Flat Top Griddles (Grills & Smokers)

A solid steel plate replaces the grate on a flat top griddle, sitting over the same style of gas burners a grill uses. Food never meets an open flame and nothing falls through, which changes what you can cook outdoors more than any other format here.

Conduction does all the work. Cold rolled steel between 3/16 and 1/4 inch thick, roughly 5 to 6 millimeters, spreads burner heat across the whole surface and holds it when a pound of cold onions lands. Independently controlled burners create genuine zones, so a 36 inch plate runs a searing corner at 500 degrees and a warming corner at 250 at the same moment. Fat stays on the surface and runs to a grease channel and a cup instead of falling into fire, which removes flare ups entirely. The plate is bare steel and behaves like a cast iron pan. So it needs seasoning, meaning thin coats of oil baked into a hard nonstick layer.

Gas grills share the burners and hand you grill marks, smoke from drippings and a lid to cook indirectly under, none of which a griddle offers. Charcoal grills sit further away still. Treat this as an outdoor version of a restaurant flat top rather than a competitor to either one.

Breakfast for a crowd, smash burgers, fried rice, fajitas and anything small enough to drop through a grate are the reasons to own one, and a 36 inch plate at roughly 720 square inches cooks two dozen smash patties in a single pass. Households wanting steak marks and smoke should add a griddle rather than replace a grill with it. Storage is real, since a 36 inch model needs about 5 feet of clear width with the shelves out.

Plate thickness comes before every other question, because a thin plate warps and then pools oil in one corner forever. Count independently controlled burners, where four across 36 inches gives usable zones and two does not. Scrape the plate while it is hot, pour on a little water to steam the residue loose, then wipe it dry and rub in a thin film of oil, since bare steel left damp rusts within days. A hard cover matters more here than on any grill, as the cooking surface itself is the part that corrodes.