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Blackstone has quietly made a major upgrade to some of their Omnivore griddle plates. Their Omnivore plates were already advanced with more even heating, bracing to prevent warping, and better efficiency, but now some of them come pre-seasoned.

Steel griddle plates naturally rust if cooking oil isn’t continually applied and re-applied to them. To make sure griddles arrived to customers without rust, they always came coated in a thin coat of cooking oil.

They were never seasoned though. That was a major innovation that some other companies, like Weber, came out with that gave their griddle plates the edge.

For a griddle that doesn’t come from the factory seasoned, you have to heat it up, apply a thin layer of oil, smoke it off, then cool the griddle down. Then you have to repeat this process two more times to create that initial seasoning.

It’s a cumbersome process because a consumer is excited to use their new product, but they’re met with a chore before they can cook. A pre-seasoned griddle plate removes that friction, and gets new griddle owners cooking in no time.

Omnivore Blackout Griddle Plate

The new pre-seasoned plate is called the Omnivore Blackout griddle plate. They surprisingly don’t advertise it much on their home page and done have a filter for it.

The easiest way to screen for pre-seasoned griddles is look for one that in the stock photo is black in appearance. The other ones will be dark gray in color.

When you click into it, if you go through the details, you’ll see them advertised as Blackout models. Blackstone is including the new griddle plate on some of the models direct from them and some through retail partnerships.

Benefit From the Merger

Weber merged with Blackstone a little over a year ago. This innovation to the Omnivore griddle plate may be a function of IP sharing between the brands.

The first product we saw that appears to be a shared platform is a Santa Maria grill. Blackstone released the Bronco and Weber has a version coming out next year.

It’s good to see better products coming out from the two companies combining together. It take a long time to effectively integrate businesses, so I’m sure they’re just getting started.