The Zojirushi EB-CC15 won two separate indoor-grill tests by being the least clever machine in each. Serious Eats put it first out of eight smokeless grills, finding that its perforated grate and open base did more to cut smoke than any of the smoke-reduction technology on rival units. Grillseeker's thermometer recorded the grate above 520°F, more than 100 degrees past Zojirushi's own rating, with sear marks they compared to a stoked charcoal grill. It is slower than a contact grill and the plate cannot go in the dishwasher.
Full review
Simplicity Beat the Technology
Serious Eats' Taylor Murray tested eight smokeless grills for a review updated in February 2026, grilling half-inch onion slices to expose hot spots, butterflied chicken breasts for five minutes a side, and — for the finalists — an unoiled New York strip steak to see what stuck. The Zojirushi EB-CC15 finished first, and she was surprised by it: "This small but mighty grill delivered surprisingly great results in my testing. Maybe I was expecting some of the more high-tech grills to outperform it, but, ultimately, simplicity won out."
There is very little to this machine. It comes apart into four pieces — a nonstick cooking grate with the heating element embedded in it, a metal drip pan, a plastic base, and a detachable cord with the heat-control knob built into the plug. Zojirushi rates it at 120 volts and 1,300 watts with a heat range of 176°F to 410°F, and it measures 18.1 by 12.2 by 3.2 inches at 7.7 pounds. Grillseeker, who assembled one, timed the process: "The Zojirushi grill comes in 4 pieces and assembles in under 5 minutes."
Over 520°F on a Grill Rated to 410°F
The most striking measurement anyone has taken on this grill comes from Grillseeker, who put an instrument on the grate rather than trusting the dial. Following Zojirushi's own four-minute preheat instruction, they recorded: "To our surprise the grate surface hit 400ºF in 5 minutes flat. An even bigger surprise was at the 8-10 minute marker where the grate temperature read 520ºF+. Zojirushi states the temperature range topping out at 410ºF, so this is why we were shocked to see such a high temperature." Left running for 25 minutes on high, the thermostat cycled and the hotter areas averaged around 500°F.
Heat that high changes what the appliance can do, and their description of the result is unambiguous: "The sear marks on the proteins and the vegetables reminded us of searing foods on a fully-stoked charcoal grill." They also confirmed the thermal isolation works — "Even though this appliance reached temperatures in excess of 520ºF the surrounding handles, base and surface it sat on remained cool to the touch." At the other end of the dial, with the control set halfway between off and low, they measured a genuine warming range of 160°F to 175°F.
The Holes Are the Whole Trick
Murray set out to find what actually reduces smoke on an indoor grill rather than what is advertised as reducing it, and her answer was not a fan, a water tray or an infrared element. "What led to the smoke reduction was a larger number of holes in the grill grate," she wrote. The causal chain is short: "Because a lot of smoke comes from burning fat, the faster it's removed from the heating element, the less smoke there is."
The Zojirushi is built around that principle without ever claiming to be. "The grill itself sits on a lightweight, open base with a drip tray beneath. The entire design allows for maximum airflow, so smoke can't get trapped anywhere long enough to be noticeable. The grill also has drip holes all over the cooking surface, so fat doesn't have a chance to linger and burn. I found that this had the greatest effect on the overall amount of smoke the grill let off, more than any other feature that claimed to decrease smoke." Reviewed's Sharon Franke, testing separately, reached the same practical conclusion about a grill with no lid to trap anything: "Even though it doesn't have a lid, we didn't notice much smoking during grilling."
Nothing in the Way
The EB-CC15 has no lid and no raised sides, which is a limitation on paper and an advantage in the kitchen. Murray's version: "I also liked that the grill has no sides, so if you want to cook skewers or a piece of meat with a large bone (hello, tomahawk ribeye), you don't have to worry about squishing it in." A lidded grill with walled edges dictates what fits; this one does not.
Two practical details follow from the open design. The cord is detachable and unusually long — Grillseeker measured it at 62 inches and called it "the longest we have seen with the electric grills we have reviewed so far," which means the grill can sit where you want it rather than where the outlet is. And when it is not in use, the controller and cord stow inside the drip pan and the whole thing collapses flat. What you give up is odour containment: there is no cover to hold cooking smells in, which is the one clear argument for the lidded Hamilton Beach in an apartment.
Ten Minutes for Six Burgers
Reviewed's Sharon Franke, a former New York City professional chef who has reviewed kitchen equipment for over 30 years, tested nine indoor grills by toasting bread to map heating evenness and then grilling burgers, chicken and salmon. Her results for the Zojirushi were good but slow: "In our tests, it took 10 minutes to cook six burgers and 20 minutes to grill salmon. That may not sound long, but it's more than twice the time most of the closed grills needed. However, food emerged fully cooked with sought-after grill marks."
That is the structural cost of an open grill, and it applies to the whole format rather than this model. A contact grill cooks both faces at once; an open one does not. Franke was explicit that this shaped her overall ranking: "In our tests, open grills didn't give us much better results than a closed grill and they can't be used to make a pressed sandwich. For this reason, we didn't select any of the open grills we tested as a top pick." She still named the Zojirushi the best open-facing grill she tested. Read the two reviews together and the picture is consistent: within open grills this is the best one, and open grills are slower than closed ones.
The Plate Cannot Go in the Dishwasher
This is the grill's one real design compromise and both Serious Eats and Grillseeker landed on it. Murray's complaint was short: "The grill plate is not dishwasher-safe, which would have been nice (though the drip tray is)." Grillseeker explains why — the heating element is embedded in the grate itself, so it cannot be submerged in water at all, let alone run through a machine.
