Question for Blackstone (or other manufacturer) flat-top grill owners

[Haertig]

I have a question for Blackstone (or other brand) outdoor flat-top grill owners. Do you have problems with rust?

I have been researching these things and believe that I want one. But the topic of rusting comes up fairly often. Is this really a common issue, or is it just an issue for people who don't do basic maintenance and prevention?

I imagine if you use the grill often, it's going to be constantly treated to oil/grease coating and thus continuously seasoned and probably less susceptible to rust. But that's just my guess. I grill often, all winter long - cold and snow don't bother me. But with a flat-top I imagine I might use that a little less in the winter. When I say I grill a lot during the winter, that entails running outside, flipping what ever is on the grill, shutting the lid, then running back inside for a while. I get the impression that flat-top grilling is more of a "you're constantly there" type of cooking. So maybe not so enjoyable during a snowstorm. And you have the issue of snow getting all over the stuff you're cooking and the grill surface itself. I don't think you use a flat-top with the lid closed, do you?

Anyway, I can see that I might be using a flat-top less in the winter than I do my regular grills. So it might be more prone to rust. On the bright side, Colorado is an arid state so we don't often have fog or high humidity hanging around us to promote rust. I would think covering the flat-top device (regardless of a lid being present) would be paramount. All kinds of grill covers exist for that.

I don't want to have to do hours and hours of routine maintenance to keep a flat-top ready for use. But I'm thinking routine maintenance would be not much more than scraping residue off the grill and wiping it down with a light coating of oil after use. Like I do with my cast iron skillet.

So, from a rust/maintenance standpoint - are flat-top grills (stored outside on the deck under a cover blanket but not under a roof) a pain in the neck, or a non-issue?

Thanks in advance for any feedback!

 

[Mountain trapper]

Yes rust can be a problem on Blackstone griddles. We put extra greese on ours after each use and wipe it in all over the griddle. Plus we keep it covered with a Blackstone fitted cover. We see little to no rust on ours anymore.

 

[Bacpacker]

Yes rust can be a problem on Blackstone griddles. We put extra greese on ours after each use and wipe it in all over the griddle. Plus we keep it covered with a Blackstone fitted cover. We see little to no rust on ours anymore.

AGREE with Trapper. Keep it well greased and covered as best you can. It's very humid here, but I don't have big problems with rust. Keep it clean, oiled up well, and covered.

 

[Haertig]

Blackstone just arrived. Sitting in the box. I don't know how the delivery driver got it up to the top of my front stairs. I could barely drag it into the house. Weighs 97 lbs per the shipment info, and the box is not small.

I did a lot of research on covers. Initially I thought totally waterproof was the way to go. But it appears that if they aren't breathable that's just going to trap more moisture and condensation inside and do more harm than good. The secret appears to be to tent the cover upwards. I was going to just put on of those plastic buckets that plants come in from the nursery on top of the grill to raise the cover to a point so water can run off, but I found a cover that comes with a tenting device. I'll probably just use the plant bucket though - less chance of scratching the grill top. Mine grill has a hard cover on top of the cooking surface, so that should help in keeping water drips away from the griddle. I bought a cheap cover to start out with. With plans to make my own out of super heavy tarp material (22mil) later if need be (although that would be waterproof rather than water resistant/breathable, so maybe not a good idea. I also bought some "corner protectors" that I'm going to try out. The cornets of the grill cover and shelf look mighty sharp - cover slicing sharp. So we'll see if the corner protectors will work. The top cover is not supposed to be used during cooking so it shouldn't get terribly hot. But the shelf will. I don't expect the adhesive on the protectors to work. But a little duct tape or sheet metal screws should hold them in place if they prove to be useful in the first place.

I've bought some accessories that are typically recommended. Except for the squeeze bottles - I have those on my list but wanted to check locally first. Evidently there is a large range from **** to good out there and you just can't tell looking at Amazon pictures. I got the spatulas and bench scraper that YouTubes "Flat Top King" recommends.




