Every day I bring you an item on Amazon that I personally use or has been purchased by many members of the audience and I have researched enough to recommend.

Today’s TSP Amazon Item of the day is Joyfair’s Basting Cover Melting Domes and it really makes sense to pick these up in a two pack as the second one is almost free compared to buying just one.  The price for one comes it at 19 bucks but a two pack is only 26 dollars.

Also unlike a lot of my reviews I don’t really have any brand loyalty here.  This is just the brand I have been using for over a year at the time of this writing.  However many brands make these, the key is they are first stainless steel, two have vents and three the form factor.

So what are these really for?  While they can indeed be useful for holding more heat in on a grill they are custom made for use on a flat top griddle like a Blackstone.  The most common use is likely melting cheese on burgers and they are fantastic for that.  Especially if you put a splash of water on the griddle next to the burger right before covering it.

There are some other great uses too though.  One is when you are cooking really thick steaks or chops.  Once you get your sear you often have to keep thicker cuts on so long they go from sear to burning.  But with these you can simply hold in more heat and get the cook you want faster.  I usually do this by getting the sear on one side then covering about a minute after the flip.

These are also great for kind of a fry/steam hybrid method for cooking veggies.  To to that you give a quick char and fry of your veg, then drop a bit of water on them, cover and let the instant steam do its work.

New up how about baking or making biscuits with a flat top.  I can hear you now “but Jack the bottom will burn”.  The way around this is to simply use a small metal trivet.  You can buy one of these or simply improvise with what you already have in your kitchen already.  And anything like the ones I linked to will work just make sure they are small enough to fit inside the dimensions of the cover which are 13×9.8 inches.  Now put your biscuits on the trivet, cover and bake until done.  Yes you can literally make biscuits and sausage on your flat top.  This works really well with the canned type pop and bake biscuits or your own home made dough.

Okay one more and this is why I recommend this form factor over round ones which are also common.  Not only can you cover two average steaks with one of these you can also put them over a standard half sized disposable aluminum throw away type of pan.  It literally fits them like it was designed to, likely because it was.  So why is that so awesome?

It opens up a huge number of options with flattop cooking.  I used this last night for instance to cook little neck clams (see the picture to the right and click to blow it up).  What I did was toss half a sick of butter into the pan, then toss in two cups or white wine, some garlic, thyme, pink peppercorns, old bay and cardomen pods.  I then put it on the flat top and covered it with a dome cover until it boiled.  Added in the clams, recovered and steamed until they opened.  Cut a few pieces of sourdough, toasted those and turned 12 bucks worth of clams into a 40 dollar restaurant level meal.

Once you know this technique you can come up with all sorts of dishes to make using these cover and the half sheet pans.  I have even done sort of a no rice style Americanized paella with this technique.  For more on that check out episode 3880 for how to do this and many other cool hacks.

Last just a bit about the option to have vents.  The ones with vents cost so close to the ones without them I see no reason to get them in any configuration but vented.  You can of course close the vent all the way or not.  However if you don’t have vents you have no options.  That alone should be enough to see why I am all in on the vented option.  There is simply no loss by adding them, so get them with that configuration.

So if you own a flattop I really think these will expand your options.  If you don’t consider adding one, again in Episode – 3880 I talk about not just these basting domes but cooking on a flattop, using chamber vacuum machines when cooking and more.  So check out the Joyfair Basting Cover Melting Dome and up your cooking game in both tough and easy times.

Remember you can always find all of our reviews at TspAz.com

P.S. – If you don’t own a flat top griddle you may really want to consider adding one to your preps.  There are many options and I also talk about options in Episode – 3880.