Start by lighting your coals and letting your grill heat up for about 10 minutes. This should heat the grates enough that any crusted-on food can be easily removed with a grill brush. After you clean the grates, oil them using a paper towel dipped in oil and held in tongs. Finally, make sure to empty your ashes, and keep that grill covered when not in use. The 357 PRO wouldn’t be a Hasty-Bake without their classic adjustable-height charcoal tray that can be raised and lowered with a crank. The coals can move from 14.5 inches to 2.5 inches away from the cooking surface for serious direct infrared searing, a lot like a classic Santa Maria-style grill.
The wood does impart flavor to the meat, like charcoal, and you can substitute different types of wood to adjust the taste — but the flavor level is “medium to light,” according to Horsman. While this grill is more budget friendly, it is still a high performer, according to Consumer Reports, which gave the grill “Very Good” ratings in all of their cooking tests. It has a main cooking space that’s 391 square inches, and a charcoal pan that can adjust to six different height levels and hold up to 4.5 pounds of charcoal. To add more coals, you can use the charcoal door instead of opening the lid. Enjoy the great outdoors and barbecue to your heart’s content with charcoal grills from the brands you trust like Masterbuilt, Char-Broil, and Weber.
Sam Sifton, editor for the Cooking section of The New York Times , joined us for these tests. These are just a small selection of things that I love to make on my weber genesis 2. This grill makes me happy—it looks like a classic Weber grill (the core design—inspired by nautical buoys—is timeless) but has a few updates that earn big points for user-friendliness. The 26-inch Original Kettle® Premium is the charcoal grill you want at your next party. It’s large enough to grill an entire dinner during the week, or a bunch of burgers at your next barbecue. With premium features, such as a hinged cooking grate for easily adding charcoal while grilling, and the One-Touch™ cleaning system with high-capacity ash catcher.
Stephen marketed this first grill as “George’s Barbecue Kettle.” It sold for $29.95—the equivalent of around $270 today. He used the grill frequently to cook for family and friends and sold a few of them, but it took several years and many grill iterations later for the business to take off. “As the story goes,” Kempster says, “he took it home, he fired it up with charcoal, and it didn’t work. The fire went out.” One of his neighbors was watching the spectacle and chimed in saying, “George, you gotta let some air in that thing,” according to Kempster. So the pair grabbed a pick from his tools and punched some holes in the lid.
Some of the ash will fall through to the ash catcher a few inches below the bowl. For the rest, Weber has equipped the Original Kettle with its “One-touch” ash removal system. It’s a rotating group of three blades you turn with a handle projecting from near the bottom of the bowl. There are several ways to light a charcoal grill, but the best option is to use a chimney starter.
Consumer Reports also pointed out the ash catcher, cleaning system and dampers that help control airflow as key features. If you’re committed to charcoal, but envious of your neighbor’s shiny gasser, the Napoleon Charcoal Professional Cart Grill may be the answer. Only a few premium and luxury BBQ brands offer stainless steel charcoal grills. Napoleon’s Professional is one of the more beautiful models we’ve seen in this price range. This stainless steel charcoal burner feels right at home in a shiny outdoor kitchen ensemble. It has 605 square inches of cooking surface, with an adjustable-height charcoal grate that has several notched height positions to place the heat closer to or further from the cook surface.
The opposite is true of charcoal grills, which function best as sealed systems with solid, tight construction for effective air control. Just as with gas, the charcoal fire needs oxygen to burn, and you can use this oxygen flow to your advantage. Shut down the air dampers weber charcoal grill to drop the cooking temp or snuff the charcoal out entirely when finished. Open them wide to flood the fire with oxygen and create a rip-roaring, red-hot coal bed. Lifting the meat a few inches further from the heat source makes temperature maintenance less of a pain.
In the case of kettle models, we arrange coals in a semicircle around the grill’s inner wall. The charcoal briquettes form a line two coals wide and two coals deep. On cart-style portable bbq grills, we modify the snake to run in right angles to match their rectangular-shaped fireboxes. Napoleon delivered excellent cooking results in our ribs test.
“My father knew that one of the best ways to bring families together was through a shared meal enjoyed in the great outdoors,” his son Jim Stephen, now chairman of Weber-Stephen Products, once said. I’ll continue to use my gas grill for weeknight dinners, but turn to the Weber when hosting things that I want to feel more like an event. In doing so, hopefully my kids will absorb the same Dad-imbued, charcoal-infused summertime impressions that waft through one’s memory for a lifetime. Whatever grill you choose, do not rely on the built-in dial thermometers, which can be off by 50°F to 100°F (10-38°C). These dials are usually located in the lid, not down on the grill surface where the food is—and you’re not eating the lid, so its temperature is irrelevant.