Being a retired engineer, OF COURSE I put all my purchase choices into a spreadsheet as I compare them! Engineers just do stuff like this. We can't resist! Then as I make my choices, I remove the items that didn't make the cut. Do any of you experienced flat top grillers have any other recommendations for what would be a good and useful starting tool set? What I have, and have purchased (shipped and on the way) is below. Well, the price of the grill setup definitely increased with all the additions. Still a cheap project though. I'm looking forward to trying it out. I';; wait for a string of predicted sunny days before assembling the thing. I want to make sure the cover arrives first so the grill will be protected from day one.

 

[Bacpacker]

Glad you found the Flat Top King. Hes a local boy and has some really good recipes.
About all I've used are spatulas and the scraper. Squeeze bottles too. A good deal of the stuff on your spreadsheet we already had.

 

[Haertig]

Assembled my Blackstone yesterday. Today was supposed to be the day I'd season it. But I had to take a friend to the doctor and the appointment drug on forever. So I didn't get to the seasoning.

But I did at least get it sanded. Sanding is an optional step. I've always done it prior to seasoning my cast iron cookware, so I continued that trend with my new Blackstone. My cast iron is slick as snot and nothing sticks to it. I wanted the Blackstone to be the same. It's not like you're going to hurt a chunk of metal with sandpaper. Yeah, it gets uglier. But it's going to get ugly when you heat it up and season it anyway. Obviously you wouldn't sand something with a non-stick coating on it. But Blackstones don't have that. Some other brands of flat-top griddles DO have a coating however, so don't go sanding THOSE guys!

Below are pics of it first, as it came out of the box. And second, after I had sanded it. I used an oscillating tool with 120 grit paper for a first pass. There was one small area on the grill that ended up with black crud on it that wouldn't sand off. But sanding would change it's look. I found that it was some really thick sticky stuff - I could kind of scratch it off with my fingernail. The oscillating tool was evidently just smearing it around. I don't know what that was. Something that was on the grill (under the manufacturers finish?) or something that was on my oscillating tool? I did use brand new sanding pads on that, so it wasn't old residue from a previous sanding job. It was about a 5" square patch - it didn't appear anywhere else on the grill. I was able to scrape off that black tar like stuff with a razor blade. Hmmm. Whatever. This was easy since the grill surface was already really smooth from the sanding. Then at the end I followed up with 150 grit sandpaper by hand. That got rid of all traces of the black sticky stuff. After sanding you can see the weld marks from where they attached the stiffening frame on the underside of the grill.

Tomorrow I will do the seasoning. I plan on using avocado oil.

If I have time after that, I'll do the bread test. I bought two loaves of super cheap thin sliced white bread this afternoon. The bread test is where you pre-heat the grill to cooking temp then totally cover the grill surface with slices of bread (do this as quickly as possible). Wait about ten minutes and flip all the bread over, keeping each slice in the same place you picked it up from (do this quickly as well). Then take a picture of your grill covered in the toasted bread. You now have a nice reference to learn all the hot spots and cooler spots on your grill. Probably you'll end up with several pieces of charred black bread, other pieces of light brown bread, and then everything else in between. If you want, you can leave the flipped bread there for another ten minutes (adjust for best time after observing how the first test went). Flip the slices of bread in place again and take a second picture. See if it confirms what your first picture told you. Save or print your pictures for future reference (be sure to mark top/bottom/left/right or some way to keep the orientation straight when you're looking at them later.

 

[joel]

Thanks for the thread Haertig.
I know nothing about using a flattop & bought one.
I saw a few videos & ask a few questions.
A chef told me about grill screen & lemon juice as a cleaner.

 

[Haertig]

I got the Blackstone seasoned today. Instead of doing "the bread test" afterwards to map out the hot/cold spots of the grill, I decided to just use my infrared thermometer. That's actually a lot more useful information than a bunch of pieces of burned bread. The bread would work fine if you don't have an infrared thermometer, which to me seems to be a necessity for a Blackstone. They don't cost much ... maybe $20 or so. Now I have to figure out what I'm going to do with two loaves of the cheapest junk bread I found yesterday at the store when I was prepping for this temperature test. I'll have to see if our local food bank wants it. I'm not exactly excited about eating it myself.

