This thing is awesome for cooking burgers, steaks, and more! I use it every time I use my KMJ. Mine shipped with some minor chips in the surface due to shipping and they great customer service sent me a replacement. Great product by a great company!

Waited 3 weeks to get this along with my Kamado Joe Grill. Significant breakage in each. That is unaccepeptable. Not I get to waste hours dealing with its replacement. I sure hope its not broke. The packaging is that of a greedy company who wont spend the money to properly package their goods.

I had been using cast iron to sear steaks and veggies for many years and thought it was the best sear I could get without risking flareups burning the food and imparting a bitter taste. I was really surprised at how much better the soapstone turned out to be for searing food. Everything I've tried searing on this has turned out far better than I expected and far better than any cast iron could ever achieve. something about the soapstones' thermal properties makes the sear perfect as if it knows just the right amount of heat to conduct and radiate to the particular food item on it for the perfect Maillard reaction and never simply burns food like cast iron tends to do so often. I've never had anything flare up on it even though I sear with it being directly over ... MoreI had been using cast iron to sear steaks and veggies for many years and thought it was the best sear I could get without risking flareups burning the food and imparting a bitter taste. I was really surprised at how much better the soapstone turned out to be for searing food. Everything I've tried searing on this has turned out far better than I expected and far better than any cast iron could ever achieve. something about the soapstones' thermal properties makes the sear perfect as if it knows just the right amount of heat to conduct and radiate to the particular food item on it for the perfect Maillard reaction and never simply burns food like cast iron tends to do so often. I've never had anything flare up on it even though I sear with it being directly over fully lit coals.People claim it to be non-stick. Don't expect this to behave like a teflon coated pan, but rather like a good stainless steel one where when heated behaves as a non-stick surface for most foods.I do pre-heat it for ~30 minutes prior to using it and sometimes even longer than that and directly over the coals.Yes Kamado Joe had to send me 2 soapstones before they finally sent one that didn't arrived cracked in two, but I can understand this issue as this type of stone is super brittle and has to be handled with great care. When cooking with it, I rest it on one of the half moon grates so it has even support across its span.As a science and physics major, it seems to me that the main differences between a soapstone and cast iron, regarding their searing properties, are that cast iron conducts most of its energy but radiates relatively little of it while soapstone radiates most of its energy in the form of black body radiation but conducts very little of it which would explain the differences in searing qualities and making the soapstone a far superior material for searing food with radiated heat without charring it to death with conductive heat.