Whether it’s breakfast cooking bacon, eggs and sausage, sizzling steaks, or burgers on the grill, there is something spectacularly American about being able to whip up meals for family and friends on a griddle or grill.
If you want to cook anything, you need a grill and a griddle so that any meal becomes an adventure! There’s more to the grill and griddle combination than meets the eye, and there are some fundamental aspects of these cookers you need to consider before buying one.
Best Outdoor Griddle Grill Combo Cookers
Before we get to the actual combos, let’s briefly explore the crucial elements that you’d need to look at before you take one home.
Griddle Grill Combos Construction Materials
This is one of the most critical aspects to look at, as this choice will determine the durability and longevity of your grill and griddle over time. Most grills and griddles are made from stainless steel.
This is a tough and very durable material that will be able to handle the heat and the elements without suffering too much damage over years of use – but it’s not as tough as cast iron.
Cast iron has a significant advantage as it is tougher than stainless steel. You can season it using various cooking oils to extend its working life and impart that mystical flavor that only a well-seasoned cooking top can deliver.
Seasoning is a process whereby a light layer of oil is brushed over the cooking surface to protect it from rust and is an integral part of maintaining your cooking surface condition.
While you can get your cooking tops in other materials like aluminum or regular steel, your best choice is going to be cast iron with stainless steel as a close second. You can also get cookers made from nickel-plated steel, ceramic ware-enabled iron, and porcelain decorated steel.
The material influences the quality of heat retention, so stainless steel with its lower iron content will heat up faster than cast iron and cool down quicker. Cast iron has superb heat retention properties, but it takes longer to heat up and cool down than stainless steel.
Griddle Grill Combos Number Of Burners
With a cooker of this size and using it for cooking multiple foods at once, the rule of thumb is that the more burners, the better.
Without a good number of burners, you will end up with hot and cold cooking spots on the cooking surface. These don’t heat food evenly and are not something you want to deal with.
Multiple burners heat the whole cooking surface uniformly, allowing you to cook food with excellent results across the entire cooking surface!
Griddle Grill Combos Cooker Size
Choosing the size will depend significantly on how many people you’ll be cooking for and where you’ll be cooking. If it’s just you and your wife and you’ll be mainly indoor, a single or two-burner would be fine.
If it’s going to be for a larger family and friends and mostly done outside, then a four-burner or bigger would be a more obvious choice. If you’re thinking of a weekend away with just family or friends, then a two-burner system would be ideal.
For those larger cookouts and festive family gatherings, you’re going to need more cooking space, and looking at an eight-burner cooker may be the way to go there. Remember that just because you have four- or eight burners doesn’t mean you need to use them all.
While the smaller or medium size configurations may be better suited, take under consideration whether there could come a time where you may need to feed a lot more people than usual and whether the eight burner option may then be a more suitable choice.
Griddle Grill Combos Cooking Area
This ties in with the size as it again depends on the volume of food you’ll be making. From just 100 square inches to 950 square inches, there is a range of sizes to choose from, so be clear about your food volume to get the right size.
If you aren’t sure, instead get a cooker with a larger area, and if you then find that the anticipated food volume is less, you can simply make use of the space required.
Conversely, if you buy a smaller one and then discover your food volume is greater than expected, you may need to get a bigger cooker then.
Griddle Grill Combos Coating
Before you make your final choice, you need to consider whether your options are pre-seasoned or not, and no, this has nothing to do with football! Seasoning ensures that your food doesn’t stick to the cooking surface.
Some cookers are pre-seasoned, and some are not. If it is pre-seasoned, you’re good to go, and if not, you’ll have to season it before use.
All cookers should be adequately cleaned and seasoned after every cooking session to protect the cooking surface from rust. Although you can remove rust and reseason, it’s best to prevent rust in the first place.
Griddle Grill Combos Cleaning And Maintenance
Before making your choice, be sure of the cleaning and maintenance required as some of them have little spots that are difficult to get to, and others can disassemble easily for cleaning.
While a bit of smoke from leftover bits of food on your cooker may not be an issue for outdoor cooking, it could be unpleasant indoors.
You are looking for a grease management system, where the cooker top has a hole or funnel that captures excess oil and grease and allows it to flow off the cooking surface and into a grease trap.
Whether it’s a drawer or a container positioned under the cooking top doesn’t matter, but you need to ensure that excess fat and oil are not left on the griddle as this can add a great deal of oil to the food and alter the flavor.
🔥 Interested in a Griddle Troubleshooting Guide, check it out here.
Griddle Grill Combos Portability
Some cookers are easier to pack up and transport than others. If you are trekking your cooker around the country to camping or hunting sites, then best pick one which is designed to be transported without taking up the entire available luggage space.
Now that you have weighed up all the considerations, let us move on to the grill/griddle combos that could work best for you.
We’re going to look at three different size options, so whether indoor or outdoor, large family or small, you will have a good idea of what’s available.
