Blackstone 17" Tabletop

What single-burner really means

One temperature across the entire plate. You cannot sear at one end and hold at the other, toast buns while patties finish, or render bacon gently next to eggs going fast.

That is a bigger limitation than its 267 square inches. For a camping breakfast — eggs, then bacon, then the next thing, cooked in sequence — it is completely fine. For cooking a composed meal it is not, and no amount of technique gets around it.

The heat density problem

12,500 BTU across 267 square inches is 46.8 BTU per square inch — the lowest figure in our entire guide, on the griddle least able to afford it.

Small plates lose heat to the surrounding air disproportionately, because they have far more edge relative to their area. Add any wind and the effective shortfall gets worse. In practice this griddle struggles when you put a full load of cold food down: the surface temperature drops and food steams rather than searing.

Cook in smaller batches than the surface suggests, and let it recover between them. That is the technique that makes this griddle work.

Where it genuinely wins: fuel

1 lb propane bottles are the whole point. No tank to transport, no hose to remember, nothing to secure in a vehicle. Combined with the electric igniter — which matters more than it sounds when you are cooking somewhere windy — this is a griddle you can genuinely treat as camp kit.

The cost is that 1 lb bottles are expensive per cook. If this becomes your main griddle rather than your travel griddle, that adds up fast, and an adapter hose to a 20 lb tank is the obvious fix — at which point you have lost the portability you bought it for.

Who should buy it

Someone who already has a main griddle, or someone whose griddling is genuinely camping and tailgating rather than patio cooking. It is a good second griddle and a compromised first one.

If you want portability and two zones, the 22-inch tabletop is the upgrade, and the Royal Gourmet PD1301 gives you three separately controlled burners at 29.3 lb — more zone control than anything else that travels this easily.

Care, with a travel-specific warning

Bare carbon steel on a griddle that gets packed away damp is the worst combination in this category. The single most useful habit is to heat it dry and wipe oil on before packing it, not after you get home. Rust prevention matters more here than on any patio griddle.