In 2023, a sweet-and-savory grilled cheese built around blueberries and brie earned me one of Blackstone’s Golden Spatulas and the title of Great Griddle Off Champion. With the Great Griddle Off returning this week, it seemed like the perfect time to look back at that cook—and at what I learned from entering a recipe that was a little outside the box.

Every once in a while, you make something that becomes connected to a particular moment in your cooking journey.

For me, that recipe is my blueberry brie dessert grilled cheese.

I created it for the Blackstone Great Griddle Off in 2023, entered it hoping people would find the idea interesting, and ultimately watched it become the recipe that earned me the Great Griddle Off championship and a Golden Spatula.

Three years later, I still have those Golden Spatulas, and seeing them brings me right back to that cook.

Now the Great Griddle Off is here again. Blackstone’s 2026 competition opens for entries August 17 and runs through August 23, so a whole new group of Blackstone cooks is about to start wondering the same things I wondered when I entered: What should I make? Is this idea creative enough? Is it too strange? Will anybody understand what I am trying to do?

If my experience in 2023 taught me anything, it is that the unusual idea may be exactly the one worth pursuing.

A Grilled Cheese That Wasn’t Really a Grilled Cheese

When most people hear the words grilled cheese, they probably picture something savory. Bread, melted cheese, maybe bacon, tomato, or another familiar addition.

I went in a very different direction.

My idea was to take the basic structure of a grilled cheese sandwich and turn it into dessert. The result paired blueberries with creamy brie between thick slices of bread, all cooked on the Blackstone until the outside was deeply golden and the cheese inside was warm and melted.

Once it was cut open, that was really the moment the sandwich came alive.

You had the crisp, browned bread on the outside, the brie melting out of the center, and the deep purple blueberry filling running into the cheese. A dusting of powdered sugar finished the dessert look and made it immediately clear that this was not supposed to be an ordinary grilled cheese sandwich.

It was familiar enough for people to understand what it was, but different enough that they had to look twice.

I think that combination mattered.

Do Something People Will Remember

There are countless delicious things you can make on a Blackstone.

That actually makes a cooking competition harder.

A perfectly cooked cheesesteak may taste incredible, but if twenty other people submit cheesesteaks, you need to think about what will make someone remember yours after seeing all the others.

That does not mean your recipe has to be complicated. In fact, overly complicated food can sometimes work against you. If an entry has fifteen components and nobody can immediately understand what the dish is supposed to be, creativity starts becoming confusion.

What I liked about the blueberry brie grilled cheese was that the concept could be understood almost instantly.

Dessert grilled cheese.

That was the idea.

The blueberries and brie made it unexpected, but the sandwich itself was still recognizable.

If I were giving one piece of advice to someone entering the Great Griddle Off this year, it would be to ask yourself a simple question:

What will make someone remember this dish five minutes after they see it?

That question is different from asking whether the recipe is good.

Your food absolutely needs to be good, but in a competition like this, memorable matters too.

The Blackstone Still Needed to Be Part of the Story

Another thing I wanted the recipe to demonstrate was that the griddle was not simply an appliance I happened to use because the contest required one.

The Blackstone was important to the dish.

A dessert grilled cheese works because of contrast. The outside of the bread needs that buttery, toasted crust while the inside becomes warm and soft. The flat griddle surface gives the bread broad, even contact with the heat, which is exactly what you want when trying to develop that golden exterior.

It is also one of the reasons I enjoy making sandwiches on a Blackstone. You have space to control the heat, move the sandwich when one side begins browning too quickly, and give the cheese time to melt without sacrificing the bread.

That principle is still relevant for this year’s competition. Blackstone’s 2026 rules require the majority of each submitted recipe to be cooked on a griddle top. You can submit one recipe in each of the three categories, for as many as three entries total.

The strongest entries, in my opinion, will probably be dishes where cooking on the griddle makes sense rather than recipes that feel as though they were simply adapted to meet a rule.

The Photograph Was Part of the Win

There is another part of my 2023 entry that deserves a lot more credit than I sometimes give it.

The photograph.

My wife, Justine, took the finished photograph of the blueberry brie dessert grilled cheese.

