The George Foreman Lean Mean Fat Reducing Grilling Machine was the kitchen appliance America didn’t know it needed.
When it arrived in the mid-1990s, Food Network and food blogging had just been born. Martha Stewart was redefining home entertaining, and Richard Simmons had made low-fat fun. Salsa was outselling ketchup for the first time, a reflection of the country’s changing demographics and its surging interest in food and cooking.
Mr. Foreman, who had left boxing and became an evangelical preacher, was making money as a pitchman for Doritos and mufflers. He wasn’t an instant convert to the grill. An early model that the Salton company shipped him, as it searched for a spokesman, sat unused until his wife, Mary, pulled it out and made a couple of hamburgers.
Mr. Foreman agreed to let Salton, a manufacturer of juice extractors and pasta makers, slap his name on the grill, and by 1996 it had sold $5 million worth. The company would go on to sell more than 100 million of the appliances.
The George Foreman Grill infused itself into all layers of society. It became a dorm-room staple and a star on late-night television. Chefs at the sprawling Tavern on the Green in New York City set one up near the dining room to quickly grill tuna steaks for salade niçoise. Jimmy Breslin, the tough-talking newspaper columnist from Queens, kept one on the counter in his New York apartment and raved about it to visitors.
Mr. Foreman, who died on Friday at age 76, provided the magic that Salton needed to sell its recent acquisition, a countertop appliance with two nonstick metal grill plates held together with a floating hinge that could close over a beef patty and cook it in about two minutes.
And here was the real innovation: The grooved grilling surface was pitched 20 degrees so the fat would drain from the meat into a little plastic tray.
Low-fat food was wildly popular then, along with a newfound appreciation for cooking, especially for a generation that began toting the little grills to dorm rooms and first apartments.
Teri Anulewicz, a Georgia politician, was among them. Like countless young people just starting out on their own, she had received a George Foreman as a gift. In her first Atlanta apartment, which had no vent hood and no dishwasher, she pressed countless chicken breasts coated in Paul Prudhomme’s Meat Magic between those metal plates.
“I was a young woman,” she said, “who knew, thanks to always reading Cooking Light, that the boneless skinless chicken breast sat at the very top of the food pyramid for young women on a nonprofit salary.”
The George Foreman had a macho appeal, too. It played into the man-at-the-grill cliché, but was also a gateway appliance for young men looking to join a food revolution that was gaining traction.
The grill was also practical for vegetarians, who discovered that it kept 1990s-era vegetarian burgers from falling apart.
But its runaway success owed as much to its pitchman: a grinning former heavyweight champion of the world, dressed in an apron and a necktie. The infomercial was the perfect vehicle for Mr. Foreman, who mixed a preacher’s charisma and unabashed need to earn money with international fame to create a hit.
“You get all the flavor and you knock out the fat,” he’d say. “Tell them the king of the grill sent you.”
The celebrity chef Bobby Flay started watching boxing as a kid during the golden age of the heavyweight bout, when Mr. Foreman and Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier were superstars. He remembers what a revelation it was that a boxing champion could be the face of grilling.
“It made no sense, except it made perfect sense,” Mr. Flay said in an interview on Saturday. “His personality was so unbelievably infectious.”
The grill itself was pretty ingenious, too. “It was really the first American version of the panini machine,” he said.
Line extensions followed, including a cookbook, a version just for quesadillas and a grill with a colorful plastic dome that served as a bun warmer. Mr. Foreman and his partners sold their slice of the business in 1999 for an estimated $137.5 million.
The grill’s cultural cachet endures. The writer, actor and producer Mindy Kaling made it the star of a 2006 episode of “The Office.” The bumbling lead character, Michael Scott, burns his foot on one he kept next to his bed so he could make bacon for breakfast more efficiently.
Fancier appliance makers now sell versions that can cost nearly $200. And the George Foreman Grill company produces models that are smokeless, submersible or designed to grill 15 burgers outdoors.
But the 1995 model remains the classic. You can see one at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, near the first microwave, the Rival Crock-Pot and Julia Child’s complete kitchen.
