Portable BBQ Grills

I tried to cover both the “portable” part and the “grill” part in my testing. After unboxing, I carried each one a block down from my house and a block back, noting how easy the handles were to hold, and if a grill’s size and weight distribution made it challenging to walk with. For those grills with wheels, I walked them weber genesis 2 around a large, uneven lawn with plenty of divots to see how they rolled. For the charcoal options, I also smoked ribs, pork, and brisket, If you’re planning to smoke, I highly recommend investing in some kind of thermometer system. It has adapters based on your grill and offers one temp probe and three food probes.

portable bbq

They also pack up quickly to get you out the door faster, and their compact sizes make it a cinch to tote them around from campground to campground. In fact, we’d go so far as to say that these portable grills are a camping essential, offering you the ability to cook up fresh, restaurant-quality meat and veggies right in the middle of the woods. With 189 square inches of cooking surface, this grill was not the biggest on the list, but it’s plenty big enough to cook burgers, chicken, fish, and veggies for a group of six hungry people. It’s also nice-looking with flare-out trays to hold your plates and grilling tools, plus an ergonomic design.

There are a few sizes, including this mid-size GoSun Goand the larger GoSun Survival if you’re planning on cooking for a group. Well, it is and these GoSun solar-powered weber genesis 2 grills actually work pretty well. When I tested it, it got scorching hot and cooked chicken thighs, sausage, fish and veggies all in under 25 minutes or less.

Though cast iron adds an extra 5 to 10 pounds to the total weight of a grill, we think the flavorful dark crust on burgers and steaks makes it worthwhile. We also prefer an open grate design that allows ambient heat from the firebox to brown the areas in between the grill marks. We found that stainless steel solid grates with small perforations don’t let enough ambient heat through to brown the food properly. We learned that the coal bed can be adjusted for better temperature control — a useful feature that we find highly important in charcoal grill tests. The grill grate is narrow, especially compared to other portable grills we tested, but can still fit about four to five chicken thighs side-by-side, or two large steaks. We tried this grill out along with the brand’s grilling kit , and found the accessories to be good quality and useful.

The Char-Broil Grill2Go can handle up to six large burger patties at a time without crowding. Charcoal is smokier than gas, a possible issue for smaller, fenced-in spaces. weber charcoal grill The fire and fuel source is contained, so there’s no risk of hot embers falling on the ground. This grill folds up like a suitcase, and you can carry it with one hand.

That’s covered by a two-piece cast iron grill grate that’s solid where it runs over the burner, which acts as a heat diffuser and keeps the burner from getting covered in grease. Speaking of grease, it has a slide-out grease trap that’s easy to empty. It also has a built-in thermometer that’s reasonably accurate, but I still suggest getting a separate instant-read thermometer.

Preventing grease and fire contact is especially important since the cooking grates on portable gas grills sit very close to the heating element (usually a 1- to 1½-inch clearance). Steel inserts that sit over the flame ports can help, as can a cleverly designed grilling grate that channels grease away from the fire. If you’re searching for a gas grill weber genesis 2 you can bring on all your adventures that also performs well enough to be used at home, look no further than the Weber Q 2200. Our home tester tried it out both at home and on the road to grill hot dogs, steaks, and veggies and was impressed with the final results each time. No matter how mobile your lifestyle, there’s a great small grill to fit.