I cooked the sandwich, but she captured the image that represented it.

That distinction matters.

When people are looking at a cooking competition entry online, they cannot taste what you made. They cannot smell the butter browning on the griddle. They cannot experience the texture of the bread or feel the melted cheese pull apart when the sandwich is cut.

The photograph has to communicate some of that for you.

Justine’s picture showed the sandwich cut open with the brie melting into the blueberries and the filling spilling toward the cutting board. You could see the crisp toast, the powdered sugar, and the contrast between the dark berries and pale cheese.

It made the sandwich look like something you wanted to reach through the screen and try.

I have always said that a piece of that Golden Spatula belongs to her because the photo was her contribution to the entry. The recipe may have been mine, but the image people saw was hers.

That experience also changed the way we approach Blackstone Cooking content today. Justine has become our primary photographer and videographer during cooks because we have learned firsthand that presentation is not simply something you worry about after the food is finished. It is part of telling the story of the recipe.

Presentation Does Not Mean Making Food Look Fake

There is a difference between making food look good and making it look artificial.

I want someone looking at one of my pictures to believe that if they follow the recipe, they could make something that resembles what they are seeing.

That means I do not think competition food has to be surrounded by elaborate decorations or styled until it barely resembles something anyone would actually eat.

Sometimes the best presentation decision is simply cutting the food in the right place.

That was certainly true with the blueberry brie grilled cheese.

If I had photographed the sandwich whole, you would have seen beautifully toasted bread.

That would have been fine.

But once the sandwich was sliced open, you could see the entire reason the recipe existed.

The cheese.

The blueberries.

The color.

The texture.

The messiness.

The photograph suddenly told the story.

When you are preparing a competition entry, think about what someone needs to see in order to understand why your recipe is special.

Sometimes the answer is inside the food.

Cut it open.

Do Not Be Afraid of a Strange Idea

I think this is probably the lesson from 2023 that has stayed with me the most.

Creativity requires being willing to make something that might not work.

Blueberries and brie are not the first ingredients most people reach for when they decide to make grilled cheese.

That was the point.

The combination made sense once you thought about it. Brie is creamy and mild enough to work beautifully with fruit. Blueberries bring sweetness and acidity. Toasted bread gives you buttery richness and texture.

The dish was unusual, but it was not random.

That is an important distinction.

There is a temptation in competitions to add ingredients simply because they sound impressive. More toppings. More sauces. More expensive proteins. More everything.

But creativity is not measured by the number of things on the plate.

A strong idea has a reason behind it.

The blueberry brie grilled cheese worked because all of the components supported the same concept.

This Year’s Categories Give You Plenty of Room to Play

The 2026 Great Griddle Off has three categories: Food You’ve Seen in a Movie, Guilty Pleasures, and Your Take on a Childhood Favorite. Entrants can submit one recipe per category, and the majority of the recipe must be cooked on the griddle.

I actually think those categories are great prompts because each one gives you permission to bring some personality into the dish.

For Food You’ve Seen in a Movie, I would not simply ask what recognizable foods have appeared on screen. I would ask whether there is a way to take that food and make it unmistakably yours while still honoring the reference.

For Guilty Pleasures, this is probably not the time for restraint. Think about the food you know you probably should not eat as often as you would like—and then figure out how to make the Blackstone version worth every bite.

For Your Take on a Childhood Favorite, the story may be just as important as the recipe. What did you love eating when you were younger? What memory is connected to it? How could you keep enough of the original that people recognize it while improving or reinventing it with the skills you have now?

A good competition prompt gives you boundaries.

What you do inside those boundaries is where the creativity happens.

Give Yourself Time to Develop the Idea

One thing I would caution against is coming up with your entry the night before the deadline and assuming everything will work perfectly the first time.

Sometimes it does.

Usually, something changes.

Maybe the filling is too wet.

Maybe the bread cooks faster than the interior.

Maybe the sauce that sounded perfect in your head overwhelms everything else.

Maybe the dish tastes fantastic but looks terrible in photographs.

If you have time, make a test version.

Taste it critically.

Ask someone else to taste it.

