My Shrimp Kept Falling Through the Grill. A $14 Mat Set Solved It Immediately

I have been grilling in my backyard for going on 22 years now, and a cheap non-stick grill mat set is the last thing I ever expected to write a whole story about. Three different grills, one smoker I bought off Craigslist that lasted exactly one summer, and more bags of charcoal than I care to count. I know my way around a fire. But there is one thing that made me feel like a complete amateur every single time, right up until about two summers ago when I finally tried one of these grill mats.

Shrimp. Every time I cooked shrimp directly on the grate, half of them would spin sideways through the gaps and disappear into the coals. I would watch them go, one by one, like a man standing at a slot machine losing quarters. I tried bamboo skewers. I tried the double-skewer trick where you thread two parallel sticks through each piece so they cannot rotate. I tried a grill wok once, which worked fine but was a pain to clean and made everything taste slightly metallic. Nothing felt right.

It was not just shrimp, either. Asparagus tips. Thin-cut zucchini. Any fish fillet that was not thick enough to hold together under the spatula. Diced onions, which my wife loves on her plate but which fall through the grate like water. I had basically accepted that delicate foods were off the menu unless I cooked them in the kitchen and missed the whole point of being outside at the grill.

My neighbor Hank mentioned grill mats one afternoon while we were talking over the fence. He had a set he had been using for about a year. I was skeptical. I had seen cheap silicone mats at the dollar store that melted the first time they touched a hot grate, and I figured this was the same idea. Hank said to look up the ones with 25,000 reviews on Amazon and stop being stubborn.

I had accepted that delicate foods were just off the grill menu. Hank told me to stop being stubborn and look up the ones with 25,000 reviews.

I ordered the Grill Mat Set of 6, the 100% non-stick reusable mats that come in at 15.75 x 13 inches each. Six mats for around fourteen dollars. I figured if they melted or fell apart I had not lost much. They arrived in two days and I used them that same Saturday.

First cook was a pound of shrimp and two zucchini sliced thin on the diagonal, the way my wife likes them. I laid one mat flat on the grate over the hot zone, gave it thirty seconds to heat up, and put the shrimp on. Every single one stayed put. I could flip them individually or in batches with a thin spatula. The zucchini got a light char on both sides without once threatening to fall through. The whole process was calm in a way grilling delicate food had never been calm for me before.

I want to be straight with you about what these mats are and are not. They are PTFE-coated, which is the same material as good non-stick cookware. They are rated up to 500 degrees Fahrenheit, which covers most direct-heat grilling. What they cannot do is withstand the kind of heat you get when coals are piled high and blazing directly underneath. I have used mine at medium-high heat consistently with zero problems, but if you crank your charcoal grill to nuclear and want to sear a steak at 700 degrees, the mat is not the right tool for that particular job. Direct searing belongs on bare grates. Everything else, including shrimp, fish, vegetables, eggs on a camping trip, and even thin chicken cutlets, does fine on the mat.

Cleaning is where these things really separate themselves from any grill accessory I have owned before. When I am done cooking, I let the mat cool for a few minutes, then I wipe it down with a damp cloth or drop it in the dishwasher. There is no soaking, no scrubbing with a wire brush, no burning off residue with a second round of high heat. The food simply does not stick. I have had the same two mats in rotation for two full grilling seasons now and they have not warped, torn, or lost their non-stick surface.

The set comes with six mats, which seems like more than you need at first. But I have handed two to my daughter, who just got her first house and her first grill, and I keep one in the camper for the portable gas burner we take on trips. It is nice to have a spare when one is in the dishwasher. The price per mat works out to a little over two dollars each, which is frankly a little embarrassing when I think about how many years I wasted losing expensive seafood to the coals.

What I Would Tell You If We Were Sitting at My Back Porch Right Now

Here is what I would say if you pulled up a chair and asked me whether to buy these. If you have ever watched shrimp fall through your grate, or lost half a batch of vegetables, or avoided cooking fish outside because the cleanup was too miserable, buy the mats. They are not flashy and they will not make you a better griller in the sense of teaching you anything about fire or smoke or meat. What they will do is remove a specific, frustrating obstacle so you can actually cook the things you want to cook without turning into a nervous wreck. That is worth every dollar of the fourteen it costs, and I am a person who spent twenty dollars on a grill wok that I used twice.

The one thing I will caution is the temperature ceiling. Do not use them for high-heat searing, and do not leave them on the grate while you build up the coals with the lid down. Preheat your grill, lay the mat down once the grates are where you want them, and cook. Follow that and they will last you a long time. Ignore it and you are going to find out why the rating says 500 degrees and not 600.