How to Season a Blackstone Griddle
Five layers, about two and a half hours, and photos of each stage. Exactly how much conditioner to use and what the steel should look like as it changes color.
Carlos Lopez
9/11/20267 min read
How Do You Season a Blackstone Griddle?
Season a new Blackstone griddle by heating it to its highest setting until it smokes, then applying five thin layers of seasoning conditioner, letting each layer cook off for about twenty minutes before adding the next. The steel turns blue, then dark, then black. Plan on two to three hours total.
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Here's the situation. Nancy and I rent RVs, which means most of our gear has to earn its place — it gets packed, hauled, used, and put away again, and anything that turns into a project usually doesn't come back on the next trip.
The griddle was the one thing we bought knowing we'd have to do homework first. You can't just take a new Blackstone out of the box and cook on it. The steel comes bare, and if you put food on bare steel you get sticking, rust, and a surface that never quite recovers. It needs seasoning first — layers of oil baked onto the metal until they turn into a hard, black, naturally non-stick coating.
Every guide we read told us what to do. None of them told us what it would actually look like while it was happening, or how long we'd be standing there. So this is that version.
What You Need Before You Start
Everything laid out before the first layer. Conditioner, lighter, gloves on the shelf below.
The griddle itself. Ours is the Blackstone 22" OTG — the tabletop size, which is what made sense for us since everything has to fit in a rental. If you want to see how it compares to the others we looked at, we covered that in our camping griddle roundup.
Blackstone seasoning conditioner. This is what we used, five layers of it.
A cloth towel. Not paper towels. More on that below.
Long fireplace gloves. The kind you'd use to move a log. You're working over a surface at full heat for two hours.
A scraper and spatula set. You won't need these to season, but you'll want them the moment you're done.
The rubber griddle cover, for when it's finally cool.
Propane, and more than you think.
On the towel question: most guides say paper towels. I don't use them. They shed — tiny pieces tear off and stick to the hot surface, and on a griddle running at max heat those little fragments can lift and blow around. You end up with burnt flecks baked into the finish you're trying to build. I use a cloth towel instead and rotate it as I go, so no single face of it scorches through and starts leaving traces behind.
Seasoning a Blackstone Griddle, Layer by Layer
Preheat. Start the griddle and turn every burner to the highest setting. Then wait — about twenty to thirty minutes. You're waiting for two things: smoke coming off the surface, and the metal starting to change color. Don't rush this. Oil applied to a surface that isn't hot enough won't polymerize, it'll just sit there and go sticky.
First layer. Here's the part most guides leave vague. Everyone says "a thin coat," which tells you nothing. What I use is one normal spoonful — a regular tablespoon, not a teaspoon — poured onto the cloth, and that one spoonful covers the entire griddle.
Wearing the gloves, work it in a circular motion across the cooking surface, then keep going: the inside walls and front lip, and then the outside — the sides, the back, the front. Every piece of exposed metal gets a film. Bare steel is where rust starts, and the parts you can't see are the parts that get skipped.
One spoonful sounds like nothing when you're standing in front of a 22-inch surface. It's enough. That amount is what works for our 22" — if yours is larger or smaller, adjust from there.
And err on the low side, because too much oil costs you time. The excess has to burn off before the metal can take the layer in, so a heavy coat stretches a twenty-minute step into something considerably longer. If it's pooling anywhere, you've used too much.
Then wait about twenty minutes and watch the color. The steel goes a blueish shade. That blue is the sign it's working.
Second layer. Another thin coat, another twenty minutes.
Third layer. By now the blue is giving way to a darker tone. Twenty minutes.
Midway through. If you look closely there's still a little smoke coming off — that's oil still burning in.
Fourth layer. This is where you notice the smoke dropping off. Less smoke means the surface is taking the oil rather than burning it away. Twenty minutes.
Fifth and final layer. At the end of this one the griddle should be a deep, even black, with little to no smoke coming off it.
After the fifth layer, at the start of cool down. That shine is what you're aiming for.
Shut down. Turn off the propane and the griddle, close the lid, and leave it alone for a few hours. It needs to cool on its own.
Cover it. Once it's genuinely cool, put the rubber cover on before it goes into storage.
One thing about the towel when you're done: lay it out flat to cool completely before it goes anywhere. Oil-soaked cloth left balled up can heat itself, and that's a real fire risk. Once mine has cooled, I put it in a couple of grocery bags, tie them off, and then it goes in the trash.
Start to finish, counting the preheat, this took us the better part of two and a half hours. Budget an afternoon. This is not something to start an hour before you want to eat.
Does It Actually Work? The Smash Burger Test
A black griddle looks right, but looking right isn't the same as cooking right. So a few days later we had friends over and made smash burgers — which is about the most demanding thing you can ask of a fresh surface, since smashing a patty directly onto hot steel is exactly where sticking shows up.
Nothing stuck. The burgers released clean, and afterward the surface scraped down with no fight at all.
That's the moment the two and a half hours paid for themselves.
Keeping the Seasoning: What We Do After Every Cook
Seasoning isn't a one-time job. It's a base coat you keep adding to.
After every cook, once the griddle is cooling down but still warm, I wipe a thin layer of avocado oil across the surface. Avocado oil has a high smoke point, which is what you want — an oil that burns off too early leaves residue instead of building the finish. That thin post-cook layer is what keeps the top black and keeps it cooking the same way every time.
It takes about a minute and it's the difference between a griddle that gets better with use and one that slowly goes patchy.
So How Did It Do on Our First RV Trip?
Here's the honest answer: it didn't.
We packed the griddle for our Labor Day trip to the Smokies — first RV trip of the year, first time taking it anywhere. And then we pulled into the campground on arrival day and it was 107 degrees.
There was no version of that afternoon where standing over a propane griddle was a good idea. So it stayed in the storage bay the whole weekend, and we cooked inside instead.
We used it once we got home — early morning, on the back patio, in the shade, which is the only sensible way to run a griddle in a Tennessee summer. And it's going right back in for our Thanksgiving trip, which is longer and colder and much better griddle weather.
Which is its own small lesson about renting and packing: the gear you're most excited about isn't always the gear the weather lets you use. We'll take it anyway.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many times do you need to season a new Blackstone griddle? Five layers is what we did and what we'd do again. Some guides say three or four. The thing to go by isn't the count — it's the color and the smoke. When the surface is a deep even black and almost nothing is coming off it, you're done.
What oil is best for seasoning a griddle, and how much do you use? We used Blackstone's own seasoning conditioner for the initial five layers — about one tablespoon per layer on our 22" griddle, which covers the whole thing including the sides and back. Scale that up or down for a different size, and lean light: too much oil has to burn off before the metal can take the layer in, which drags out the whole process. For upkeep after each cook, we use avocado oil, because its high smoke point means it bakes onto the surface instead of burning off and leaving residue.
Do you have to re-season a griddle after storing it? Not fully, if you shut it down properly — cooled, oiled, covered. A light coat before the first cook of the season is usually enough. Full re-seasoning is for rust or a surface that's gone patchy.
Can you season a griddle at a campsite? You could, but we wouldn't. It's a two-to-three-hour job that burns a real amount of propane and needs you standing over it the whole time. Season it at home and arrive with it ready to cook.
Keep Exploring
Best Multi-Fuel Camping Stoves — we also looked at fuel flexibility for RV Trips
Funny RV & Camping Shirts — including our "We're New to This" tee, which we wore for most of the Labor Day trip and which has never been more accurate
Camping Griddle vs Campfire Grate vs RV Stove — We tried to cover all of our bases and luckily we had the RV stove in our first trip given the hot and stormy weather.
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