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My son-in-law in Alabama is my outdoor cooking influencer. He and his
father built a roof to cover his patio and has created an impressive
outdoor cooking space with TV, ceiling fan and lighting. He has
recently acquired a Blackstone flat top grill (aka griddle).
Flat top grills have not been on my radar because I didn't think I
needed another way to cook. We spend a good bit of time at a lake
house in East Texas and that's where I do most of the grilling of
meat. I bought one of those Traeger pellet smokers (Ironwood 650)
a few years ago (after Matt got one). And it has been fun to smoke
briskets, pork butt, ribs, etc when family members come to visit us
at the lake. Unlike traditional smokers that you have to feed with
pieces of wood to manage the temperature, the pellet grill is
more of a "set and forget" type of operation. As long as there are
enough wood pellets in the hopper (and the hopper holds a lot), it
will keep going and maintain the set temperature. It even has wifi
and and app that I can use to manage the grill from my phone.
I also have a Weber propane grill that we use for grilling other
meats such as burgers, hot dogs (I'm defining meat broadly),
sausage, chicken, fish etc.
My wife is typically the driver for new purchases. She became
inspired to research flat top grills during our visit to
Alabama after Matt cooked us some "smashburgers" on the flat top.
She imagines how nice it will be for me to cook up bacon and eggs
and pancakes on the griddle so we can have breakfast outdoors at
the lake house. The griddle is also good for cooking stuff that
would fall through the grates on my propane grill like vegetables,
shrimp, hash browns, rice etc.
So, I'm game with expanding my outdoor cooking game. To be honest,
it is fun to learn some new skills that get me away from screens.
My only issue is that we have limited deck space at the lake house
and we aren't planning to the existing grill or smoker. Weber has
introduced some attachments to their propane grills that may offer
an interesting solution.
Weber has ways to retrofit existing grills to either completely
replace the grill surface with a griddle or replace half of the
grill surface with a griddle. I linked to the Weber page above.
Some of these attachments are available at big box stores like
Lowes and Home Depot and Ace Hardware.
I'm leaning to this solution because it would give me the
flexibility of grilling vs. griddling without having to add yet
another large free-standing object to my deck. I'll have to
report back on how well this works. The reviews sound positive.
For more info about cooking on a flat top grill, check out:
Flat Top Grill Tips for Beginners
So, there in a nutshell is more than you ever wanted to know
about flat top grills.