All in all, it’s a neat electric skillet, but not worth the price they charge IMO.
Besides that, with that cookware, the magic of cooking with no added oil is because of the vapor lock seal that is supposed to develop. That’s a pain to get to work, and you can often burn cuts of lean meat because there isn’t enough moisture to form the seal. My Buddy ended up not using that “feature” and ended up just cooking with them as if they were regular pans. The electric skillet I have has the same vapor lock design, but even when I’ve cooked chili mac or just plain chili that has loads of liquid, I could never get that seal to form properly, so I just use the thing like a regular electric skillet.
Do they still say you can stack the pots on each other thereby using the bottom of the top pot as the lid of the bottom pot? I always thought that was a neat idea, but my buddy never tried it. I can’t imagine using that configuration for cooking, but for holding things warm, it’s pretty neat.
Other than the stacking feature, I’m not impressed with the Saladmaster line. They are really well made (heavy duty construction, 5 ply SS, etc), but they just aren’t worth the money IMO they are asking for them.