Ok folks, time for the big reveal, and thanks to the generosity of some really great friends, the decision of what griddle I am getting is settled. Yvonne and I are now proud owners of the big bad Camp Chef FTG900 flat top grill!
I had to do the assembly last night in the garage, due to rain. You basically build the grill upside down, then flip it upright, and set the top on it. The top on this bad boy is 80 pounds or more - total weight is 160 pounds! It is very substantial. The wheels work very well - solid wheels at one end, and swivel casters at the other end. I was able to navigate a wet yard to get it from the garage to the pool area this evening.
Preheating on medium on all 6 burners gets the heat of the cooktop up to around 350 almost uniformly in 5 to 10 minutes. There is a hot spot at each end that runs up to 400 or so at the same setting as the interior burners. Knowing about the hot spots could be useful for placing pots for melting sauces, or I just turn the end burners down some. I plan an IR photo of the cooking surface at different heat levels as part of a detailed writeup/review of the cooker over the next few weeks.
Tonight, Yvonne watched on as I did my best to imitate a hibachi style cook of shrimp fried rice. More time was spent prepping and putting stuff into bowls than in the actual cook.
First - ready to start cooking... Once it was up to temp I turned off the 2 burners on the right, leaving the burners on the left around medium, and the ones in the middle on low, for 3 temperature zones.
Yvonne had an iron infusion at the cancer center today, and worked up enough energy to go outside and look on from a safe distance as I made dinner.... she really wanted to see this bad boy in action!
Started sautéing some onions in a squirt of peanut oil (I know, weird, but I use it for frying and the only other oils in the house were olive oil, sesame oil and truffle oil).
Once those were translucent, added some spices to the onions (minced garlic, pepper, powdered ginger), and dumped some peas and carrots on:
Followed by shrimp:
Everything just got a squirt of oil, spread it with the spatula, dump the bowl out. Easy peasy. Once the shrimp were looking pink and had been flipped around a couple times, it was time to dump on the rice - about 4-5 cups of cooked rice, and get 3 eggs going - the eggs went really quick.
And finally, cut the eggs in, added a little more soy sauce, used the spatulas to move it into a nice pile, and BOOM! DONE!
All in all I doubt the cooking took more than 10 minutes start to finish, and having SO MUCH SPACE... I never got more than about 2/3 of the way down the length of the cooktop for this cook, and used less than half the surface probably, but it is nice to know I have PLENTY of room to grow into bigger cooks.
I carried things inside, went back out with water and a scraper and did an initial quick clean, and then sat down and ate:
I think we both had seconds tonight! Things were still warm when I went out 20-30 minutes later, did a final wipe down and an oiling of the cooking surface, and its good to go for the next cook! If you've ever cleaned a commercial grill (I worked at Wendy's in 1983!), or have been to a hibachi style Japanese restaurant, you know the drill - squirt water, scrape, wipe with rags while hot.
All in all I think we are REALLY going to enjoy cooking on this thing, and I can see how it will be a very forgiving way to cook as well. The plan is to work on more veggie cooks for sure, and to try to get my lovely bride involved in the cooking too. I also need to work on my spatula skills - I just got a cheap Blackstone griddle tool set for use with two Grillgrate griddle plates a few weeks ago, and I am not ready to spin or catch an egg just yet. But I will work on it! I will say that this is a far superior experience for griddle cooking than my other outdoor griddle options (Drip 'N Griddle or Grillgrate griddle panels). The amount of oil used was pretty minimal, and I will look for a lighter high temp oil other than peanut oil, although I noticed no flavor contribution from that oil that was objectionable - it was certainly lighter than olive oil in flavor. The only food that stuck at all tonight were the shrimp, as I didn't have enough oil down when I dumped them out.
Now I gotta go flip through Paul Sidoriak allsid 's book, "The Flippin' Awesome Backyard Griddle Cookbook" and get some more ideas... it's currently one of my "coffee table" books in the den.