Below are my grill temps. The reds are obviously the high temps, taken after the grill had been blazing away on HIGH for a while and temps had hit maximum. The blues are the low temps. To get the low temps, I turned off the grill and let it cool until the hottest place on the entire surface was 275. Then I lit it up again with the burners on LOW. I let it heat back up on LOW for about ten minutes - I figured it would be stabilized by that point (I did verify my assumption with my infrared thermometer - indeed, the temps had stabilized).

My Blackstone cooking surface is 28-3/4" x 18-1/4" per manufacturer documentation.

In this pic it looks like my grill has 4 burners. It actually only has 2. Each burner is shaped like an "H". In the heat pattern you see above it looks like there is an "H" in the middle. Not so. It is two side by side "H's". It's easy to tell where the grills hot spots are just by looking at the thing. Couldn't be more obvious. As it seasons more over time with frequent use the temp zones may become harder to see, but I doubt they'll ever totally go away. Even if the grill eventually turns totally black, it's not like this pattern is difficult to commit to memory. Each brand/model of grill may have different shapes of burners, but they're all going to be hottest right over the top of a burner. Duh.

What this experiment taught me is not to ask "Will my grill get hot enough?" It surely will. It will get hotter than you'd ever use for cooking. The correct question is "Will my grill simmer down cool enough?" And that answer appears to be "No" (you must use a few tricks to cook at low temperatures). Not with my Blackstone at least. I have read that eggs cook best around 300-325 degrees. I'm going to have to turn the burners OFF to get down that low. Another trick I've read is to keep the burners on LOW and squirt the grill with a little water to cool it down even further. Another thing to remember is that if you wanted to, say, cook a chicken breast at 400 but your grill was up at 475 you can still do that just fine. The act of adding the chicken breast to the grill will bring down the temperature in the spot where the chicken is sitting. As a matter of fact, you may have to increase the burner's gas to maintain the desired temp if you put something large on the grill. A couple of YouTube videos on grilling have mentioned that when you flip your food item, don't flip it back into the same spot it came from. Because that spot will have cooled down. Instead, flip it to a new spot on the grill that will be higher temp.

I have seen several warnings against pre-heating your grill on HIGH. You might warp or crack it, especially in cold weather. Looking at the temps this thing can reach, I don't doubt that one bit. I will be doing my preheating on LOW. Actually, the temps on LOW are just about perfect for most all cooking tasks. I'm thinking that using HIGH may be best reserved for bringing the grill back up to temp after some large something or other you're cooking has dragged the temps down. Saving a minute or two of pre-heat time by using HIGH just doesn't seem worth the risk to me. I did some playing around prior to seasoning today I think I'll be pre-heating my grill on LOW for 5 minutes, then MEDIUM for an additional 5 minutes. It should be ready for cooking after that. But I'll adjust timings as necessary as I find out how it works in real life cooking.

This temperature experiment and post is dedicated to the memory of Mr. Late Season Gnat. Unfortunately, he executed an ill-timed landing right in the middle of the high heat test. May his soul rest in peace.

 

[Bacpacker]

Interesting readings. I need to pattern mine and see what it does.
You mentioned watching Flat Top King on you tube. I know with some foods he cut off heat to one section and moves some stuff to that area while finishing up other parts of the meal. Or run one side low and one side hotter. Both technique seem viable to me.

 

[Haertig]

I finally go to cook on the new Blackstone last night. Learned some things, but the food came out good despite my newbie-ness.

Started off with a lb of thick cut bacon - to additionally season the grill and put it away for the rest of the week. I learned: Start the bacon at a cooler temp. The grill was 400+ when I threw the bacon down, and it stuck. However, those long thin blade griddle flippers I bought saved the day. They had no problem getting the stuck bacon up to flip. No sticking on the second side of the bacon, due to the grease on the grill. The bacon came out 100% fine - you'd never knew that it got stuck at first. But when I first threw it down there, I'd swear it was epoxied to the griddle. Those flippers are great - they lifted the stuck bacon without tearing it up at all. Lesson: Put the bacon down at a lower temp (250 maybe?) so that it has time to release some grease before the griddle is hot enough for it to stick.

Bacon lesson #2: You need more paper towels than you thought you would. And a bigger trash can too. The griddle itself is trivial to clean. Just scrape the grease right down that exit hole into the catch container. It's everything ELSE the bacon touched that needs paper towels for degreasing. Alternately, instead of a ton of paper towels, I suppose a real chef has pre-planned landing spots for things they may want to set down. Maybe spread out a piece of aluminum foil or some other kind of mat. Just randomly setting things down on whatever surface is handy is not fun to clean up after cooking bacon.

