Griddle thermometers

Infrared, not a probe

Two different instruments for two different questions.

A probe thermometer measures the internal temperature of food. Essential for doneness, useless for griddle surface temperature.

An infrared gun measures surface temperature without contact. That is what you need for a griddle, because the plate temperature is the variable that decides whether food sears or steams.

They complement each other. If you only buy one for griddle cooking, buy the infrared.

What it actually changes

1. “Medium” becomes a number

A knob position is not a temperature. It drifts with wind, ambient conditions and how full the tank is, and it means something different on every griddle.

Our temperature chart is only directly usable if you can read the plate. Otherwise it is a set of numbers you have to translate into knob positions by trial and error.

2. You find your hot spots

This is the bigger one. Every griddle heats unevenly — burners sit under specific areas, and edges run cooler because they lose heat to the air on three sides.

Thirty seconds reading nine points in a grid tells you where your plate is hot and where it is not, and you will never cook on it the same way again. Hot-spot mapping.

3. You can confirm seasoning temperature

The center can stop smoking while the edges have barely got going, and the edges are exactly where rust starts. Seasoning temperature.

What to look for

• Range of at least 100–600 °F. Most consumer guns comfortably exceed this.
• A fast response. You are taking nine readings, not one.
• A laser pointer so you know what you are aiming at — it does not affect the measurement, it just shows you the target.
• A sensible distance-to-spot ratio. The further away you stand, the larger the area being averaged. Stand close for a specific reading.

The accuracy trap

Infrared thermometers infer temperature from emitted radiation, and how much a surface emits depends on its emissivity. Most consumer guns assume a value around 0.95, which suits most cooking surfaces.

Bare, shiny steel has much lower emissivity, so a new or freshly stripped griddle plate can read 50 °F or more below its real temperature.

A seasoned plate — dark, matte — reads much closer to true. So:

• On a well-seasoned plate, trust the reading.
• On bare shiny steel, treat it as a relative measure — useful for comparing one area with another, unreliable as an absolute.
• If your gun lets you set emissivity, that is genuinely useful.

Nobody mentions this, and it is the reason people conclude their new griddle will not get hot.

Griddles with built-in thermometers

Some configurations — certain Weber Slate models, the LoCo with its digital displays — include temperature readout.

Useful, but it measures one point or infers from the burner, and it cannot tell you about the corner you are about to put a burger on. A handheld gun still earns its place.