Later folks, and look for a more in depth review of the cooker itself once I have time to do some more scientific testing and get more cooks under my belt.
Jim
I had to do the assembly last night in the garage, due to rain. You basically build the grill upside down, then flip it upright, and set the top on it. The top on this bad boy is 80 pounds or more - total weight is 160 pounds! It is very substantial. The wheels work very well - solid wheels at one end, and swivel casters at the other end. I was able to navigate a wet yard to get it from the garage to the pool area this evening.
Preheating on medium on all 6 burners gets the heat of the cooktop up to around 350 almost uniformly in 5 to 10 minutes. There is a hot spot at each end that runs up to 400 or so at the same setting as the interior burners. Knowing about the hot spots could be useful for placing pots for melting sauces, or I just turn the end burners down some. I plan an IR photo of the cooking surface at different heat levels as part of a detailed writeup/review of the cooker over the next few weeks.
Tonight, Yvonne watched on as I did my best to imitate a hibachi style cook of shrimp fried rice. More time was spent prepping and putting stuff into bowls than in the actual cook.
First - ready to start cooking... Once it was up to temp I turned off the 2 burners on the right, leaving the burners on the left around medium, and the ones in the middle on low, for 3 temperature zones.
Yvonne had an iron infusion at the cancer center today, and worked up enough energy to go outside and look on from a safe distance as I made dinner.... she really wanted to see this bad boy in action!
Started sautéing some onions in a squirt of peanut oil (I know, weird, but I use it for frying and the only other oils in the house were olive oil, sesame oil and truffle oil).
Once those were translucent, added some spices to the onions (minced garlic, pepper, powdered ginger), and dumped some peas and carrots on:
Followed by shrimp:
Everything just got a squirt of oil, spread it with the spatula, dump the bowl out. Easy peasy. Once the shrimp were looking pink and had been flipped around a couple times, it was time to dump on the rice - about 4-5 cups of cooked rice, and get 3 eggs going - the eggs went really quick.
And finally, cut the eggs in, added a little more soy sauce, used the spatulas to move it into a nice pile, and BOOM! DONE!
All in all I doubt the cooking took more than 10 minutes start to finish, and having SO MUCH SPACE... I never got more than about 2/3 of the way down the length of the cooktop for this cook, and used less than half the surface probably, but it is nice to know I have PLENTY of room to grow into bigger cooks.
I carried things inside, went back out with water and a scraper and did an initial quick clean, and then sat down and ate:
I think we both had seconds tonight! Things were still warm when I went out 20-30 minutes later, did a final wipe down and an oiling of the cooking surface, and its good to go for the next cook! If you've ever cleaned a commercial grill (I worked at Wendy's in 1983!), or have been to a hibachi style Japanese restaurant, you know the drill - squirt water, scrape, wipe with rags while hot.
All in all I think we are REALLY going to enjoy cooking on this thing, and I can see how it will be a very forgiving way to cook as well. The plan is to work on more veggie cooks for sure, and to try to get my lovely bride involved in the cooking too. I also need to work on my spatula skills - I just got a cheap Blackstone griddle tool set for use with two Grillgrate griddle plates a few weeks ago, and I am not ready to spin or catch an egg just yet. But I will work on it! I will say that this is a far superior experience for griddle cooking than my other outdoor griddle options (Drip 'N Griddle or Grillgrate griddle panels). The amount of oil used was pretty minimal, and I will look for a lighter high temp oil other than peanut oil, although I noticed no flavor contribution from that oil that was objectionable - it was certainly lighter than olive oil in flavor. The only food that stuck at all tonight were the shrimp, as I didn't have enough oil down when I dumped them out.
Now I gotta go flip through Paul Sidoriak allsid 's book, "The Flippin' Awesome Backyard Griddle Cookbook" and get some more ideas... it's currently one of my "coffee table" books in the den.
Later folks, and look for a more in depth review of the cooker itself once I have time to do some more scientific testing and get more cooks under my belt.
Jim
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