Thicker steel behaves differently from a skillet. Once you know the temperatures and how much stove power you actually need, everything else is easy.
Every piece of cookware does the same job: take heat from a burner and move it into food. Steel is excellent at that — but how thick the metal is matters more than what it’s made of.
The thicker the plate, the more heat it can hold, the more evenly that heat spreads across the surface, and the less the temperature crashes the moment cold food hits it. That last part is what makes a real sear possible.
The Steelmade Flat Top is 3/16" solid American steel — about 50% thicker than the 11-gauge (1/8") steel used by most dedicated griddles, and several times thicker than a typical stamped pan.
Thermal camera images of a Flat Top heating on a domestic range. The burners are point sources — the steel is what turns them into a cooking surface.
Surface temperatures, measured with an infrared thermometer. The Flat Top is rated to 600°F — almost everything worth cooking happens below 500°F.
| Surface temp | Best for | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 250°F | Fried eggs | Low heat is the key to tender whites. Use butter rather than oil. |
| 300°F | Caramelizing | Gradually cooks and develops color on onions, garlic and peppers. |
| 325°F | Scrambled eggs | Also best with butter instead of oil. |
| 350°F | Slow roast | The temperature to finish meat on after a quick sear at high heat. |
| 365°F | Breakfast | The cook-everything temperature: pancakes, bacon, hash browns, sausage. |
| 400°F | All-round grilling | General-purpose temperature for meat and roasting vegetables. |
| 425°F | Stir fry | Right for cut vegetables, shrimp and cubed meats. |
| 450°F | Char | Builds a flavorful crust while sealing in the natural juices. |
| 500°F | Searing steak | One to three minutes per side, then finish at 350°F. |
Most cooktops only need to be set to 1/3 to 1/2 power to take a Flat Top past 500°F. Our test stoves reach 400°F at 3 out of 10.
Start low and bring the heat up gradually. It takes 10–15 minutes to preheat fully — do it while you’re prepping. Raising the temperature later is easy; bringing it back down is not.
Always heat with every burner under the plate, even for a small meal. Heating one corner of a solid steel plate is how you warp it. Cooking for one? Use a skillet.
Stove dials are not temperatures — they’re arbitrary numbers that mean something different on every range. An infrared thermometer tells you what the steel is actually doing, instantly, without touching it.
Point, pull the trigger, read the surface temperature. Once you’ve learned what “4 on your dial” means in degrees, you barely need it — and it’s just as useful on your grill, in your oven and on every other pan in the kitchen.
3/16" American steel, made in the USA, lifetime warranty. Tell us what you cook on and we’ll match you to the right size.
