Lesley Stockton is a senior staff writer reporting on all things cooking and entertaining for Wirecutter. Her expertise builds on a lifelong career in the culinary Blackstone Adventure world—from a restaurant cook and caterer to a food editor at Martha Stewart. She is perfectly happy to leave all that behind to be a full-time kitchen-gear nerd.
After graduating from Cambridge University, Alex got his start in reviewing at the iconic Good Housekeeping Institute, testing a wide range of household products and appliances. He then moved to BBC Gardeners’ World Magazine, assessing gardening tools, machinery, and wildlife products. Helping people find true quality and genuine value is a real passion. I would recommend it to friends or family in the market for a grill as the best grill you can get. It doesn’t have all the bells and whistles, but we’re being totally honest, few people actually need to use side burners or fancy thermometers. If you want to grill a few burgers on a sunny afternoon, this grill will get them cooked with no fuss.
Cook too low and you risk dry meat and rubber skin; too high and you may have to snatch the bird off the grill to prevent burning the outside before the bird is properly cooked inside. We dialed up 325°F by goosing the left and right burners to Medium. Whole chicken or turkey are good candidates for the thin side of the grates. You want to cook whole birds evenly at moderate temperatures to slowly crisp the skin. Then we placed the chicken in the middle in the indirect heat zone. Click here to learn more about the essential technique of 2-zone cooking.
The ultimate goal is an evenly dark brown crust across the entire surface of the meat, which transforms dull, tan meat to a delicious flavorful crust thanks to the magical Maillard reaction. Weber is one of the country’s biggest and most trusted names in gas grills, with their Genesis II models always reliable options on the market. This generally means that the grill comes with a dedicated rotisserie burner; the motor and spit are usually purchased separately. A dedicated rotisserie burner is usually located on the back of the firebox, slightly above the cooking grates; some models use the grill’s main burner(s).
You could easily turn out ten burgers and 20 sausages, which is more than enough to feed a crowd. Everyone on the test day got a sample sausage and they all agreed that these were pretty much perfect. I’d blow my own trumpet but it was all the work of the grill. It cooked utterly delicious burgers and sausages.
With the stainless steel materials used to manufacture the grill, it will be difficult to break this bad boy. In the process of writing the Weber Spirit II E-310 review, we came across the product. At first glance, we thought it could be a bit more compact. That way, you won’t have to worry about taking too much space wherever you’re using it.