Only then can you determine whether you have the best grill on the block. We offer a variety of sizes and shapes to ensure you find the best propane grill or charcoal grill for your space. You’ll find the perfect grill at Lowe’s — whether you want something traditional or a trendy, new infrared grill. Like the charcoal version of the Summit, the gas model is as feature-rich as it gets.
She has more than 20 years experience in the food and writing spaces and believes in a joy-filled approach to health and wellness. Charcoal is easy to pick up at just about every grocery store, home improvement store, or gas station, so you won’t need to make a special trip. But you’ll need to have a charcoal starter on hand, will have to wait for everything to cool down before you can dispose of it, and need to deal with the messy ash afterward. For a gas-powered grill, the Weber Spirit II E-310 is our top choice thanks to its three burners, compact design, and useful features. If you’re looking for the classic Weber black charcoal grill, you can’t go wrong with the Weber Performer Deluxe 22-Inch Charcoal Grill. The SmokeFire EX4 has a 20-pound pellet hopper, as well as a DC-powered engine designed to prevent auger jams.
Its temperature fluctuated no more than 20 degrees over six and a half hours of smoking. The hinged sides and pop-out center of the grate are nice for adding charcoal while cooking. We found it difficult, however, to use these to arrange or bank the coals without burning ourselves, as it required us to remove the entire grate for safety.
It stood out in multiple rounds of tests for excellent heat retention and quick recovery time after we opened the lid. There were also minimal flare-ups and no excessive charring or undercooked spots during cooking tests. Versatile and increasingly popular, a Weber pellet grill can reach temperatures high enough to grill, sear, smoke and even bake to give you more cooking options. Fueled by wood pellets, infuse whatever you’re cooking with delectable woody flavor. Introducing the newly designed Genesis® gas grill – the biggest grilling innovation in decades, that creates a full backyard culinary experience. Grill, bake, and even stir-fry on the newly designed Genesis® gas grill.
The Weber Genesis E-325s is a whole foot longer than the company’s Spirit II E-310, with 20% more cooking area. It also puts out more heat per square inch than our top pick, thanks to a fourth burner—placed between the middle and right-side burners—that creates what Weber dubs the Sear Zone. The Genesis E-325s also has roomier side tables, including one big enough to fit a half sheet pan. With more heat per square inch and a larger grilling area than our top pick offers, this model is our top choice for dedicated grillers. At Weber, we believe grilling should be as fun as it is flavorful. Call us perfectionists, but we have dedicated ourselves to that standard since 1952 when we made our first charcoal kettle.
And of those Weber grill owners, 69% reported that they were extremely satisfied, and another 29% reported that they were moderately satisfied. We assembled the grills alone and in teams of two, noting poor instructions, needlessly complicated screw or bolt sizes, or safety hazards such as sharp edges. Greg Baker is an award-winning chef, restaurateur, and food writer with four decades of experience in the food industry. His written work appears in Food & Wine, Tasting Table, Food Republic, and other publications. The Go-Anywhere Charcoal follows suit with its gas counterpart; the uneven heat distribution from evenly-layered charcoal gave a mixed bag of results, from overdone to pale and unimpressive. Keep your griddle clean with the Blackstone culinary 10-piece cleaning set.
That may not seem like much, but if you’re working in a small patio area, every inch counts. Like the E-310, the E-210 has an open-cart design and an easy-access side-mounted hook and gauge for the propane tank. Yes, you can smoke meat on a Weber charcoal grill, also known as a kettle grill. The simplest way to use your kettle grill as a smoker is to place all of your charcoal briquettes on one side of the grill and your meat on the other. Adding a few small chips of wood to the charcoal will give your meat a more traditionally smoked flavor.
The SmokeFire has flavorizer bars like the Spirit grills, and there’s a SmokeBoost option to infuse an extra dose of smokey flavor at the beginning of a cook. The burgers came off the grill with slightly paler sear marks than the ones we cooked on the Spirit II E-310, just like with the previous Genesis models we tested. It’s a very minor quibble, and one that’s moot if you use the sear zone. Grates come in a range of materials, and the differences in performance are small. These materials include plain cast iron, the more rust-resistant porcelain-coated cast iron, and stainless steel rods, which are sometimes as thick as a stick of chalk or even a thumb.
They didn’t perform well, and we knew that they wouldn’t be durable. Ultimately, if you want to spend less, we recommend that you get a smaller, two-burner grill or consider a charcoal grill or portable grill instead. Two-burner grills like our budget pick can save you a little space and a little money—as long as you are prepared to cook your food in smaller batches and don’t plan weber charcoal grill on much indirect cooking. On the other hand, gas is more convenient once you have it—you simply turn a knob to start the fire, and there’s no need to wait for coals to burn down before you begin cooking. But you’ll need a special hook-up for natural gas, or to run to the store for liquid propane. Gas-cooked foods also can lack a certain charred grilling taste preferred by some.
The Masterbuilt Portable Charcoal Grill and Smoker provides the unmatched flavor of charcoal with the ease of a gas grill on the go. Forget manually adjusting the coals to get your grill to the right temperature – easily adjust the SteadyTemp™ dial to maintain desired temperature for up to 4 hours. Master the art of charcoal grilling on the go with Masterbuilt. The new grill design resolved all the pain points for consumers back in the 1950s, Kempster explains.