I found this in the use and care manual. I would call and find out what the finish is and what metal it is made of. I wouldn't want a coated griddle either but I am curious why you want stainless steel. If you really like the range it would be pretty inexpensive to buy an add on griddle. They typically come in steel or aluminum though. There might be some in cast iron. All of these would take a seasoning and become nonstick. The aluminum might take a little longer. If this is cast iron and will take a seasoning, it might be pretty good as it seems to have notches that fit the grates.

"The griddle is intended for direct food cooking and can be used on both sides (Figures 2 and 3). Do not use pans or other cookware on the griddle. Doing so could damage the finish."

Thank you for the response. My guess would be that since there is a risk of "damage [to] the finish" it has some sort of coating on it.

I was looking at something like this, which fits over 4 burners http://www.webstaurantstore.com/24-x-27-x-3-add-on-griddle-top/117761151.html. Though I wonder if a stove has continuous grates if that will work.

I like that. It looks more like a built in griddle. Some questions might be
- What is the weight? Are you going to move it on and off often. I looked at the chef king 23x23 and it was heavy.
-How is the visibility to see the flame to adjust heat Maybe if you take the grease tray off you can see ok. You can probably learn to adjust without seeing the flame.
-Does it require the grates to be on or off? It might be trickier to fit if you have to have the grates off. It might just sit on top though.

I am currently using a coated cast aluminum griddle because it was dropped in my lap. I keep waiting for it to die. It does heat very evenly though. I really like that about it. I also have a smaller older uncoated cast aluminum one. The aluminum is a better conductor of heat so is more responsive to changes in heat and heats more evenly. Steel is much heavier and holds more heat.

Some other ones to consider.
Chef King has been used by quite a few forum members with success. It comes in 2 burner and 4 burner.
Chef King

I've also been looking at this aluminum one, but no one has tried it. It is sheet aluminum rather than cast, 7 guage I believe.
Royal griddle

My perfect griddle would be an uncoated cast aluminum 4 burner(23x23). 2 burner would be good too. .
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That $300 four-burner griddle from Webstaurant is only described as "steel." That means it probably is carbon steel (CS) rather than stainless steel (SS).

Do you really want a stainless steel griddle, anyway? Seems to me that a stainless griddle would be for looks rather than use.

I would think a stainless steel griddle would be undesireable from a cooking perspective. The Webstaurant griddle is listed as 7 gauge metal. IIRC, that's only about 1/8 or 3/16 inches thick. A stainless plate that thin is ikely to heat very unevenly. Remember why a lot of stainless pans have at least a "clad" base which includes aluminum or copper for heat dispersion?

From a cooking perspective, a CS griddle would be much more useful that an SS one. CS works like cast iron (CI) except that it can be made thinner and thus not so heavy as CI. (CI needs to be thicker to keep it from breaking). Once seasoned (which is pretty quick), CS surfaces develop a near non-stick surface just as CI does. Not only is that good for the morning pancakes etc., but it means you can use them with more acidic foods than you would with aluminum. (Don't use wine or vinegar to deglaze though; they contain tannins (unlike, say, tomatoes) and those react with the metal to give a sour metallic taste.) Like cast iron, CS pans have good heat retention abilities, which means they need to be pre-heated longer than an aluminum griddle.

Over time, of course, CS is going to look a lot less pretty than stainless. If you've seem the big griddles in a restaurant, you've seen what a well seasoned CS plate will look like.

But even if it is CS, I would still recommend against the $300 Webstaurant griddle . It is listed as 27" inches deep. This is fine for true commercial stoves which are deeper than residential stoves. But, with a residential stove like that 36" Icon, that griddle's front lip will either be sitting on the burner controls or will ovehang them. It will get hot and that will make it awkward to work the burner controls.

That 4-burner unit also will be awkward to move, clean, and store in a home kitchen. In my own kitchen, I don't know where I would put something that big when not using it. And, how do you pan on cleaning something that big, too?

The Chef King griddles that Wekick mentions are a better choice for an occasional griddle. Note that they are carbon steel (CS) rather than cast aluminum. The Chef Kings do have loop handles which help a lot in moving them, so they would be less awkward to handle that the Webstauraunt unit. I would still recommend the two-burner spanning unit over the 4 burner spanning unit. A two burner Chef King unit will be 14 x 23 and weigh 16 to 17 pounds and cost $55 to $80.. A four burner unit will be 23 x 23 unit and weigh something like 38 pounds and cost between $150 and $200 depending on where you buy it and how much you pay for shipping.

