Before you head out to the griddle to whip up a delicious meal, you want to make sure you’ve gotten all your food prepped and ready to go. If everything is prepared in advance, cooking it will be the easiest part.
Having your prepped meats and vegetables by your griddle means you can cook without having to run back inside or worry about anything else. You can focus on cooking the food, so it comes out its best.
Because having your food properly prepared in advance is so important, we’ll cover our top 6 food prep accessories for griddle cooking on your flat top grill.
1. Cutting Boards and Knives
Proper cutting boards and knives are essential and frequently used food prep tools. When cooking food on a griddle, this is no different.
The griddle excels at cooking smaller or thinner pieces of food, so having good cutting boards and knives will help you cut meat and vegetables into the ideal size for cooking.
A perfect example of this would be for making a stir fry. You can trim any excess fat off meats and then cut them into small uniform size pieces that will cook quickly and evenly. The same goes for the vegetables. You want to make sure they are cut to the desired size, so they cook properly.
Having a few cutting boards is a good idea so you can prep raw meat and vegetables separately. I also recommend having a couple of different knives on hand. An all-around chef’s knife is great for cutting vegetables and just about anything, but I find a boning knife is better suited for trimming and cutting meats.
Kitchen Scale
When you’re looking at tasty griddle recipes online, they’ll often call for a certain amount of a particular food, but it’s measured in weight rather than volume. This is where a kitchen scale comes in handy.
You don’t want to eyeball it because you may use too much or too little of an ingredient, which can impact how the dish turns out.
One thing I love to use my scale for is when I’m making smash burgers. It allows me to measure the right amount of beef for each patty, so they are uniform in weight.
Scales allow you to measure by pounds, ounces, and grams so you can get very accurate readings whether you’re weighing something heavy or light. They also have a tare function allowing you to reset the scale to zero after putting an empty bowl or plate on it.
If you are looking for more consistent and measured foods, then a kitchen scale is the perfect option. It’ll help ensure you’re always cooking with the right amount of any ingredient that is measured by weight.
There are many good options on Amazon, and most of them manage to do a good job while not costing a lot.2.
3. Vegetable Chopper
Diced potatoes, onions, peppers, mushrooms, and zucchini are just a few of the many excellent foods to sauté on a flat top grill. You may also need burger toppings sliced like tomato and red onion.
It can be time-consuming and tedious when prepping vegetables or mushrooms with a knife. A vegetable chopper helps cut or dice the food to the desired size quickly and easily.
You can create delicious side dishes or incredible additions to other foods like burgers, fajitas, omelets, cheesesteaks, and more.
More often than not, you spend more time prepping ingredients and toppings for a dish than you do actually cooking it. If you are regularly slicing and dicing vegetables for meals on your griddle, then a vegetable chopper is worth considering. I recommend the Fullstar Vegetable Chopper, but there are additional choppers on Amazon that work well too.
4. Meat Tenderizer
The griddle is great for cooking thin cuts of meats. Cutlet-style meats cook up quick and easy on the flat top and are perfect for dishes like chicken parm, chicken fried steak, or a chicken Caprese sandwich.
Thicker cuts can be cooked on a griddle but are not as ideal as thinner cuts. Sometimes it can be difficult to cook the inside of the meat sufficiently without overcooking the outside.
A simple meat tenderizer can thin out and tenderize foods like chicken, steak, or pork. Place the meat on a cutting board and cover it with plastic wrap. Then hammer the meat out until it reaches the desired thickness.
You’ll find your food cooks quicker and more evenly since it’s all the same thickness. It’s a simple kitchen tool but great to have for griddle cooking. There’s not a lot of variety between them so that most any metal one will do.
5. Prep & Serve Trays
Transporting your uncooked food and cooked food in and out of the house can sometimes be challenging, but these trays help make the process easier.
There’s one for raw food and one for cooked food for starters so that you can avoid any cross-contamination. This safety issue can bring your get-together to a grinding halt.
They can hold a good amount of food, and they also have an edge along the perimeter to help prevent anything from falling off. I’ve definitely had a few burgers and dogs slide off my plate or cutting board in the past before I started using these.
The tray also provides a nice place for meat to rest before serving after taking it off the griddle. Any juices that collect will be confined to the tray and be easy to dispose of.
If you don’t have proper trays for transporting your food to and from the griddle, these are your best bet. I like the Cuisinart CPK-200 trays, but there are some other good options out there too.
6. Condiment Serving Container
If you’re cooking for a larger group, want to keep ingredients and toppings fresh, or like to be well organized, then a condiment serving container is a great accessory choice.
These containers not only segment your food into different compartments but keep it from getting too warm because of the ice chamber underneath.
These can help put foods you’re cooking within, so they are easy to grab and throw on the griddle as you go. They are also great if you want a “toppings bar” for foods like burgers or tacos.
Having all your prepped ingredients or toppings organized and kept fresh can be a big help to churning out excellent dishes on your griddle. If you’re not already using these, definitely consider picking one up or possibly a couple.
Final Thoughts
Cooking tools like spatulas, scrapers, and griddles presses get a lot of focus but don’t underestimate the value of food prep tools and accessories.
Prepping for your meals on the griddle is half the battle, so be sure you’re doing it the best way possible while saving yourself some time along the way. These are some of the top prep accessories you’ll benefit from using as a griddle cook.
Now that we covered prepping accessories take a look at cooking accessories. Here are our top 7 must-have griddle accessories, followed by 8 more must-have griddle accessories.
Read more expert griddle accessory reviews on Griddle Sizzle now!
