Hey, PJ ... not sure if this will be of any help but if I ever need to loosen up a cooked on mess by "soaking" something that can't be submerged, I often make a sort of "poultice". Just spread a bunch of wet (with whatever cleaning solution you want, i.e., water, vinegar, etc.) paper towels over the mess and press to ensure that they are in full contact. Cover the wet towels with plastic wrap to minimize evaporation, and let it sit for as long as needed. Just watch out for corrosion ... but it sounds like your cooktop surface may not be in danger of that.
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Panhead John it may not be the heat as much as not enough oil. For stir fries, especially involving rice, its a sticky endeavor. I had to constantly scrape the rice off the griddle when doing veggie fried rice the other night. That said, it came right up with my spatula, I just had to stay at it. I had oiled with plenty of avocado oil up front, and squirted it a few times during the cook.
Attjack is telling us to use higher heat, and he does enough stir fries to know.
Most of my flat top cooking is at 350-450 with the IR. I do know when I was doing everything in the wok this past winter - something that I will likely do again this winter - I would get it blazing hot on the gas stove before I ever added anything to it. Food cooled the wok down quickly, and I kept the heat on high. Of course, the gas stove in the house probably only has 12,000 BTU's per burner. Not really sufficient for the wok. I could go outside and use a much higher BTU burner, but then I could just use the flat top if I wanted to get cold or wet, haha.Comment
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Panhead John You really want to let it go until that first side has all the sear you want. After that it will release much more easily. I do that with small pieces of meat too. I try to get as much meat contact as possible so I spread out small pieces and push them against the griddle for maximum seating. -
Gotta agree. It will not release until it is ready.
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It appears that PJ has figured out to tweak his technique to resolve his issues, but in case anyone reading this thread persists in wanting to believe that there is some innate deficiency in this product, here's a picture of my griddle surface having used the techniques I enumerated above. It looks like this after each cook. I'm coming up on 7 months of fairly regular use, no less than once per week, often more. And I've not found any reason to "season" it with oil until it's time to cook, and then only using enough for the job at hand (admittedly a learned thing).
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For me, this is a pretty good reason.
The unit comes preseasoned from the factory, but it is important to clean and season the Hot Plate after each use to prevent rust, extend the life of your griddle, and create a non stick cooking surface. The seasoning of the griddle is a continuous process that must be repeated over the life of your griddle to ensure the best cooking experience and longest life of use.
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UPDATE TO THIS POST: I appreciate everyone’s comments and tips and have learned a few things from your answers. I made smash burgers last night and changed a few things in my cooking/cleaning procedures. Here’s what it seems like I was doing wrong.
1. I was cooking at too high of temps, causing a lot of the sticking issues I had. Last night I cooked bacon, onions and hash browns, along with the burger patties. With the exception of the hamburger patties, I cooked everything else on medium/medium low heat….👍
2. I was not allowing the meat to sear long enough before flipping. Even though I cooked the patties at 450*, I allowed them to sear for 3-4 minutes before flipping. Previously I was flipping after just a minute or less. Made a BIG difference. Sticking was minimal at most.
3. I cooked the bacon and onions first, making it easier to cook without trying to maintain different heat zones, less stressful too, than having 4 different things on the griddle at once.
4. I did a much better job of cleaning as I go. Even after applying the cheese to the patties, everything scraped up smoothly once they were done. I did this immediately after removing them, while the griddle was still hot.
5. This should have been mentioned earlier, but I did a thorough cleaning of the griddle surface ahead of my cook and then applied a light coating of oil afterwards. I will be doing a light seasoning of oil after each cook from here on out.
I was able to do a quick scraping of the food residue last night after my cook and everything scraped off well….took me maybe 1 minute at most. I did this while the griddle was still hot. This morning I just took a few paper towels and the rest of it cleaned right up! While this may seem like a lot of work reading this post, it actually didn’t take long at all. I’ve learned here first hand that…”with any new cooker there is a learning curve”. I retract my previous comments at the beginning of this post….💪
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Very cool! I too agree, let your burgers sear for a few minutes, on steel OR on ceramic. They get a better crust and stick not at all! Mine are 3/4 of the way done when I flip them - they get a flip, a light S&P, then cheese and within 30 seconds are stacked and ready to pull.
And I've started using ONIONS for seasoning my steel griddle. Works great.
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