The griddle accessories worth buying

The four tests an accessory has to pass

The accessory aisle for this category is enormous and most of it is the same four useful items repackaged. Before anything gets onto a list like this one, we ask four questions of it, and they are the questions worth asking in a shop as well.

1. Does it do something the griddle cannot do without it? A melting dome does. A sauce brush does not — the kitchen drawer already answers that.
2. Does it replace a chore, or create one? Grease cup liners remove the single most unpleasant job in griddle ownership. A 30-piece tool set creates a storage problem.
3. Will it survive being near a hot plate? Thin stamped steel flexes, cheap plastic deforms, and fabric that cannot be wiped absorbs grease permanently.
4. Does it fit any griddle, or only yours? This is the one that decides whether an accessory is a safe purchase or a likely return, and it is the reason the list below is split the way it is.

That last test matters more than any specification. Roughly half of the items here work on any flat top ever made, and the other half have to match your griddle’s width, hood and grease system exactly. Buying in the wrong order — model-specific items before universal ones — is how people end up with a drawer of near-misses.

The buying order

If you bought a griddle this week and want to know what to add and when, this is the order. It is not a ranking by price or by how much we like each item; it is the sequence that gets the most use out of each purchase.

Owners who already have tools can skip to item five. Owners who have nothing at all should read the note on kits below before buying items two, three and four separately.

1. A cover, before anything else

On a bare carbon-steel griddle — which is most of them, including every Blackstone and both Traeger Flatrocks — the cover is not an accessory. It is the thing standing between your cooktop and a rust problem, and it costs a fraction of what a replacement plate does.

It has to match three things: the width, whether the griddle has a hood, and the cart style. A 36-inch cover cut for one brand will not sit correctly on another brand’s 36-inch cart, which is why covers are the most commonly returned item in this category. Vents are non-negotiable: an unvented cover traps condensation against steel, which is precisely the thing you bought it to prevent. Covers by size and burner count works through the sizing.

The honest limitation: a cover is a consumable. Seams, zips and the inner coating are what fail, usually after two or three seasons outdoors, and no cover survives being put on over a plate that is still warm.

2. Two spatulas, and only two

The pair of spatulas is the tool you touch on every single cook, and the only specification that matters is stiffness. A blade that flexes when you push it under a patty slides over the crust instead of lifting it, which is the difference between a burger that comes up whole and one that tears.

A long turner for moving food and a shorter, wider one for scooping covers essentially everything. Everything beyond that pair is the kit manufacturer counting pieces. What makes a spatula stiff enough.

Cons worth knowing: welded-handle spatulas conduct heat up to your hand faster than riveted ones, and the thin stamped blades that come bundled with budget griddles are the first thing most owners replace.

3. A scraper — the one that saves the surface

Griddle maintenance is almost entirely a sixty-second routine performed while the plate is still hot: scrape, wipe, thin film of oil. A proper flat scraper does that job in one pass where the edge of a spatula does it in six, and a hot plate releases residue that a cold one has glued down.

Match the scraper to your cooktop material. Steel is correct on bare carbon steel and wrong on a ceramic-coated top like the Pit Boss Ultimate, where it cuts through the coating you paid extra for. Scrapers, stones and what each strips separates the daily tools from the once-a-season ones.

4. Squeeze bottles, which cost almost nothing

Two bottles, one for oil and one for water. This is the least glamorous item on the page and the one with the best ratio of technique unlocked to money spent.

Dosing oil by eye from a jug gives you either a dry plate or a shallow fry; a narrow tip lays a controlled line, which is what a seared crust requires. The water bottle is what makes the after-cook routine fast, because steam lifts residue that scraping alone leaves behind, and it is also how you steam under the dome in the next item.

Two honest cons: wide-tip bottles over-dose oil and defeat the whole purpose, and oil left in a bottle on an outdoor griddle for a season goes rancid. Label them — oil and water look identical through opaque plastic.

5. A melting dome

A smash burger is done in roughly ninety seconds and cheese does not melt in ninety seconds. A dome plus a squirt of water from the bottle you just bought solves that in about ten, and the same trick steams onions, warms buns and finishes thicker food without burning the outside.

It fits any griddle, it is cheap, and it gets used on most cooks. Sizing and what to look for. The limitation is that a dome is a crude instrument — it traps steam, which is exactly what you do not want under anything you are trying to keep crisp.

6. Grease cup liners, if the cup fits them

Liners turn emptying the grease cup from a job you put off into one you do without thinking, and putting it off is how the cup overflows down the back of the cart.

