Griddle pan

The trade-off

Browning happens where food touches hot metal. On a flat pan, the entire underside is in contact, so the entire underside browns. On a ridged griddle, perhaps a fifth of the surface touches metal and the rest sits over air.

So a griddled steak has dark bars and pale gaps, and a pan-fried steak has an even dark crust. In flavour terms the flat pan wins clearly, because the crust is most of the flavour.

What the ridges do give you is drainage — fat runs into the channels rather than pooling under the food — and a visual signal that reads as grilled. For vegetables, halloumi and things that would otherwise sit in liquid, that is genuinely useful.

When it is the right pan

• Vegetables that release water — courgette, aubergine, peppers, asparagus. The ridges keep them out of their own liquid.
• Halloumi and firm cheese, which would spread and stick on a flat surface.
• Marinated food, where excess marinade drains away instead of burning.
• Anything fatty — sausages, chops, chicken thighs — where you want the fat to run off.
• When appearance matters. Bar marks look like a barbecue and there is nothing wrong with wanting that.
• Not for steak where crust matters most, not for anything you want a pan sauce from, and not for small or delicate items that fall between the ridges.

Getting good bar marks

1. Preheat the pan properly — longer than you think. Cast iron griddles need five minutes or more, and a lukewarm griddle gives grey stripes.
2. Oil the food, not the pan. Oil poured into a griddle runs into the channels where it burns and smokes.
3. Dry the surface of the food thoroughly.
4. Lay it down and do not move it. Two to three minutes for a clear mark.
5. For crosshatch marks, turn the food 90 degrees halfway through cooking that side, then flip and repeat.
6. Open a window. A griddle at the temperature it needs produces a great deal of smoke, and this is the main practical objection to using one indoors.

Living with one

• Cast iron is the material worth having — it holds the heat the ridges need. Thin non-stick griddles never get hot enough to mark properly.
• Cleaning between the ridges is genuinely awkward. A stiff brush and hot water while it is still warm is the only pleasant moment to do it.
• It smokes. A griddle indoors without extraction is unpleasant, and this is why many people use one twice and then leave it in a cupboard.
• It is not a substitute for a barbecue. Bar marks are not smoke, and the flavour of grilling over coals comes from fat dripping onto them.
• A heavy flat cast-iron pan is more useful for more of the time. If you can only own one, own that.

Common questions