Phoenix Journal · Equipment
Griddles, chargrills and salamanders each earn their place on the line for different reasons - and each puts a very different load on the extraction above them. Here is how to choose the right heat and keep it running safely.
Kitchen design & heat
Almost every decision on a busy kitchen line comes back to heat - where it comes from, how hard it hits the food and what it leaves behind in the air.
Griddles, chargrills and salamanders are three of the most common ways of applying that heat, and they are often mistaken for near-enough the same thing. They are not. A griddle conducts heat through a solid plate. A chargrill radiates it upward from below, straight through an open grate. A salamander does the opposite, throwing intense radiant heat downward from above. Each one suits different dishes, different service styles and different budgets - and, crucially for anyone responsible for fire safety, each one produces a different quantity and type of grease-laden vapour for your canopy and ductwork to deal with.
Get the choice right and you build a line that cooks the way your menu needs while keeping the extraction load manageable. Get it wrong and you end up fighting flare-ups, smoke and a duct system that clogs far faster than anyone expected. This guide walks through what each appliance is really for, and what it means for keeping the system above it clean and compliant.
The reason the choice matters so much for extraction is that grease production is not even close to uniform across these appliances. A flat griddle is the tidiest of the three. Fat renders out of the food, runs across the plate and collects in a trough, so a good deal of it never becomes airborne at all. What does rise is a relatively light, warm vapour that a well-maintained canopy handles comfortably.
A chargrill is a different animal. With the heat source below the grate, rendered fat drips straight onto it, flares, and is flung upward as a heavier, hotter plume carrying vaporised fat and fine carbon particles. Solid-fuel and lava-rock versions add smoke and sticky combustion residue on top. That plume is exactly the material that coats baffle filters, then canopy plenums, then the duct itself - and standard baffle filters only capture somewhere in the region of 20 to 40 per cent of it, so the rest heads into the system.
The salamander sits somewhere in between. Because it works overhead for short bursts of finishing and gratinating, it produces less volume than a chargrill, but the intense radiant heat - units commonly run at 2 to 6kW and can reach around 400°C at the food - drives off sharp bursts of grease and sugar smoke that still need capturing. Understanding this hierarchy is the first step to sizing both the ventilation and the cleaning schedule correctly, and it is worth remembering that heavier heat also means more waste heat to manage; if you are planning a refit, it is worth reading how heat recovery works in commercial kitchen ventilation before finalising the canopy layout.
Once you understand what each heat source does, choosing between them becomes a menu decision rather than a guess. A griddle is the workhorse of high-volume, all-day service. Its even, conductive heat is ideal for breakfasts, burgers, onions, eggs and anything that benefits from full contact with a hot surface and a controllable, repeatable finish. Because the plate temperature is steady and the grease is largely contained, it is also the kindest of the three to your extraction and the easiest to keep clean at the end of service.
A chargrill is what you reach for when the char itself is the point. Those distinctive bar marks, the smoky note and the caramelised edges on steaks, chicken and vegetables come from open, radiant heat and the flare of dripping fat hitting the source below. It is a signature-dish appliance, and it delivers something a griddle simply cannot - but you pay for that flavour in smoke, in grease carried into the system and in a faster-clogging duct. If a chargrill is central to your concept, plan the extraction and the cleaning regime around it from day one rather than treating it as an afterthought.
A salamander is the finisher. It is not really a primary cooking appliance at all; it exists to melt cheese, brown a gratin, glaze a glaze, crisp a skin or bring a plated dish up to temperature in seconds using top-down heat. In a well-planned kitchen it complements the griddle and chargrill rather than replacing either, adding precision at the pass without adding much bulk to the line. Many kitchens genuinely need all three, each doing the narrow job it does best. The mistake is buying a chargrill for work a griddle would do more cleanly, and then carrying the extra grease burden for the life of the equipment.
Whichever combination you settle on, the appliances you choose write the terms of your cleaning schedule. Under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 the responsible person must manage the fire risk that accumulated grease represents, and insurers increasingly expect evidence that the extract system is being cleaned to a recognised standard. In practice that standard is TR19 Grease, the specification published by the Building Engineering Services Association, which sets the grease thresholds referenced above and asks for cleaning frequencies matched to how hard the kitchen is worked.
For a heavy-use operation - broadly 12 to 16 hours of cooking a day - a three-monthly clean of the full extract path is a sensible baseline. A chargrill-led line, and especially anything burning solid fuel, will often justify more frequent attention because of the carbon and heavy grease it throws into the system; a griddle-only prep kitchen may safely stretch the interval. The honest answer always comes from a proper risk assessment and post-clean verification against the 200-micron mean, not from a calendar guess. That 200-micron figure is only about half the thickness of a business card, which is a useful reminder of how little build-up it takes before a duct becomes a genuine fire risk.
Cleaning a chargrill system properly is also more involved than wiping a canopy. Carbonised deposits in the duct and fan need mechanical removal, access panels have to be cut and made good, and the work generates dust and disturbed grease that operatives should be protected against - which is why competent contractors treat getting respiratory protective equipment right as part of the job rather than an optional extra. Daily surface care by your own team matters too: scrape and clean griddle plates and chargrill grates after each use, wipe salamander elements down carefully without harsh residue-leaving chemicals, and keep baffle filters on a regular soak so less grease ever reaches the duct in the first place.
Questions
A chargrill is by far the biggest grease and smoke producer, because fat drips onto the heat source below the grate, flares and is thrown upward as a hot, particle-laden plume. A griddle is the tidiest, as most rendered fat runs into a trough rather than becoming airborne. A salamander sits in between, producing shorter bursts of grease and sugar smoke during finishing. That order should shape how often each system is cleaned.
For heavy use of roughly 12 to 16 hours a day, a three-monthly clean of the full extract path is a sensible starting point under TR19 Grease. A chargrill-led line, particularly one burning solid fuel, often needs cleaning more frequently because of the heavy grease and carbon it generates. The correct interval should be confirmed by a risk assessment and by verifying the grease film stays below the 200-micron mean, not fixed by the calendar alone.
Many kitchens genuinely benefit from all three because each does a narrow job best: the griddle for high-volume contact cooking, the chargrill for char and smoke on signature dishes, and the salamander for finishing, melting and gratinating at the pass. The key is to match the appliance to the dish rather than over-specifying. Buying a chargrill for work a griddle would handle more cleanly means carrying extra grease load, smoke and cleaning cost for the life of the equipment.
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