Is a lighter, a bag of charcoal and your favorite ingredients. In no time you’ll be reaping the rewards of an easy meal with true smoky flavor. Lesley Stockton is a senior staff writer reporting portable bbq on all things cooking and entertaining for Wirecutter. Her expertise builds on a lifelong career in the culinary world—from a restaurant cook and caterer to a food editor at Martha Stewart.
What you will have to do after each use is remove unused charcoal and ash that falls to the bottom. Buy a wireless digital meat thermometer, you’ll be much happier over the long run. One feature you also don’t get with the Original Kettle is a thermometer in the lid. The Spruce Eats uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read our editorial process to learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.
One thing that I noticed while putting the grill together was that the materials just seemed chintzier and more flimsy than those on the Weber Kettle Grill my dad owned. (Weber grills are still assembled in America, but with some imported components.) The metal in the legs seems to bend pretty easily. The most significant difference that stood out to me was that all the handles on the new models have plastic instead of wood. The wood on the 1970s and 80s versions really classed things up. We didn’t have a charcoal starter on hand this time around, so we used some firestarter gel from Hasty-Bake.
She’s an expert on all things home, including kitchen appliances, grills, and other cooking gadgets. Spider Grills Pella manages to make the charcoal-fueled Weber a wood-pellet grill in an elegant and easy way. It’s the most-automated path to low-heat smoking possible while remaining perfectly capable of high-heat grilling.
After testing and reviewing it for over 6 months, I can safely safe I’m a big fan of the Slow N’ Sear, however, I don’t think it’s absolutely necessary to make smoking feasible on a charcoal grill. In this setup, the lid thermometer is measuring the temperature of the hot zone rather than portable bbq the cool zone . The dampers are made of aluminum and the hinged grill grates are made of heavy-duty plated steel. You’d be super hard pressed to find a more affordable grill with 22 inches of grilling space, engineered from decent materials, for the same price, with a long warranty.
In our testing, the Weber Premium was hands down the easiest grill to control temperature on, with the flames inside the kettle responding expertly to any tap of the vents. During our cooking tests on the Weber Original Premium Kettle Grill, hamburgers cooked to a medium rare temperature and our chicken ended up juicy, with a solid sear on the outside. Other grills we tested either ran hotter and overcooked the hamburgers, or they weren’t hot enough and barely seared or cooked the meat. For instance, the grill is equipped with cast iron cooking grates, as well as a convenient side drawer for adding charcoal. It even has a built-in wooden side shelf where you can keep tools and serving dishes.
You’ll need to purchase a bag of briquettes, and either lighter fluid or a handy charcoal starter. We filled it up to the top with briquettes and then put newspaper underneath, which we lit on fire and then allowed the coals to heat up for exactly 15 minutes. Once your briquettes are fired up and ready to go, you then dump them into the base of the kettle grill. After you pop the cooking grate over the red-hot briquettes, you’re ready to start cooking.
Charcoal grilling takes a bit more time and attention to get things just right, so when you choose to use a charcoal grill for a barbecue, everyone knows you mean business. This Weber grill features a porcelain-enameled lid and bowl for optimal heat retention, and the cooking grate can hold up to 13 burgers at once. Our reviewer tested this model by cooking everything from pork to pineapple and found that weber genesis 2 it’s consistently a great choice for beginners and seasoned pros. We have a whole guide right here to help you get started with charcoal grilling, from arranging your coals to determining temperature and even controlling flare-ups. The best way to light your grill without the scent of chemicals is to forgo lighter fluid and use a chimney starter.This modelfrom Weber is our favorite for size and usability.