At my house, we enjoy cooking outdoors. Whether we are cooking hot dogs over a campfire, or grilling burgers, everyone gets in on the fun. Oftentimes, we cook breakfast on an electric hot plate out on the deck. My wife likes cooking breakfast out there to keep the house from smelling like bacon all day. I‘m not sure why that is a good thing, but she likes it that way. Anyway, we all got excited when the Blackstone 36 Inch Outdoor Griddle arrived, and we have another good reason to cook outside.
Assembly
The Blackstone 36 Inch Outdoor griddle arrived in one big box. The packaging is good and solid, so none of the parts were damaged. A basic set of wrenches and a phillips head screwdriver and someone to help lift heavy parts are all you need to assemble the griddle. We studied the assembly instructions for a couple minutes and the griddle was assembled in less than 20 minutes. Assembly is easy and straightforward, but you can check out Blackstone‘s instructional assembly video HERE.
Construction
The build quality of the Blackstone Griddle is good. None of the parts felt flimsy, and the assembled griddle does not feel wobbly. Moving the griddle is easy with the pre-installed casters. Two casters are fixed and two locking casters swivel, so you can steer and lock the griddle into place. Four control valves for the burners give good flame adjustment for the stainless steel burners and the electric ignitor is handy.
Seasoning the cooktop
A first item of business is to season the cooktop just like you need to season cast iron cookware. Seasoning the cooktop will keep rust away and it makes a stick-resistant cook surface. You can check out a video about seasoning HERE. Blackstone recommends flax oil for seasoning, but any cooking oil will do. I used grapeseed oil for seasoning ours. Get the griddle good and hot and apply a thin coat of oil on every part of the cooktop. The oil will smoke, and the griddle will begin to turn black. The black discoloration is the oil bonding to the surface and it is this coating that makes the griddle stick resistant. Apply at least two thin coats of oil and wait for the smoke to stop before applying more coats.
Cooking on the Blackstone 36 Inch Outdoor Griddle
The 720 square inch 3/16 inch thick solid steel griddle spreads the heat out evenly, and the four burners put out 60,000 BTUs so there is plenty of heat. I cooked a whole package of bacon at once and followed that up with hash browns, fried eggs, and pancakes. Cooking on a big griddle like this is new to me and it is so nice to get the meal prepared quickly. As the bacon finished, I plopped on the potatoes and onions for hash browns, and then eggs as the last of the bacon finished up. Pancakes were last, but we cooked up a whole batch of batter by filling up the cooktop about twice. A trough in the front funnels grease to an included rectangular catcher.
Final thoughts
The Blackstone 36 Inch Outdoor Griddle retails for $299.99. You get a quality griddle for that price and it is worth the asking price. If you want to take your griddle on the road, the cooktop just lifts off and the base folds up easily. I highly recommend the Griddle Accessory kit, so you‘ll have those cool spatulas they use at the Japanese steakhouse. With that kit, you‘ll get a griddle scraper and a couple squirt bottles for oil and cleaning water.
I‘d like to thank Blackstone for providing the 36 Inch Outdoor Griddle for testing and review. My family loves it and we are going to eat outside in style from now on.