When people first think about cooking on a Blackstone, the usual suspects come to mind: smash burgers, bacon, pancakes, fried rice, and cheesesteaks. Those are all great reasons to own a griddle, but some of my favorite Blackstone cooks have come from figuring out how to use that big piece of hot steel in ways people do not necessarily expect.

Over the years, I have baked puff pastry, deep-fried food, made sauces, created crispy cheese shells, and even used the griddle to cook fruit for dessert. None of these techniques replaces what the Blackstone does best, but they show just how versatile it can be once you stop thinking of it as something that only cooks food directly on the flat top.

Here are five ways I use my Blackstone that tend to surprise people.

1. I Use It as a Makeshift Oven

This year’s Great Griddle Off gave me a perfect excuse to test something I had been curious about: could I actually bake puff pastry on a Blackstone?

My entry was Groovy Griddle Spinach Puffs, inspired by Kronk’s spinach puffs from The Emperor’s New Groove. The filling was easy enough to make on the griddle, but I did not want to finish the pastries in a conventional oven. If this was going to be a Griddle Off recipe, I wanted the griddle to actually matter.

The solution was a warming rack and a large basting dome. I placed the assembled puff pastries on the rack, positioned it over the griddle, and covered everything with the dome. Instead of intense direct heat hitting the bottoms, the warming rack raised the pastries above the steel while the dome trapped hot air around them.

It worked. The pastry puffed, developed visible flaky layers, and browned on top.

I would not claim that a Blackstone suddenly replaces every oven in the kitchen, but accessories like a warming rack and dome can create an entirely different cooking environment than most people expect from a griddle.

2. I Deep-Fry Food in a Pan on the Griddle

I recently wrote an entire post about this one because it has become such a useful technique for me.

I place a sturdy metal pan filled with oil directly on the Blackstone and use the griddle as the heat source. Once the oil reaches around 350°F, I can fry foods normally while keeping the rest of the flat top available for other parts of the meal.

I have used this method for beer-battered fish, coconut shrimp, Big Mac-inspired egg rolls, and Captain Crunch chicken tenders.

The best part is that the frying can happen right beside everything else. Fish can fry while tortillas warm. Chicken tenders can cook while waffles or another component finish nearby. Egg-roll filling can be cooked directly on the griddle before the finished rolls go into the oil.

And, as a bonus, all of that deep-frying smell stays outside instead of taking over the kitchen.

3. I Make Cheese Into Part of the Structure

Cheese usually goes on food.

On a Blackstone, sometimes cheese becomes the container holding the food.

I have made breakfast burritos by melting shredded cheese directly on the griddle until it develops a crispy bottom, then rolling the finished burrito through that cheese so the outside becomes wrapped in a crispy cheese skirt.

I took the same idea even farther with ziti. I melted a large layer of cheese directly on the griddle, added saucy pasta and more cheese, then folded the crispy cheese layer around the pasta. It ended up looking almost like a burrito, except there was no tortilla at all.

The trick is patience. When cheese first melts, it is too soft to move. Once enough moisture cooks out and the bottom starts browning, it develops enough structure that you can lift, fold, or wrap it.

It is a simple technique, but it can completely change the texture of a familiar meal.

4. I Make Sauces Right Alongside the Meal

A Blackstone gives me enough surface area that I do not have to limit myself to what is touching the steel.

Sometimes I set a small pan directly on the griddle to make or warm a sauce while the rest of dinner cooks around it.

I have made homemade cheese sauces this way, including smoked queso and beer cheese. I have also used small pans for butter-and-garlic mixtures, like the bath we used to briefly cook lobster for our surf-and-turf lobster roll hot dogs at the Blackstone Social Summit.

Having that pan sitting directly on the griddle means the sauce stays part of the same cook. I can move it between hotter and cooler zones, keep an eye on it, and have everything ready at roughly the same time.

It is one of the reasons I think of the Blackstone more like an outdoor cooking station than simply a flat-top grill.

5. I Cook Dessert on It

Dessert is probably one of the most overlooked things you can make on a griddle.

Fruit is especially good.

Peaches cut in half and placed directly on the hot surface begin to caramelize, soften, and become noticeably sweeter. From there, they can be eaten as-is, topped with ice cream, or turned into part of a larger dessert.

Of course, my 2023 Great Griddle Off-winning blueberry brie dessert grilled cheese is another example. That recipe took something familiar—the grilled cheese sandwich—and pushed it into dessert territory with blueberries, brie, and a sweet finish.

The Blackstone is really good at creating contrast, and dessert benefits from that just as much as savory food does. Warm fruit with a caramelized surface, crisp bread around a sweet filling, or even something as simple as toasted cake can become a completely different dessert once it gets some direct heat.

The Griddle Is Really Just the Starting Point

I think one of the biggest changes in how I cook on a Blackstone happened when I stopped asking whether a food traditionally belongs on a griddle.

Instead, I started asking what the griddle could contribute to the recipe.

Sometimes that means direct heat.

Sometimes it means creating a crispy crust.

Sometimes it means using the Blackstone to heat a pan of oil or sauce.

Sometimes it means putting food on a warming rack, covering it with a dome, and creating a tiny outdoor oven.

That is where the experimentation gets fun.

Final Thoughts

Smash burgers will always belong on a Blackstone, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with firing up the griddle just to make a pile of burgers or a big breakfast.

But the Blackstone can do much more than that.

I have used mine to bake puff pastry, deep-fry chicken and seafood, turn cheese into crispy shells, make sauces, and cook desserts. Every time one of those experiments works, it opens the door to another recipe idea.

So if you have ever looked at a recipe and thought, “That isn’t really griddle food,” I would not dismiss it quite yet.

Sometimes you just need to change the question.

Instead of asking whether it belongs on a Blackstone, ask:

How could I make this work on a Blackstone?

That question has gotten me into trouble more than once.

Fortunately, it has also led to some pretty good food.