Editorial policy

1. Every specification has a source

Every number on this site — cooking area, BTU, burner count, weight, dimensions, steel thickness, wattage — comes from a manufacturer page or a major retailer’s specification panel, and that source is linked on the page that uses it.

Nothing is estimated, interpolated or recalled from memory. If we cannot source a figure, the page says so or the figure does not appear.

2. Computed numbers are labeled as computed

Heat density — BTU per square inch — is our arithmetic on their published numbers, and we say so every time it appears. It is the most useful number in this category and no manufacturer publishes it, so it has to be calculated. The method.

3. We publish conflicts rather than resolving them quietly

Retailers genuinely disagree about specifications in this category, and the temptation is to pick a number and move on.

We do not. The Blackstone 28″ XL ships at three different BTU ratings under one surface area. Member’s Mark sells two ratings at 720 square inches. The Pit Boss Deluxe appears at 748 and 753 square inches. Each of those is flagged on the page, because a reader comparing listings will hit the same conflict and needs to know it is the listing that varies.

4. The claims we never make

This is the section that matters most, and it is absolute:

• We never claim to have tested anything. No “in our testing”, no “field-tested”, no “we used it for a month”. There is no test kitchen behind this site.
• We never publish a price. There is no verified price feed here, so every price slot sends you to the retailer. A number we cannot verify is worse than no number.
• We never publish star ratings or review counts. No verified source exists for them.
• We never publish testimonials. There are none on this site, invented or otherwise, and there never will be.
• We never invent credentials. Selena H. is not a chef and holds no culinary qualifications, and the about page says so plainly.

5. Scores are editorial, and never marked up as reviews

The 0–10 scores here are judgments derived from published specifications by a published rubric. They are opinions about specifications, not measurements.

Because of that they deliberately never appear in this site’s structured data. Marking an editorial score up as a product review rating would tell search engines we tested something we did not, which would contradict the sentence we print on every page.

6. Commission never affects a ranking

We are an Amazon Associate and we say so above the first affiliate link on every commercial page. What that funding does not buy is a position in a ranking.

Several pages here recommend spending less or nothing — a plate for a grill you own, not buying a griddle at all — and one carries no buy link by design because it answers a safety question. Full disclosure.

7. Safety content is never monetized

Where a page answers a safety question, it carries no product recommendation and no buy button. The indoor-propane page is the clearest example: the answer is no, and attaching a purchase to it would compromise the answer.

8. We do not cite unsourced content

A real finding from building this site: several of the highest-ranking pages for griddle comparisons are machine-generated, carry confident specification tables with no sourcing, and are wrong. One had an electric griddle’s wattage out by 150 W against the manufacturer’s own figure.

None of them are cited anywhere here. Where we could not verify both sides of a comparison from primary sources, we published the framework instead of the comparison and explained why.

9. Corrections are public

Material errors are logged at /corrections with what was wrong and what it is now, rather than quietly edited. Minor fixes — typos, broken links — are made silently.

Every page carries a visible “last updated” date.

10. No sponsored content, ever

No manufacturer has paid for or influenced anything on this site. We decline guest posts, paid link insertions and paid placement, and do not reply to those enquiries.

Holding us to this

If you find something on Sizzle & Scrape that breaks one of these rules, tell us: contact@sizzleandscrape.com. That is a correction we want to make.