Adding an outdoor flat top grill to your kitchen equipment can be a game-changer. It excels over grated grills for certain foods and provides a large surface area, enabling you to cook more items at once and diversify your meals.
Of course, just like any grill, you need to maintain and clean them properly. This will prevent damage and rust, ensure better-tasting food, and increase the longevity of your griddle. Additionally, regular cleaning prevents the buildup of harmful bacteria and food residue, which can contaminate your food and pose health risks. A clean griddle ensures safer cooking by reducing the chance of foodborne illnesses and helps in cooking healthier meals.
So, without wasting more of your time on an intro, here’s a step-by-step guide on cleaning your outdoor flat top griddle, what you’ll need, and further questions that might arise when it comes to griddle maintenance, cleaning, and restoration:
Prep & Tools You’ll Need
First — and this sounds obvious, but it’s worth reminding: make sure your flat top grill is completely cooled before you start cleaning. This is a no-brainer, but the first step in the cleaning process is getting it super hot (more on that in a sec).
Otherwise, here’s what you’ll need:
- Squirt bottle — not a spray bottle (helpful for more targeted bursts of water dispersion)
- Grill scraper or heavy-duty spatula
- Griddle brush
- Paper towels or rags
- High smoke point oil
- Soap
- Water
- Optionally, you could use a grill stone or steam cleaner too.
To the cleaning!
Cleaning Your Outdoor Flat Top Griddle Step-by-Step
Now for the actual cleaning, beginning with that pesky aforementioned pre-heating process. We’ll call that step zero.
Step 0) Carbonization and pre-cleaning prep
Before you start any actual cleaning, heat the griddle to 400-450 degrees and keep it there, closed, for about 10-15 minutes. As the name suggests, this crisps up and carbonizes leftover food debris and grease, making it less sticky and easier to remove as you can now chip it away.
Once you’ve let it cool, use the grill scraper or a strong spatula to chip off the now-carbonized bits of leftover food.
Step 1) Deep cleaning
Then comes the actual deeper cleaning portion.
Unlike grated grills, a flat top griddle allows you to pour water onto the surface. Do that, then turn the grill back on at around medium heat — yes, we know this is a lot of “heat up, cool down,” and we’re sorry to inform you that this won’t be the last time we tell you to turn your grill on and off again.
Heating this up helps loosen the grease and the even smaller bits of residue that you weren’t able to get out during the carbonization step.
Get it hot but not quite simmering — really, just get it as hot as possible before it’s too hot for your hands to clean with or, better yet, get it a bit hotter than you can touch and let it sit for a bit while it cools to a workable temperature.
[image of someone testing heat with back of hand]
Once it’s cooled to a temperature that’s still hot but not going to burn you, scrub the surface thoroughly with your griddle brush and a bit of mild dish soap. You’ll likely find some tougher spots of grease, probably in the corners and near the edges, which may need extra strong scrubbing. For the most stubborn areas, you might need to break out the grill stone or steam cleaner.
Step 2) Rinsing
This is pretty self-explanatory: Pour fresh water over the griddle to rinse away the stirred-up residue and soapy water and make sure all the soap has been completely removed.
Dry the griddle thoroughly with paper towels or clean rags, and ensure no moisture is left. Leftover water droplets can lead to rust, which negates the whole point of cleaning and maintaining your grill.
Step 3) Seasoning
If your flat top isn’t cast iron, ignore this step. However, this is a really important step for cast iron, which many, if not most, flat top grills are. Seasoning your cast iron flat top helps protect it, improves its cooking performance, and gives it non-stick properties.
Crucially, to season your flat top, you’ll need a neutral oil with a high smoke point. This means one that won’t smoke until at least 400 degrees Fahrenheit, preferably higher to 450+. Popular options include avocado, refined peanut (unrefined peanut oil has a much lower threshold), sunflower, rapeseed or canola, or safflower oil.
To season, pour a small amount of oil onto the griddle’s surface. Using a cloth, spread a thin, even layer over the whole cooking surface, making sure it’s consistently applied and that there aren’t any areas where it’s too thick and goopy.
Once it’s applied evenly, turn the cooktop on to medium-high heat and leave it — the oil will begin to cook onto the surface, smoking a bit and bonding with the iron. This will generally take about 20 to 30 minutes, after which you should turn it off and let the grill sit.
If you have the time and energy, you can repeat this process a couple more times to increase the seasoning effect.
Congratulations, you are now the proud owner of a clean, well-seasoned flat top grill!
