Evo Grills

[Gil Bang 26,100]

Anybody have one?  

We are house sitting, and there's one in the  outdoor kitchen.  Cooking some fish that I caught earlier today.  About to give this thing a try. 

[dcbc 14,569]

It appears to be a somewhat small but highly priced griddle.  What's the appeal over a Blackstone?

[Gene Parmesan 4,023]

27 minutes ago, dcbc said:

It appears to be a somewhat small but highly priced griddle.  What's the appeal over a Blackstone?

I had to google it.  I've seen that style (maybe even that brand) on some youtube cooking channels.  I would guess it's better quality than a blackstone, but yeah no way that small of griddle is worth thousands of dollars.  It would be 100% a flex purchase, which makes sense why I see it on youtube cooking channels.  

[PantsTent 2,002]

Sam The Cooking Guy is the one I've seen with the whole suite of shit.  All looks nice for sure.

 

[Blotto 23,705]

1 hour ago, Gene Parmesan said:

I had to google it.  I've seen that style (maybe even that brand) on some youtube cooking channels.  I would guess it's better quality than a blackstone, but yeah no way that small of griddle is worth thousands of dollars.  It would be 100% a flex purchase, which makes sense why I see it on youtube cooking channels.  

You can always take out a 15 year note on it. 

[jimmyjazz 46,479]

I bet that guy's pit sweat really helps season those veggies.

[elfenix 34,387]

Anybody have one?  
We are house sitting, and there's one in the  outdoor kitchen.  Cooking some fish that I caught earlier today.  About to give this thing a try. 

Are you house sitting for sam the cooking guy?

[Gil Bang 26,100]

No, just a rich motherfucker that loves toys.

[PantsTent 2,002]

1 minute ago, elfenix said:

18 hours ago, Gil Bang said:

Anybody have one?  
We are house sitting, and there's one in the  outdoor kitchen.  Cooking some fish that I caught earlier today.  About to give this thing a try. 

Are you house sitting for sam the cooking guy?

Haha, I didn't think of that...Gil is in San Diego isn't he...

[Gil Bang 26,100]

1 minute ago, PantsTent said:

Haha, I didn't think of that...Gil is in San Diego isn't he...

I live in SD.   I'm housesitting in the FL Keys.

[Mo Horn 8,899]

10 minutes ago, Gil Bang said:

I live in SD.   I'm housesitting in the FL Keys.

This is how you humblebrag.

[Gil Bang 26,100]

yeah, I'm sitting on the patio, looking over the pool at the atlantic.  Probably go on a jet ski ride later, out to a sandbar.

[Gene Parmesan 4,023]

Not impressed unless you ride out with this

[Damor 1,237]

I've got one.  I had a Camp Chef before (pretty much a Blackstone), and there are some things better, some not as good.  I do love it and I use it all the time.

Advantages:
-- I think the surface area is a little larger than the Blackstone overall, but it's pretty close.
-- The circular drip tray around the outside makes grease management a little easier, and the cooktop is slightly curved so grease runs off evenly.
-- Gets hot AF quickly.  I sear steaks around 600F and that's set just above medium heat.  I don't know if you could go higher without warping it, but I'm not sure I'd ever want to.
-- It still has hot spots, but it's more even than my old rectangular griddle.  I like that for cooking large amounts of vegetables, tacos, etc.
-- The tighter fitting lid makes it good for steaming things.   Haven't ever tried using it as a pizza oven.

Disadvantages:
-- It only has an inner and outer ring, so you can't fine tune multiple temperature zones as easily as on a rectangular 4-burner.
-- The curved surface means if your oil or ghee or whatever is going to try to run off and it has to be scraped around.
-- OCD types who like cooking in Cartesian coordinates may struggle moving to a polar system.  Good thing I was a liberal arts major.
-- Duh, it's stupid expensive.  When we were building the outdoor kitchen, though, there weren't a lot of options for something more built-in without going commercial, which is even worse and nobody would install it anyway.  I actually have the tabletop model on a shelf made to fit it, because the "built in" is somehow even more expensive.
-- It still doesn't keep me from being a shitty cook.

[dcbc 14,569]

On 5/12/2023 at 6:57 PM, Damor said:

It still has hot spots

From reading about it, I thought the "zones" were purposeful, like a French cooking suite?

[dcbc 14,569]

On 5/12/2023 at 6:57 PM, Damor said:

OCD types who like cooking in Cartesian coordinates may struggle moving to a polar system.  Good thing I was a liberal arts major.

I was an English major.  I googled it.  I read about it.  I still don't know what you're on about there.  I don't think I want an explanation.  But maybe you should have been a scientist.

[52-80 19,281]

On 5/12/2023 at 4:28 PM, Gene Parmesan said:

  It would be 100% a flex purchase, which makes sense why I see it on youtube cooking channels.  

You mean it's loaned or given for free to youtuber as a form of advertisement...

[Damor 1,237]

On 5/14/2023 at 7:08 PM, dcbc said:

I was an English major.  I googled it.  I read about it.  I still don't know what you're on about there.  I don't think I want an explanation.  But maybe you should have been a scientist.

Well, that's what grad school was for.