Griddle Grill Combos Outdoor Or Indoor
When you think of a griddle and grill combo, your first thought is usually an outdoor venue, campsite by the lake, hunting camp, or seaside holiday home with a patio. Grilling and griddle cooking are also healthy ways to cook, and many folks like the idea of an indoor appliance that can be used to make daily meals.
Many of the cookers here would connect to supplied gas in a home rather than a portable cylinder, which offers some versatility in terms of fuel source and connection.
Getting rid of an electric stove or only using it when baking would reduce your electricity costs considerably, and having your cooker use the piped-in gas supply is a great alternative.
It makes cooking quicker as gas would be hotter than electricity and faster to get going as there is only a tiny window needed for the griddle or grill top to get hot with either two or four burners.
Also, if you have a set outside the barbecue area, you can consider installing a gas supply pipe to that area and then using the cooker for outdoor cooking as well.
Griddle Grill Combos Meal Versatility
Your choice of cooker will also greatly depend on the types of food you want to cook. If you’re not going to be grilling steak or salmon or similar dishes, then you may not need a griller. The same would be true for griddle cooking.
If most of your food will be grilled and you are not going to be doing eggs, bacon, and toasted sandwiches, then the grill-only option would be better suited. The problem, of course, is that it is always better to be versatile, so you have the option if you need it.
Blackstone 1554 Outdoor Griddle Station
This is a perfect cooker for any size party and comes equipped with four burners and a host of other features! This 36-inch cooking station has four burners and is a medium-large appliance with the cooking surface coming in at 720 square inches.
On this size cooking surface, you can do steaks, patties, ribs, vegetables, sausages, and pretty much anything else your heart desires!
Equipped with four fully adjustable burners and made from stainless steel, you can store utensils and cooking sauces on the side racks or the bottom shelf for easy access.
The four-burner configuration is ideal for cooking at full heat all around or using two burners as warmers while the other two are cooking flat out. The even heating setup prevents food from burning, and it gets cooked from the inside out.
One of this grill’s outstanding features is that this cooker is battery-ignited. This is not surprising as the Blackstone folks do consider everything in their design. So you don’t need to go searching for matches – simply push the button.
The storage compartment can hold a 20lb propane tank as well, so get it hooked up, get the gas on, hit the button, and bang! You’re good to go!
Another great little addition are the locking mechanisms on the legs and casters, so you don’t need to worry about any instability while cooking. The grease passes through a hole that leads into the specially placed container.
Blackstone is one of the leaders in these appliances, and it’s no wonder that this griddle/grill combo ticks all the boxes you’d like.
Royal Gourmet GB8000 Gas Grill With Griddle
This one is the big daddy with eight burners and a whopping 950 square inches of cooking space; this behemoth can handle 90 burgers at a time! So if you need a cooker for hungry mouths at Little League, this is the one for you.
One of the features of the Royal Gourmet is that it has bars, so those toasted sandwiches and steaks will have the restaurant-style sear marks along with that delectable smoky flavor.
Like the Blackstone, this one also comes with storage space on the side shelves and the bottom rack, and these are ideal for keeping spices, sauces, and marinades handy. If you don’t need all the space offered, you can fold the side shelves down and out of the way.
Some drawers capture the grease from a cleaning perspective, and these can be removed and cleaned once the cooking is done.
Another intelligent feature for the Royal Gourmet is that it comes with its own accessory kit. This kit includes spatulas, dispenser bottles for your special secret marinade, and a scraper to clean the surface once the cooking is done.
Grilla Grills Primate Gas Grill with Griddle
The smallest of the three cookers we’ve looked at so far, this one features a 500 square inch cooking surface which is still plenty of space to cook a reasonable volume and variety of food.
Made from heavy-duty stainless steel, an insulated hood, and easy to clean grease management, the Grilla is a grill beast! Ignition is done safely with the electric start, and once the first burner is lit, the others will follow.
Whether you’re doing breakfast with bacon and eggs on the grill and then lunch with seared tuna steaks, whole fillet, or burgers, you simply replace the griddle with the grill, and you’re good to go.
One of the banes of existence when cooking outdoors is the wind, and with the Grilla, you can use the lid to stop the wind from causing temperature fluctuations while cooking.
You can also use it to create an oven-like environment, allowing the heat to generate convection currents inside and add some heat from the top for that oven-style cooking result.
The adjustable four-burner configuration lets you control your heat everywhere on the cooking surface to ensure consistent heat to the cooking surface.
The double-insulated hood protects you and your food from sudden gusts of wind, especially if you are cooking thicker cuts and need consistent temperature.
Excess oil while cooking, whether indoors or outdoors, is fundamentally unhealthy, and it can often change the taste of your food as well. This grill, like the others, has a hole on the side of the griddle tray that lets excess oil drip off into the containers below.
The fold-down shelves found on either side of the grill give you plenty of space for your sauces, spices, and other cooking paraphernalia, and they can be folded down when not required.
Conclusion
With a range of cooking surface sizes and burner options, any of these three superb appliances will deliver outstanding meals for years to come. All you have to do now is decide which one is best suited for you and let the cooking begin!