Look at the finished dish through your phone camera.

You may discover that the recipe needs less of something, more of something, or a completely different presentation.

Cooking competitions reward creativity, but execution still matters.

A simple concept that is cooked extremely well is better than an ambitious concept that never quite comes together.

Think About the Final Photograph Before the Final Cook

This is something I understand much better now than I did when I first started creating food content.

Before the final version hits the griddle, know what photograph you are trying to capture.

Do you need the dish whole?

Do you need it sliced?

Do you want the griddle visible in the background?

Is there a sauce that needs to be added immediately before the picture?

Does the food need to be photographed while it is still steaming?

Will the cheese stop looking melted after five minutes?

Knowing those things before you finish cooking can make a tremendous difference.

Hot food changes quickly.

If you spend ten minutes deciding how to photograph it after the cook is over, the best moment may already be gone.

Share the Story Along With the Food

The Great Griddle Off is ultimately about recipes, but people connect with stories.

Why did you make this?

Why does this food matter to you?

Where did the idea come from?

What makes your version different?

You do not need to write a novel about every dish, but context can turn a picture of food into something people care about.

That is especially true for this year’s childhood-favorite category. If the dish reminds you of Saturday mornings with your grandparents or the meal your mom always made after baseball games, that memory becomes part of the entry.

Food is rarely just food.

That is one of the reasons cooking competitions can be so much fun.

You Cannot Control the Result

This may be the hardest lesson.

Once you submit your recipe, most of the process is out of your hands.

For the 2026 contest, voting will take place August 24 through August 27 through Blackstone’s Facebook and Instagram channels, with the winner scheduled to be announced August 28. Blackstone says entrants can also share their recipes using #GreatGriddleOff26 for the opportunity to receive additional votes.

At that point, you have made the food.

You have submitted the recipe.

You have taken the photograph.

And then you wait.

Not everyone can win.

That does not mean the entry was a failure.

One of the best parts of these events is seeing what other Blackstone cooks create. Someone will take an ingredient in a direction you never considered. Someone will make something completely ridiculous that somehow works. Someone relatively new to the griddle may create something that surprises everyone.

That is part of the fun.

The Golden Spatula Is Still Pretty Cool

I would be lying if I said winning did not matter.

It was awesome.

Getting the Great Griddle Off championship and receiving the Golden Spatula was one of those experiences that validated a lot of the experimentation and creativity I had been putting into Blackstone Cooking.

The prize also became a tangible reminder of the moment.

This year’s grand-prize winner will receive the Golden Spatula along with a 28-inch XL Griddle with Cabinet. Second and third place also receive Blackstone griddles, and the winners receive accessory bundles.

But even three years later, the part I remember most is still the recipe.

That strange blueberry-and-brie grilled cheese worked.

People responded to it.

And something I made on my Blackstone became part of the story of this channel.

My Advice for This Year’s Great Griddle Off

If you are thinking about entering this week, do it.

Do not talk yourself out of submitting because somebody else’s photography looks better.

Do not assume your idea is too simple.

Do not assume you need the most expensive ingredient.

Do not decide that your weird idea is too weird before you have even tried cooking it.

Instead, focus on creating something that represents the way you cook.

Make the Blackstone part of the recipe.

Give every ingredient a reason to be there.

Cook it well.

Make it look appetizing.

Tell people why you made it.

And above all, make something people will remember.

The Great Griddle Off accepts 2026 entries from August 17 through August 23, so this is the week to stop thinking about that idea and put it on the griddle.

Final Thoughts

When Justine and I bought our first Blackstone in 2019, I certainly was not imagining that a few years later I would be holding a Golden Spatula because of a blueberry brie dessert grilled cheese.

That is one of the things I love about cooking.

You never really know where one idea might lead.

The recipe that sounds a little strange may become the recipe people remember.

The photograph you almost did not take may become the picture that represents it.

And the cook you enter just because it sounds fun may end up becoming one of your favorite Blackstone memories.

My blueberry brie dessert grilled cheese did exactly that for me in 2023.

Now it is somebody else’s turn.

Fire up the griddle and give them something worth remembering.