Hi, I'm Justin.

I grew up in New York and somewhere along the way became the guy in the backyard with the grill going. Gas grill, charcoal, smoker. I cooked all of it. After attending Arizona State University I ended up staying in Arizona, which means year-round outdoor cooking and plenty of reasons to keep adding equipment to the patio.

In September 2020 I picked up a 36-inch Blackstone. I was already a serious backyard cook, so I wasn't expecting it to change much about how I thought about cooking. It did. The first thing that really hooked me was smash burgers: a loose ball of 80/20 beef pressed hard against screaming-hot steel, that crust that forms in the first two minutes, the way it eats completely differently from anything you pull off a grill. That was the first moment. The second was a weekend morning when I cooked eggs, bacon, and hashbrowns all at the same time on the same surface. No juggling burners, no timing things separately, no cold food waiting on other food. Everything finished together. That's when I understood what a flat-top actually is.

My wife and two kids are the primary beneficiaries (and occasional critics) of everything that comes off the Blackstone. Cooking for four is the sweet spot for a 36-inch griddle. You have room to run the main dish and a side or two at the same time, which is what makes weeknight dinners practical on the griddle and not just a weekend project.

Griddle Sizzle started as a place to keep my own notes: seasoning routines that actually worked, the accessories worth buying, and the recipes my family asked for again. It grew into this. Every recipe here has been cooked on real steel in a real backyard, and the tips come from trial, error, and a fair amount of scraped-off carbon. No sponsored opinions, no filler content, just what actually helps you cook better on the flat-top.

When I'm not at the griddle, I'm probably at the movie theater, a habit I've kept since growing up in New York that Arizona is perfectly set up to maintain.

The griddles I cook on

Everything on this site gets cooked on one of these four, a few times a week, for a family of four.

Where to find me

The best place to follow along is Pinterest, where I've been pinning griddle recipes and tips for years. I'm also on Instagram, Facebook, and X, or you can drop me a note.

I also run ProteinCrafted, where I write about the high-protein, low-carb cooking I do every day.