Tips for Maintenance and Care
Now, arguably the most important thing you can do for your outdoor flat top is to be proactive in its maintenance. This will:
A. Make the deep cleaning sessions less strenuous
B. Make the deep cleaning sessions less frequently needed
C. Improve your griddle’s performance
D. Improve your griddle’s lifespan
E. Ensure healthier cooking by preventing the buildup of harmful bacteria and food residue
Essentially, a little bit of effort to keep it well-cared for will make everything better (and easier) down the line. Here are some tips and reminders to that end.
1. After each cooking session, scrape off food residue and wipe down the flat top with a damp rag before it totally cools down. Once it cools and sits like that for a while, food debris and grease will really start to stick on, making it much more difficult to clean off later.
2. Depending on usage, you’ll likely want to deep clean every one to two months — more during the summer outdoor cooking months, less during the winter if your usage goes down. And of course, if you don’t keep your flat top habitually clean or store it improperly, you’ll have to do so more often.
3. Dry your griddle thoroughly after cleaning. Moisture equals rust, and we don’t want that.
4. On that note, store an outdoor griddle properly with a weather-resistant but breathable cover, and ideally somewhere where it’s at least partially protected — or better yet fully protected — from rain and the elements.
5. Cast iron is notoriously hardy, but still take care to protect it while cleaning or cooking. That means avoiding digging in with abrasive pads or metal utensils that can scratch its surface, as well as cleaning with mild dish soap as opposed to something stronger. Harsher soaps can both damage the griddle’s surface and leave a residue that affects cooking and flavor.
6. Maintenance isn’t just proactively cleaning but also proactively re-seasoning your griddle like we mentioned above as the last step in the cleaning process. A good seasoning has non-stick properties while also adding a protective layer to help your flat top keep on cooking for as long as possible.
Other Questions We Get a Lot
There is a bit of a mythologizing about what feels like a paradox of cast iron — how can it last hundreds of years, and yet have such specific care requirements? There are some ambiguities that come with this, prompting us to see the following questions pop up:
Can I use soap and/or water on my griddle?
Yes! People often say you can never use soap or water on cast iron, but that’s mistaken. Mild dish soap and water are not only okay to use, but they’re sometimes necessary. What you shouldn’t do is go overboard with more heavy-duty dish soap and neglect to dry your griddle after — that is what will damage it.
It’s okay to use mild dish soap and water; just be sure to thoroughly dry it off after and then re-season it.
How do I remove rust from a griddle?
Depending on the extent of the rust, a grill stone or steel wool can often scrub rust off the surface. Once you’ve removed the rust, thoroughly clean with water, dry, and re-season. To restore cast iron from more extensive rusting, you might have to use more intensive techniques, including baking soda and vinegar, or even power tools in extreme cases (but it almost certainly won’t come to that).
Do I have to re-season my griddle after each use?
Nope! It is, however, a good practice to apply a hyper-thin coat of oil after each cleaning to maintain its protective coat.
How do I handle the most stubborn food residue that refuses to come off?
In these cases, pour water onto the griddle surface and let it sizzle or simmer (depending on the depth of the griddle and amount of water) to loosen the particles. From there, a griddle brush or steam cleaner should be able to scrub it off, although you might have to repeat this process a few times as residue loosens a bit at a time.
What if my griddle develops an overly-sticky surface?
This means an excess of oil has built up — and is one of the things you can avoid with proper shutdown and maintenance of your flat top after each use. In this case, heat the griddle to burn off excess oil, then scrape and clean as usual before (of course) re-seasoning.
Can I use my griddle during the winter?
Of course! Just be sure to take extra maintenance precautions to protect it from the elements — increased rain, snow, and general moisture plus cold weather can make your flat top more prone to rusting.
In addition, when cooking with your outdoor griddle in the winter, warm it up more slowly and generally be more gradual about changing its cooking temperature the colder the weather is. Like many materials, thermal shock can crack cast iron from extreme temperature changes.
Just like all your cookware and outdoor grills, proper, proactive maintenance and cleaning will help it perform better, last longer, and save you headaches down the road. There are three main steps you can take to ensure this: taking care of your griddle after each use, storing it properly, and doing regular deep cleans like we discussed here.
Also, because crowdsourcing from fellow enthusiasts can be the best way to figure out quirks and special tips, feel free to share any questions or experiences with us through email or social! Sometimes things can come up where it’s helpful to hear from people on a specific instance, and we’ll chime in occasionally to answer questions and offer tips too.
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