I'm Bob Joyce.
I've worked at Yale Appliance for 37 years in Boston.
I've had my Blackstone griddle for approximately three years.
And today we're going to see how good the Traeger is up against the Blackstone.
I love the fold-down shelves, the cover,
the tank indicator, and the clean-out is really nice.
It's on the rear of the Blackstone and
it's a smaller container versus this large container, which as you can see is here,
nice and easy and safer than leaning around the back of it.
Currently, right now, we're about 500 degrees on the Blackstone.
We're at 475 on the Traeger.
They've been running for approximately 12 minutes to this heat up-time.
So on the burners,
they do have three individual burners that are separated by a wall on each burner.
And then the top has zero space between it
so that if you are in a windy location versus here, you can see the gap.
The wind tends to blow this out on higher winds.
It's easy to reignite,
but it's just another nice feature that the tractor has.
So now we're going to cook on both of these products.
We're going to start with breakfast,
go to nice steak and cheese sandwiches, and then we're going to do burgers
and dogs and see what the results are for both.
Both the Trager and the Blackstone got up
to about 600 degrees in approximately 12 minutes.
Both have ease of igniting it with the push of a button.
The trager offers the two larger side
shelves, which is useful because it gave me more space to place my paper towels,
many of my seedlings, and any cooking utensils.
One thing that is useful about the Traeger is that it has three different cooking
zones, which will be handy when you want to cook different foods that require
different temperatures at the same time on the same surface.
Both the Traeger and the Blackstone offer tons of grilling accessories like paper
towel holders, cup holders, seasoning, and any cooking utensils needed.
For the results, as you can see, the food turned out about the same for both.
We did eggs, bacon, pancakes,
steak and cheese, burgers, hot dogs, an array of vegetables.
Overall, it comes down to if you want three different cooking zones
and the larger side tables that the Traeger offers.
We've cooked on both of these all afternoon.
Now we're going to go to the clean-up portion of it.
I use just basic water.
You'll see it just scrape everything in.
In the Blackstone, it's in the back.
In the Traeger, it's going to be in the front.
We'll show you how easy it is to see everything at the end.
We're just going to scrape off all the heavy stuff and get it over to here.
This I think is a drawback to the black zone is it being in the rear because
you're constantly fighting it and leaning over the hot surface.
Now it's ready to cook.
Now I can just turn it off and it'll cool down in 15, 20 minutes.
Now that we still have the grill on, we're going to do that again.
Just scrape all the nasty food off and the scrapings.
It's a lot easier coming at myself with the scraper.
Just caught all the food right in this
container, which is a lot larger than that one.
That one's already full.
This one is not even a quarter of the way.
You can see into that.
All right, so we've cooked the same amount of food on both of these griddles.
The importance of the waste management, I think, in the traeger is much larger.
We've used two and a half bottles of pulling Springs water to clear
that griddle, and that didn't even get a third of the way.
If you look at the Blackstone, the catch basin is almost full
to the point of if I had to pull it off, it'd be dangerous to pull it off because
it's really still about 180 degrees, 200 degrees.
So that's a great feature on this griddle right here.
So at the end of the day, I've had this grill griddle for three years.
Cooked on this one for the first time today, the Traeger.
Pretty impressed. I love the side shelves.
I love the grease management system in the front.
It's a lot safer, a larger capacity, and a lot easier to use,
pulling the grease towards you instead of trying to reach over.
The three heat zones, we cooked different food in the different zones.
I was pretty impressed with the ability
to change temperatures based on a vegetable, a meat.
The three different temperature zones were really impressive.
And I love the capacity of the shelves versus this.
This is clearly a lot smaller
and a lot more ability to use different cooking tools on those shelves there.
Couple of the drawbacks on the Traeger.
When we were cleaning it, the water burned off a lot faster on the black stone.
We had to use a lot less water to clean it, but this took a lot longer to clean.
So the end result is the same.
We ended up with a pretty clean grill on it, and I like it.
It's a great griddle.
I like the three temperature zones.
And for somebody with a little bit more
in their budget, I think the Traeger is a great product.