It can fit up to 10 large burger patties, two cut-up chickens, or 16 large bratwurst links at a time. In our tests, the Q 1200’s heavy-duty cast-aluminum firebox was the best at evenly absorbing and reflecting heat. That, along with the U-shaped burner, provided weber charcoal grill the most consistent grilling of all the portables we tested, with the fewest hot spots. Then we grilled bone-in chicken to test for flare-ups and how well the gas and charcoal grills could sustain a medium-low cooking temperature over 45 minutes.
The Solaire and the Grillster both carry cleanly and easily, kind of like a small suitcase. Models like this are easy to carry into the park to find your ideal picnic spot. With any grill, cleaning them before transporting them will lead to less mess. To determine scores in this metric, we loaded each product into vehicles, took them to picnics and campsites, and grilled gratifying culinary concoctions.
Cleanup is easy using a top-down approach of wiping the inside of the lid with soapy water, cleaning the grates with a grill brush, and emptying the grease collector. To evaluate these grills I assembled each one from scratch and then cooked an array of foods at various temperatures to see how they performed. Foods cooked included steak and burgers, which do best with a hot sear. This grill is for serious tailgaters and is specifically designed to ride on the back of a car attached to a hitch. The monster Forge 15 has 355 square inches of cooking space so you can feed the whole gang and two powerful 7,500-BTU burners (15,000 total) will make sure your steaks, dogs and sausages get a proper seer.
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I’ve picked this one several years in a row, and that’s because no other grill of the more than 12 I’ve tested touches the sturdy Q series in terms of quality, power and overall value. There’s a wooden cutting board/serving tray that sits on top of the grate when the grill’s not in use, but it’s completely open to the elements while cooking. Most grills have a domed lid that helps distribute the heat from the burner, and without that, we got uneven temperatures—enough that one end of the steak started to burn before the other was sufficiently seared. It might interfere with perfect-looking grill marks, but we’d recommend rotating and moving larger items around during cooking to achieve even doneness. Even though the Jumbo Joe isn’t the smallest or most compact charcoal grill we tested, it is lightweight (about 18 pounds) and easy to carry.
The Weber Q 1200 remains at the top of our list of tabletop gas grills because it packs the performance of larger grills into a portable gas grill footprint. Assembly is simple thanks to the manual providing pictogram-style instructions, and the whole task took just 12 minutes for us to be ready to cook. Attaching the gas bottle took a little finagling that sparked safety concerns but ultimately resolved once connected. weber bbq After the easy task of lighting the grill with the pushbutton ignition, the grill grates came to cooking temperature in just eight and a half minutes — a tough task for most portable grill competitors. The Weber Q 3200 has the largest cooking area of all the Weber Q gas grills with 393 square inches of grilling space. The Q 3200 also comes with a stand for the grill, making it the only freestanding Weber Q model.
Finally, we should note that, at 40 pounds, this grill is more suited to car camping or picnicking, where it’s only a short walk to where you’ll be cooking. It would also fare well as a supplemental grill when cooking for a crowd in your backyard. The compact fold and overall weber portable grill design makes traveling and storing as seamless as possible. The Weber Traveler grill takes up minimal space in your garage and is designed to fit easily in the trunk of a car. Overall, we were most disappointed by the Char-Broil Deluxe Portable Propane Gas Tabletop Grill.