If you are new to charcoal cooking then this classic grill is the perfect place to start. Our rib experience with a few of the other grills was far from ideal. At times, the inside of this grill hit temperatures as high as 400 degrees F.
Called the fuse method, or “the charcoal snake,” this trick involves stacking briquettes in a specific way inside the grill. Do it correctly and the charcoal snake will burn at barbecue temperatures and with minimum supervision. With the 18-inch Weber Original Kettle Grill, you can still get the full ing experience for under $100. One of the factors that draws so many people to charcoal grilling is the authenticity around it. Not just with the flavors, but the skill and learning curve required to cook with it. It’s cased in a porcelain enamel bowl to help heat retention and distribution.
In our medium, indirect-heat chicken tests, the Nexgrill delivered flavorful, juicy meat as a close second to the Weber. And this updated model, when we used the charcoal snake method, demonstrated temperature control almost as good as the Weber. They carry regular charcoal grills, kamados (charcoal-burning griller-smokers, usually made of heavy ceramic, the most familiar being the Big Green Egg), and griller-smokers portable bbq that burn wood pellets . Salvaggio spent an hour explaining the fundamentals of charcoal-grill design, function, materials, and maintenance to us. And because he’s an independent retailer, he was able to speak freely about what he sees as the relative strengths and weaknesses of the various designs. If you do not have a grill, the Weber Original Kettle Premium 22” Charcoal Grill is the place to start.
We set all air vents on each grill to the halfway-open position. Lastly, we place one rack of ribs on each grill for indirect cooking, with the meat not sitting directly above the coals. Cooking over charcoal takes longer than cooking with a gas grill, and we typically need to add more fuel during cooking to keep our grills above 350 degrees F for the full duration.
In fact, most of the time the temperature hovered between 220 degrees F and 230 degrees F. As a result, ribs cooked in the Weber came out tender, juicy and full of smoky flavor. For our tests, each grill gets a full chimney of lit charcoal and a 6-pound chicken opposite the coals for indirect heat. None of the hood thermometers built into these grills mirrored the temperatures recorded by our own thermocouples and data software. But the biggest problem is that the instructions completely overlook what we found to be a potentially dangerous design flaw. The Napoleon’s vent assembly consists of two metal collars, one inside the other.