The dinner I did after the bacon was simple - Taco Bell clone Crunch Wrap Supremes. They came out good. Things cooked much faster than I thought they would. In an attempt to make them as much like Taco Bell as I could, I used one of those canned cheese things - a glass jar of cheese from Tostitos. I have never eaten this before, except when a place like Taco Bell uses it. Man, that stuff is gross. Use real cheese instead.

I couldn't find tostitos in the store. Is that what those crunchy circles are called? Like a taco shell, except flat. So I just used some corn chips instead - like Doritos, except without any flavorings. I had to break them up a little to make them flat, but who cares? As soon as you bite into the meal, the tostido breaks up anyway. And it's all wrapped in a large flour tortilla, so nothing falls out.

I thought it was going to be difficult to fold the outer wrap, turn it upside down and put it on the grill without all the contents falling out. Nope. That was easy. I did warm the tortilla on the griddle for a few seconds before using it. That softened it up and made it easier to wrap with. I'd say I only heated it for 10-15 seconds per side, but that did the trick. Straight from the package, tortillas can be a little dry and they tend to crack or break on the lines where you fold them.

One pound of ground beef makes four healthily stuffed crunchwraps. We ate the pretty ones, and I finally remembered to take a picture of the remaining ugly ones. They were fine, just being the first things I grilled they were not as aesthetically pleasing as the later ones where I had figured out better wrapping/grilling/flipping techniques. I forgot to take a picture of the back side of the things - where all the folded tortilla ends are - but they all sealed up perfectly on the grill. I over cooked the ones in this pic a tad, but they're not horrible. Just ugly. I didn't get the one on the left folded properly either. Live and learn. It's actually easy to do once you try it once or twice.

 

[Mountain trapper]

Today for dinner we're going to make potato pancakes on the Blackstone griddle. And of course an adequate amount of bacon to go along with it. Maybe a few eggs too.

 

[Haertig]

I've only cooked a few things on my Blackstone so far, but I've learned a lot.

Have everything prepped in advance, before you start grilling. Everyplace tells you this. It's true!

Have a large working area to stage things and set things down. Those little shelves on the sides of the griddle are woefully inadequate. I have been using a 3' x 3' table. And THAT is woefully inadequate. I find myself with a ton of things that need to be set down somewhere. Don't forget to have a place to set down messy things. I use a cardboard box lined with aluminum foil that gets thrown away after cooking.

As you are learning, it will take you a lot longer to cook things than you think it would. Tonight from start of prep to finished cleanup it took me two hours (which included 15 minutes to eat). And what did I produce in those two hours? TWO HAMBURGERS. That was actually four smash burgers, with two patties per served hamburger. I did cut up and saute some onions and mushrooms lettuce tomato, etc. What tools did I use to cook those two hamburgers? Two spatulas, one grill scraper, one meat smasher, parchment paper, one infrared thermometer, one melting dome, one raised rack, one apron, one headlamp, untold numbers of paper towels, squeeze bottle of oil, squeeze bottle of water, four little prep bowls to hold various ingredients, one 1/3 cup measuring cup to measure the meat for each smash burger, two plates for the burgers, one plastic tote caddy to carry everything outside, one baking sheet to carry all the food ingredients. And this list doesn't even include the food components!

I hate to say it, but I would have had those hamburgers done in 20 minutes on my regular propane grill. And I would have been enjoying a beer while I did that. But I'm learning. And I expect things to get better with the Blackstone. But you would have thought I was preparing a six course meal for a dozen people.

New Blackstone users - allow yourself plenty of time, allow yourself plenty of space. I think I'm going to go buy me one of those siz foot long tables! I might help to have a helper. It only took me about three minutes to clean up the grill after finishing cooking, then three more minutes to carry in all the stuff I didn't want the raccoons to chew on while we were eating inside. And the hamburgers were sitting there getting colder and colder as I was doing all this. Get yourself a helper and hand off the cooked food for them to garnish and deal with while you're cleaning up the griddle.