BLACKSTONE Tailgater Stainless Steel 2 Burner Gas Grill

Nice grill. Very durable. Thought the legs would be to weak, but not the case. I use this grill for a fixed a fixed camping site, but wanted it to be portable to take home if needed. It’s quite heavy so toting it back and forth (if that’s our intended purpose) will not be so effortless. I don’t suggest leaving the griddle on as it will slightly rust over time. I’ve had mine for several months and use it frequently. It cooks evenly as long as you place your meat over the vents on the catch plate. I normally have to keep it on med-high for efficient and proper cook through of my meats. Your’s might differ. I bought the hose & quick adapter to run off of a quick connect on my RV. Didn’t want to have a separate bottle connected. Griddle is OK. I found it only heats up in the center. Very thick. As mentioned, don’t leave the griddle outdoors. Too much effort, for me, to clean each time it needs to be used. Haven’t tried transporting it yet. Recommended over the other the other similar Blackstone grills due to the dual purpose of griddle and grill.

This combo works great for camping! The only down fall, I find it quite heavy, and it takes two of us to get the legs down and set up.

Excellent for camping

After much soul searching, I decided to buy this and am glad we did. I was concerned about reports of bolts stripping out and couldn’t quite figure out what that was going on and how serious an issue it might be. Also a little concerned about weld quality. As it turns out, there are 4 thumb screws – one for use with each leg – and in fact the ones I received were too short to secure the leg extension. I contacted Blackstone support via email on a Monday and received the 4 replacement thumb screws in the mail on Friday. I could’ve solved this by purchasing locally as well. When you open this up, if the bolt is not at least 9/16″ long from the thumb screw itself, you’ll want to contact support and get replacements. The ones in the package were only 3/8″ long. The overall quality of the grill seems above average to me.

We also purchased the carry bags and the only ding there is there is no pocket to place the grill tools in. The griddle, grill and 2 drip trays are carried in the smaller bag. The dimensions of this bag with the components stored is approximately 23.5″x23″x10″, 36lbs. The bag that holds the grill frame itself also has pockets for the 4 leg extensions. I found that there is no need to do more than collapse them to store this in the bag. The dimensions of this bag with the grill stored is approximately 34″x20″x10″, 38.5 lbs. The grill tools easily fit in this bag as well.

I chose not to follow the seasoning steps provided by Blackstone. I wanted a solid ‘first’ seasoning, and chose to use the method outlined the site you can find by searching for ‘Chemistry of Cast Iron Seasoning: A Science-Based How-To’ (can’t post external URLs in a review anymore) – and repeated it 7 times. If you ever need to get a fresh start with this, I found that the griddle easily fits in an oven and plan on running the ‘clean’ cycle with the griddle inside to do that. I used organic flaxseed oil – https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004R63VI6/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o06_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1. The first four cooks with the griddle were excellent. If you’re not familiar with griddle or cast iron fry pan use – you still need to use butter/oil of some sort while cooking. After cooking, I scraped the surface with the spatula and removed any debris. After it cooled down to the touch, I wiped lightly with oil – to include the inside and outside lip of the griddle, and then wiped again with a dry rag before storing in the bag. If you don’t season the grill before first use – regardless of how you do it, and you don’t wipe it down after use, I expect you will get some rust going on. I don’t view that as a defect.

We also seasoned the 2 grill grids – but expected a little sticking of the meat/chicken on the grids while cooking as these are porous metal.

We’ve already grilled a few times at home, and now this is in the camper and ready for use on the road. Confident enough in this to post the review now though. Also purchased an RV extension hose to enable plug into our RV gas line.

5 stars given the cost and overall quality. Was going to make it 4 stars given the thumb screw problem and the appearance that this is a pretty well known condition. However, the easy response by Blackstone customer support corrected it quickly. Sometimes things happen in production – but they appear to stand by their product.