While the 4 burner Chef King unit will be only half the price of that Webstaurant model, it will only be slight less awkward to manuver, clean and store than that Webstaurant unit.

Will you be doing large scale breakfast or griddle production often enough to warrant having such a big griddle? Personally, if I were planning on frequent production use, I would be much more inclined to get a pair of the 14x23 units and just deploy them as needed.

For finding Chef Kings, besides the "Rocky Mountain" site that wekick cited, there are others. You could check out the Dvorson's site and Amazon whose prices are a bit lower. Nuntbiz1 has reported that Amazon recently has been selling the Chef King 14x23 for under $60.

I have no experience with the aluminum Royal RoyGrid 23 that Wecick linked to. They certainly are a lot lighter than the Chef Kings. The 15x23 unit is only about 5 or 6 pounds compared to the 16 for the comparable Chef King.

But, my concern with that Royal is the 7 gauge aluminum specification. Again, IIRC, that is between 1/8" and 3/16" thick. To me, that doesn't really seem thick enough, though I may be wrong. I once used somebody else's similarly thin two-burner aluminum griddle. I don't recall the brand or the exact thickness, but my recollection is that it was only about 1/8" thick. My impression was that it had hot spots over the burners and cooler areas between them even after considerable pre-heating. Pancakes in between the burners did not cook as quickly or brown as evenly. Electric griddles, like Broil Kings, can get away with that kind of wide and thin aluminum because their heating elements extend continuously and go under more of the plate. You don't get as even a spread with thin metal over discreet gas burners. (Seems to me that Cooks Illustrated made that finding in some testing they did about ten years ago, but I cannot find the link at the moment.)

Anyway, the Royal Griddle might be just fine. I don't know. Before I bought one, I would really want to look for good reviews and would be leery of buying one without them.

As for the the griddle plate that comes with that 36" Icon stove, maybe somebody here has one of the Icons and will chime in if we get enough postings here to attract attention.

Unfortunately, I have no first hand knowledge of the Icon's griddle but I would bet that it is aluminum and non-stick simply because that is the kind of approach most major brands take. When I was stove shopping last year, I looked at a couple of GE stoves (Cafe and Profile) that came with griddles. GE's griddles had a black non-stick coating on the cooking surface, were about 1/4" inch thick, and seemed to be cast aluminum. I However, they were designed specifically for GE's elongated center griddle burner (found on its Profile and Cafe stoves). They were sort of oval shaped, something that seems to have been intended to mimic the kind of heating dispersion you get with electric griddles like the Broil Kings. Reviews on them have been mixed. Some folks like them, some think they are useless. They are small, too, which limits their usefulness for production cooking.

This post was edited by JWVideo on Thu, Mar 28, 13 at 13:47

Thank you for all of that information!!

I guess I was wrong in saying I wanted stainless steel. What I mean was that I wanted some sort of uncoated metal. In my ignorance, I just assumed it be stainless steel. SS is definitely NOT a requirement.

I do a lot of cooking for which a large griddle would be great. French toast, pancakes, eggs, bacon - often all at the same time! I anticipate I would use it for burgers and sandwiches as well.

I like the idea of the griddle that fits over the burners, since that would give it a more integrated feel. However if the ones that lay across the burners work well, that would be fine too. In fact it may be a necessity with the continuous grates. Thanks again for all of the information!

JW, I was looking at the Chef King and it is 7 gauge as well on the 23x23 and the 14x23, at least from what I can find on a quick search. The 12x20 is 10 gauge so maybe the bigger ones are 10 gauge somewhere. You could probably hardly lift it though! I think the first one kitten was looking at may come a little smaller to but that measurement (27 inch)may include the removable grease tray. The aluminum griddle I have now is thinner and it heats really evenly. With aluminum, it heats pretty quickly and you don't need or will it help to have prolonged heating like you would for cast iron. I had wall to wall Rubens on it the other day and they cooked so evenly. I really like the shape of the chef king and agree it would be more practical to have 2 smaller ones than one big one. The idea of aluminum though is very compelling because it heats so evenly and it easier to pick up. I don't really use a griddle for acidic things that I can think of too much but they do season which would help with that. My mother made pancakes on a well seasoned aluminum pan when we were growing up. She had it to the point of nonstick. We were in Louisiana a couple of weeks ago and they seem to use aluminum more. Magnalite was very prevalent in the secondary markets. I almost never see it where I live and I would love to find a big frying pan.

I just posted those links to show the product not as the place to buy them-- "My mama told me, you better shop around".