It was  a dumb poorly thought out phrase, but you'll get an explanation and you'll like it.  I was probably just a bit OCD when cooking on my rectangular cooktop and had a nice, linear progression of temps from one side to another, and was a little guilty of cooking in a tidy and gridlike fashion.  With the Evo being circular, your temperature changes radiate outward from the center instead, so you either have to arrange things in a circular or radial pattern, or just randomly throw shit on there.  That took me a while to adjust to.

As for the French cooking suite, I guess I wasn't liberal-artsy enough to learn about those, but while yes, you can use the two zones on the Evo to cook at different temps, there's some variation even at the same distance from center you have to learn about.  Since a picture's worth more than my verbosity, in the action shot from yesterday's mother's day burgers, the patties are cooking at a higher temp than the buns are toasting, but I know from experience that the patty at about 2 o'clock and the buns from 1 to 2ish are going to cook more quickly, so you have to keep an eye on that portion of the griddle to keep them from burning:

But all of that is a long and awkward way to say that the Evo is great, but if you're happy with your Blackstone it doesn't offer any world-changing improvements unless you have built-in/aesthetic/wife approval factors.

[jimmyjazz 46,479]

How many Lodge griddle/grill pans would I need to create the same surface area?  3 or 4, at $60 a pop, then I use my existing grill?

Seems more cost effective, but I am merely a caveman cook.  ish

[Sam Lin 3,564]

If that's the goal, have a local metal shop laser cut you a piece of steel to fit your grill. Much less fiddly than a bunch of griddle pans, and you don't have the lost cooking space from the joints between pans.

Or, even easier and cheaper, just buy a griddle insert that fits your grill:

https://www.amazon.com/SQ180-Stainless-Universal-Griddle-Tailgating/dp/B000HQHBSQ

[jimmyjazz 46,479]

I like those ideas.  Counterpoint, it's easier to take a bunch of modular pans into the kitchen to wash them.

Counter-counterpoint:  who washes their grill surface?

[dcbc 14,569]

1 hour ago, Damor said:

Well, that's what grad school was for.

It was  a dumb poorly thought out phrase, but you'll get an explanation and you'll like it.  I was probably just a bit OCD when cooking on my rectangular cooktop and had a nice, linear progression of temps from one side to another, and was a little guilty of cooking in a tidy and gridlike fashion.  With the Evo being circular, your temperature changes radiate outward from the center instead, so you either have to arrange things in a circular or radial pattern, or just randomly throw shit on there.  That took me a while to adjust to.

As for the French cooking suite, I guess I wasn't liberal-artsy enough to learn about those, but while yes, you can use the two zones on the Evo to cook at different temps, there's some variation even at the same distance from center you have to learn about.  Since a picture's worth more than my verbosity, in the action shot from yesterday's mother's day burgers, the patties are cooking at a higher temp than the buns are toasting, but I know from experience that the patty at about 2 o'clock and the buns from 1 to 2ish are going to cook more quickly, so you have to keep an eye on that portion of the griddle to keep them from burning:

But all of that is a long and awkward way to say that the Evo is great, but if you're happy with your Blackstone it doesn't offer any world-changing improvements unless you have built-in/aesthetic/wife approval factors.

Thanks for the explanation.  I don't have a Blackstone or an Evo.

I should have said "French cooktop," which is part of the FCS

"The idea of the French Top is that when all the plates are in place, you have a flat surface to move cookware around on, with high heat in the center gradually cooling off as you move further away. "

 

https://www.signaturedesignskitchenbath.com/blog/what-is-a-french-top

 

 

Edited May 16, 2023 by dcbc

[Damor 1,237]

@dcbc Yeah, similar concept.  I'm glad I didn't know about those before we built or that would probably have been a few more thousand spent.  I don't know if those have just one central heat source whereas on the Evo you can adjust or even have off the inner or outer ring, but otherwise sounds similar.

@jimmyjazz I just scrape and oil it (and did with my older flattop as well), which is one reason I love cooking on it, almost no pots/pans to clean up.  I am a lazy caveman cook.

[kevwun 15,943]

You can buy a commercial kitchen flat top grill for less than that tiny thing.

[jimmyjazz 46,479]

14 minutes ago, kevwun said:

You can buy a commercial kitchen flat top grill for less than that tiny thing.

Would that put one's homeowners insurance in jeopardy?  On more than one occasion the guys at Ace Mart have told me that certain commercial appliances are a no-no for residential installation.  Maybe outdoor installation would be different.

[kevwun 15,943]

That part I have no clue about, but you can buy a simple electric one like this that is made to sit on top of another table, so it shouldn't be too big of a pain to incorporate in to an outdoor kitchen.  It's just silly to spend $4-5K on something that is the same size as a Weber kettle.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0051MMG2W/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

 

Edited May 16, 2023 by kevwun

[dcbc 14,569]

On 5/16/2023 at 10:14 AM, jimmyjazz said:

Would that put one's homeowners insurance in jeopardy?  On more than one occasion the guys at Ace Mart have told me that certain commercial appliances are a no-no for residential installation.  Maybe outdoor installation would be different.

Don't know about insurance.  But these are made for residential and have had my attention since first I saw them (not that I'm dropping that kind of cash on something like this).  But if that lottery hits . . .

 

https://www.leatelierparis.com/pages/ranges