Bacon

If you’ve only been making bacon in a skillet on the stovetop or in the oven, you’re missing out on the convenient experience of cooking your favorite pork strips in a panini press. Not only is this method fast and easy, the cleanup is so much faster! Simply arrange the strips of bacon in a single layer on the press, close the lid, and leave them alone. After about 10 minutes or so, you shall be rewarded with perfectly crispy bacon with most of its guilt-inducing fat rendered. If you clean the grooves while the press is still slightly warm, a brief wipe-down will do. The grease slides off immediately.

Hash browns

Crispy breakfast hash browns can be a reality any morning you like when you enlist the assistance of a panini press. Lay your potato mixture on the grill and press down. The built-in pressure from the lid and the intensified heat help the shredded potatoes caramelize quickly, resulting in picture-perfect golden brown edges and a crisp-tender center you can’t help but marvel at. Once you cook hash browns this way, you’ll never want to go back to skillet-cooking. Skip the hovering around the stove pressing down with a spatula and take the easy route to hash brown bliss.

Brownies

This just in: you can make brownies using a panini press. Whoa. This game-changing technique lets you skip the oven and get straight to the brownies in much less time with way less effort. Not only can you whip up any old brownies in your trusty sandwich maker, you can cook up tasty ones that are decadently chocolatey, satisfyingly fudgy, and irresistibly chewy. Prepare the batter and transfer it to a round cake pan that’ll fit in your panini press, then close the lid and wait for the magic to happen. That’s it — eat brownies in about 20 minutes.

Chicken

I kick myself sometimes when I think of all the years I wasted not cooking chicken on a panini press. While there is no shortage of ways to cook chicken, throwing a couple of breasts on a sandwich press is undoubtedly the easiest way to go. When you need grilled chicken to make Taco Tuesday happen, you just want to have the cooked chicken ready to go and not have to figure out a recipe right then and there. With the panini press, you only need to season the chicken with salt and pepper, then plop the cutlets on and close the lid. The machine does the rest of the work.

Omelets

As an unabashed egg lover, I’m always disproportionately ecstatic when I find new ways to prepare these delicious orbs. As such, I’m naturally obsessed with making omelets in the panini press. After all, this preparation of eggs is the most obvious thing when you think of it. Omelets are basically egg pancakes, making them an ideal food for a press of any kind. Simply prepare your whisked egg mixture as usual and pour over the grates, then close the lid. Remove the omelet and roll it up to enjoy. If you’re using veggie add-ins, grill them in the panini press first, then pour the egg mixture on top.

Vegetables

Enjoy the warm weather feels of grilling food year-round when you use your panini press to cook vegetables 365 days a year. Achieve the impressive grill marks and charred smoky flavors of summer without going outside or cleaning your grill. Prepare your veggies by cutting them thinly, then arrange them in a single layer in the panini press. Close the lid and cook away. Whether you prep bell peppers, squash, or mushrooms, in no time your kitchen will smell like the best cookout in the neighborhood.

Burgers

In the vein of treating your panini press like a convenient indoor grill, try using it to cook burgers. Juicy, delectable burgers are a cinch to grill in the almighty press. Unlike cooking patties in a skillet, by using the panini press, you apply pressure to the meat uniformly, ensuring even cooking in addition to eliminating more of the fatty stuff. Healthier and delicious? Yes! You’ll revel in being able to achieve the smoky flavor of grilled burgers with little effort and easy cleanup.

Cookies

Yes, grilled cookies are a thing — and an easy one at that. I love baking cookies, but some days I just don’t feel like turning on the oven. On lazy days when I need a sugar fix, I flatten balls of cookie dough and throw them in the panini press instead. It’s a down-and-dirty method to help get cookies in hands as soon as humanly possible. I highly recommend you try this at home. By making cookies using your panini press instead of heating an entire oven, you save lots of energy. I mean, you only want to eat like, five cookies at a time anyway, right?

Cake

If making cookies using a panini press seems crazy, try making cake in one! The truth is that I often want cake, but maybe just not an entire 9-inch version all to myself. The good news? You can whip up some pretty adorable mini cakes using just a couple of ramekins and your reliable panini press. Prepare your favorite cake batter in a smaller quantity and transfer it to two greased ramekins. Place the cakes in your panini press and cook for 15 to 20 minutes. Once they’re set, you can enjoy them individually or frost and stack them to create a small layered cake.

Fish

Like chicken and burgers, fish is terrific food to cook using a panini press. Think of this awesome appliance as a useful indoor grill and take it from there. There are a ton reasons to incorporate more fish into your diet, yet people are resistant because it seems like a finicky ingredient to cook. Maybe but probably not when you opt to grill it with your panini press. Doing so makes preparing fish easy and makes cleanup a breeze, which might encourage you to eat fish even on the busiest of weeknights.

If you need a few pointers on how to grill fish e

Written by Jennifer En, mashed.com