The most common griddle cooking mistakes

By Cheri Sicard
We know that many of our readers cannot live without griddle cooking at camp, especially the ones with a Blackstone griddle. If you are among this griddle-loving group, the video below by griddle cooking expert Johnny Brunet can help you up your griddle cooking game as it exposes ten common griddle cooking mistakes. Are you doing any of these things?

#10 Sides too hot: The heat coming off the sides of the griddle is intense, which can result in melting plastics. Store plastic items and condiment containers elsewhere!

#9 Smash those burgers: Johnny says people don’t smash their smash burgers enough.  Put some muscle into it for a better burger. Here’s the press he uses.

#8 Zone cooking: Most griddles have four burners and four different potential cooking zones that you can use to accomplish various tasks at once. Johnny talks about how in the video.

#7 Get a cover: This will protect your griddle from rain or other elements. While this won’t ruin it, you will have to re-season it, something you can avoid with a cover.

#6 Oil overload:  Johnny briefly discusses the best oils for your griddle at point 2:30 in the video. While you can buy special seasoning oils for your griddle, he explains it is unnecessary. You can season your griddle with almost any edible oil.

#5 Don’t preheat on high: Preheat no higher than medium-high, or you risk warping your griddle, which is the one thing that is impossible to repair.

#4 Not prepping properly: Get everything you want to cook prepped before you head outside to your griddle.

#3 Cooking food in the wrong order: The order in which you cook matters if you want food to be cooked together and hot. Johnny discusses this at point 4:40 in the video.

#2 Excessively playing with the food: Johnny says that when cooking on the griddle, most people tend to touch and move the food, especially potatoes, too much. This is counterproductive to getting a sear or a crust on the food.

# 1 Temperature control: Johnny says this is the #1 most common mistake and that the temperature settings of low, medium, and high don’t tell you nearly enough useful information. He remedies this with a surface thermometer and an infrared thermometer.  Dialing in this one mistake will help your griddle cooking overall so that you will always have perfectly cooked griddle foods.

Do you have additional griddle cooking mistakes or tips? Be sure to drop them in the comments below.

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