They are model-specific. Rear-drain and front-drain cups are different shapes, and a liner cut for one will not seat in the other — check which your griddle has before buying. Which liner fits which cup. They are also a recurring cost rather than a one-off, and foil liners tear if you let the cup get genuinely full.

7. An infrared thermometer

Griddle knobs are labeled low to high, which tells you nothing about the surface temperature, and surface temperature is the whole game — pancakes want a moderate plate, smash burgers want one as hot as it gets. An infrared gun reads the plate in a second and finds the hot spots every griddle has in about thirty.

It is the item that most changes how well someone cooks on a griddle in the first month, and it works on any griddle, indoor or out. What to look for in a surface thermometer and the temperature chart to read it against.

The caveat is real: infrared thermometers read surface temperature only, so they are no substitute for a probe thermometer for doneness, and a shiny, freshly oiled plate can read low because polished metal reflects rather than emits.

8. A smash burger press, if you smash

Narrower use than the items above, which is why it is eighth rather than third, but on the cook it is for it is decisive. Crust comes from maximum contact between cold meat and hot steel for the first thirty seconds, and that needs weight and a genuinely flat face.

The light aluminum discs bundled in tool kits bounce off the patty instead of holding it down. Heavy cast iron with a flat face is the article. Presses, weight and face flatness, and the technique it belongs to.

9. A mat, if the griddle stands on something you care about

Grease spatter travels further than people expect and a wood deck, a composite deck or a rental patio does not recover from it. A mat is the cheapest insurance available against a permanent stain, and it also stops cart casters marking soft surfaces.

Buy one bigger than the griddle’s footprint — spatter lands beyond the cart, not under it. Mat sizing and materials. Nobody needs one on concrete or gravel, which is why it is ninth.

10. A hard cover or hood, last and biggest

This is the one accessory that changes what the griddle can cook rather than how comfortably you cook on it. Trapped heat lets you roast, melt and hold, and a hard cover deals with weather in a way fabric cannot.

It is also the most model-specific item in the category: mounts are matched to the model and often the model year, so you need both before ordering. Clearance above the griddle matters too, since a hood that cannot open fully is worse than none. Hard covers against hoods explains which one your griddle can take.

If you own nothing at all, consider a kit instead of items 2 to 5

A single kit is usually cheaper than buying two spatulas, a scraper, bottles and a dome separately, and a first-party kit is cut to your griddle’s dimensions. The trap is piece count: a 30-piece kit holds the same four or five useful tools as a 10-piece one plus twenty-odd items destined for a drawer, and kits economize precisely where it matters — spatula stiffness. How to judge a kit is the page for that decision.

What we would not buy

• Anything that duplicates a kitchen item. Tongs, sauce brushes, seasoning shakers and skewers are all sold as griddle accessories and none of them are.
• Branded seasoning blends, as a first purchase. A conditioner is a convenience with a usable viscosity, not a chemically different product from a high-smoke-point oil applied thinly. Which oils actually polymerize.
• Cleaning kits, as an everyday tool. They contain abrasives that strip seasoning by design, which makes them occasional-reset equipment rather than part of the daily routine. When to use one.
• A wind guard, unless wind is your problem. On an exposed or coastal patio it is the difference between a griddle that holds temperature and one that does not; anywhere sheltered it is a solution looking for a situation. Wind guards.
• A caddy or a carry bag bought early. Both are genuinely useful — one for not walking back to the kitchen mid-cook, one for a tabletop griddle that travels — but both are organization rather than capability, and both are model-specific.

The brand-ecosystem point nobody mentions

Accessory availability is not equal across brands, and it is invisible at the point of buying the griddle. Blackstone’s parts and accessory range is the deepest in the category; Traeger’s Flatrock line has the thinnest of the major four, which is a genuine ownership consideration rather than a specification one.

It matters twice: when you want a hood or a first-party cover that definitely fits, and in year four when a burner assembly or a regulator needs replacing. If you are still choosing between models, the two Traeger Flatrock sizes compared includes what the smaller ecosystem means in practice, and Blackstone against Traeger Flatrock weighs it against the heat advantage.

Cooking indoors instead? Almost nothing on this page transfers except the thermometer and the bottles — coated electric plates need plastic or silicone tools, not steel. Flat tops for an electric stove covers what indoor cooking actually needs.

What we cannot tell you

We have not run these through a test program, and this site has no test kitchen. What that rules out is durability claims about an individual listing: whether one brand’s cover outlasts another’s, or how a particular spatula holds up after two hundred cooks.

So the picks here are deliberately category picks, not SKU picks. What we will tell you is what to match, what each item replaces, what fails first and the order to buy in — which is the part of the decision that does not change when a listing goes out of stock. The selection rubric is at how we choose.