How to Griddle Better: Diner-like Results at Home

If there’s a more iconically American dish than a plate of hashbrowns, eggs, bacon, and sausage at a roadside diner, I’d like to know what it is. Yes, others may be as iconic—cheeseburgers and fries jump immediately to mind—but not more so than this humble-yet-noble breakfast of staples. Of course, the whole thing is cooked on a griddle and that can be a little confusing to the average home cook. How hot should the griddle be? And how do they make those hashbrowns so crisp instead of soggy? We think it’s time you got answers to those questions, so we cooked up a big breakfast so we could show you. Read on and learn to master the griddle.

The best griddle temps for breakfast

In general, the main goal of almost all griddle cooking is to brown and crisp. There are exceptions, to be sure, but we aren’t trying to steam our bacon or serve pale white hashbrowns! And for pretty much everything on the griddle, the temperature we’re looking for is 375°F (191°C). If that seems high, consider how crisping and browning work:

Crisping on a griddle

Cooking something until crisp means that we’re dehydrating it. That sounds odd, but it’s true. Bacon crisps when enough water has been cooked out of it, and the same goes for hashbrowns and even the golden brown edges of pancakes. No, they aren’t bone dry throughout, but they have been dried out in that one area where the crisp is. Not the whole stack of hashbrowns, but part of the shreds that are touching the pan.

To get that kind of water cook-out, we need some pretty high heat. You may remember from your physics classes all those years ago that water takes a lot of energy to heat, and even more to boil and drive off as steam. As such, a low-temp griddle just won’t do the trick.

Browning

Then there is browning. Browning is mostly caused by the Maillard reaction, a process wherein amino acids (present in proteins) break down in the presence of oxygen to create color and flavor molecules. It gets going in the low-300°F range and increases as temperature increases. You can get great Maillard browning at those lower temperatures if you have lots of time, but who wants to wait that long for breakfast! A higher temperature requires vigilance to prevent burning, but rewards us with beautiful food, faster.

In order to both crisp and brown the foods we love, we need a griddle that is plenty hot, but not so hot that it burns food without cooking it through. Hence the optimal 375°F (191°C).

Knowing how hot the griddle is

So we know how hot the griddle needs to be to sizzle out eggs and get our bacon cooked just-so. But how can we know if it is running at that temperature? Thermometers, of course! (No one is surprised here, are they?) In fact, an infrared thermometer like ThermoWorks’ Industrial IR with Circle Laser (IRK-2) is the very best tool for the job. Its wide temperature range can handle any griddle temp you throw at it, and its narrow focus beam can spot-read individual places on your griddle to check for local hotspots.

How to temp your griddle with an IR thermometer

IR thermometers measure the amount of infrared radiation being emitted by a surface. They then correlate that measurement with known physical constants to convert that light to a temperature. But to get the temp right, you have to use them the right way. First, always try to take a temperature with an IR gun at right angles to the surface. An oblique angle is less accurate for knowing the temperature in one given spot.

Also, IR thermometers need to be set to the correct emissivity to function properly. Emissivity is a number that expresses how much light is being reflected from the surface of an object versus how much infrared radiation it is emitting. A stainless steel pan, for instance, has a low emissivity because it reflects a lot of light, like a mirror, almost. A cast iron pan, however, reflects almost none and so has an emissivity of nearly 1. You can check the emissivity of dozens of surfaces using our emissivity table. Set the emissivity of your IRK-2 appropriately for your griddle.

If you don’t want to change the setting and it’s set to 0.95, you can just put a little oil on the surface of the griddle. Point the thermometer straight at the oil puddle and it will give you an accurate reading.

Temping an electric griddle surface

You may think that using an electric griddle will solve your temperature control problems, but that just isn’t the case. Just as you should be verifying your oven’s temperature and using an air probe in a pellet smoker to monitor its temperature, an electric griddle may not be telling you the truth. Set it to the temperature you want, but verify that it’s running at temp with your IR thermometer. If not, adjust the electric control to bring it in line with what you want.

A few notes on cooking some classic griddle foods

Cooking sausage on the griddle

Sausage links and patties are classic. But they also present a safety concern. Yes, they’re small, but you don’t want to overcook them just to make sure they’re safe to eat. To be sure your links are done, stick them with a fast and accurate thermometer like Thermapen® ONE. Its probe tip is small enough to check the individual sausages and make sure they’re cooked to at least 160°F (71°C)—the food safety temp for sausages.

Pancake doneness temperature—yes, there is one!

No one likes an underdone pancake. (Well, no one you can trust does.) But you don’t have to rely on guessing your pancake doneness, you can rely on temperature. Grab your Thermapen ONE again and check the temp in the center of the pancake, looking for a temperature no lower than 190°F (88°C). If you can hit that, your pancakes will be as light and fluffy as possible.

Hashbrown cooking secrets

And while we’re here, let’s talk about the thermal problems with hashbrowns. For hashbrowns to cook up right, all the starches need to properly gelatinize, and that means that they need to get up to an internal temperature of about 203°F (95°C). If the potato strands are filled with loads of water, that’s hard to do (remember how hard water is to heat up?). To make the best ‘browns, you need to get rid of excess starch and excess water.

Grate your potatoes and rinse them very well in running water. Then put them, a few handfuls at a time, into a tea towel and wring them out hard. You’ll get a lot of water out. If you want them to be brighter white, you can re-rinse them and wring them one more time. Now they’re ready to cook (and brown) much more easily.

That being said, you can cook them even faster by pouring a little bit of water into their tangle right after you put them on the griddle. The steam will carry the heat up through the mass of taters, par-cooking some of them before they even come in contact with the surface. After that, they key is patience and just letting them sit still to brown.

Review and conclusion

Whether it’s a stack of flapjacks or a mess of hashbrowns, a pound of bacon, or a dozen eggs all over medium, it’s a blast to cook a big griddle breakfast. With careful monitoring of your griddle temperatures, using IRK-2 or another high-accuracy infrared thermometer, you can be sure everything will cook up just the way you like. Add your Thermapen ONE to the equation for perfect pancakes and safe sausages, and your breakfast is even better. Check your griddle temps, whether gas-powered or electric, and get diner-like results every time. Pass the hot sauce and ketchup, and happy cooking!

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