What partly redeems it is a detail that decided the whole test. Murray found the Zojirushi's grate is coated on both faces, not just the top: "The Zojirushi is coated on the bottom as well as the top, so as fat drips down and congeals, it still won't stick when you go to clean it… Conversely, Hamilton Beach was harder to scrub since the bottom was uncoated." That was, in her words, the tiebreaker between the two grills. So the Zojirushi is the easier grill to hand wash and the Hamilton Beach is the easier one to put in a dishwasher — which of those matters depends entirely on how you clean. Grillseeker found the grate cleaned up in the sink with dish soap and a plastic brush, but did flag a cosmetic issue: "the cooking grate surface had some imperfections. The imperfection was not in the surface coating, but in the underlying metal surface."
An Interlock and a Footprint
One safety feature is worth knowing about because it is not on the spec sheet. Grillseeker found that "the added measure of a 'safety interlock' in the base of the unit prevents the user from accidentally plugging the temperature controller in without the drip pan installed, preventing product damage or a potential fire." On an appliance whose entire smoke strategy depends on fat falling through the grate into a pan, making it impossible to run without that pan is exactly the right interlock to build.
The size is the other thing to plan for. Franke's warning is worth quoting because it names all three places the problem shows up: "The Zojirushi model is large and will take up quite a bit of space on the countertop, in the dishwasher, and in a cabinet or closet if you're going to stash it away between uses." At 18.1 inches wide and 12.2 deep it is not a small object, though at 3.2 inches high it is the flattest grill here — half the height of the Hamilton Beach with its lid on. One caution on specifications: Zojirushi does not publish a cooking-surface area for the EB-CC15 anywhere on its product page or in the manual, so any square-inch figure you see on a retail listing is not a manufacturer number.
The Grill to Buy If You Only Want a Grill
The EB-CC15 is the right pick for someone who wants indoor grilling and nothing else — no air fryer, no panini press, no griddle. It is the only appliance here that won two separate independent tests, it produces the hardest sear of anything on this page by a measured margin, and its smoke performance comes from geometry rather than from a feature that can fail. The open surface is the practical reason to prefer it: skewers, tomahawk steaks and long fish fillets all fit.
Three things should send you elsewhere. If odour control in a small apartment is the priority, the lidded Hamilton Beach Searing Grill with Lid Window 25361 contains what this one releases. If you want to make pressed sandwiches, only the Breville BGR820XL The Smart Grill here does that. And if speed matters more than sear, a contact grill will cook six burgers in less than the ten minutes Reviewed measured. Otherwise this is the default recommendation, and it has been for two separate test kitchens.
Strengths
- +Serious Eats' top pick out of eight smokeless grills tested, and Reviewed's best open-facing grill out of nine — the only unit here that won two independent tests
- +Grillseeker measured the grate at 400°F in five minutes flat and above 520°F between eight and ten minutes, well past Zojirushi's own 410°F rating
- +Its grate is perforated all over, which Serious Eats identified as the single most effective smoke-reduction feature of anything she tested
- +Nonstick coating on both faces of the grate, so congealed fat on the underside wipes off — the exact detail that won it the test over the Hamilton Beach
- +No sides and no lid, so skewers and bone-in cuts sit on it without being squeezed in
- +62-inch cord measured by Grillseeker, the longest they had recorded on an indoor electric grill
- +A safety interlock in the base prevents plugging in the temperature controller unless the drip pan is fitted
Watch-outs
- −The grill plate is not dishwasher safe and cannot be submerged, because the heating element is embedded in it — only the base and drip tray go in the machine
- −Slow: Reviewed took 10 minutes to cook six burgers and 20 minutes for salmon, "more than twice the time most of the closed grills needed"
- −No lid at all, so nothing contains cooking odours in an apartment the way the Hamilton Beach's removable cover does
- −Grillseeker found imperfections in the metal beneath the coating on the cooking grate
- −At 18-3/4 inches deep it takes up real counter, dishwasher and cupboard space — Reviewed flagged the footprint specifically
- −Zojirushi publishes no cooking-surface area, so the sizes quoted by retailers are not manufacturer figures
How it compares
Serious Eats ranked this first and the Hamilton Beach Searing Grill with Lid Window 25361 second, and the deciding detail was the coating: the Zojirushi's grate is nonstick on both faces, the Hamilton Beach's only on top. The Hamilton Beach has the lid this one lacks, which matters for odours. Against the Ninja Sizzle Smokeless Indoor Grill & Griddle GR101 it gives up a griddle plate and a mesh lid but has a far bigger open surface; against the Breville BGR820XL The Smart Grill it cannot press a sandwich; and against the Ninja Foodi 5-in-1 Indoor Grill AG301 it does one job with no preheat wait.
Rating sources
“This small but mighty grill delivered surprisingly great results in my testing. Maybe I was expecting some of the more high-tech grills to outperform it, but, ultimately, simplicity won out.”
“Even though it doesn't have a lid, we didn't notice much smoking during grilling.”
“To our surprise the grate surface hit 400ºF in 5 minutes flat. An even bigger surprise was at the 8-10 minute marker where the grate temperature read 520ºF+.”
Our 4.4 score is the average of these published ratings. Ratings marked * were derived from the reviewer’s written analysis or video transcript — the publisher didn’t print an explicit numeric score, so we inferred one from their own words. Click through to verify. More about methodology.
