She’s a professional, trained cook, recipe developer and grill aficionado. The summer is favorite season, mostly because she can put one of her many grills to the test nightly. You can boil water on any type of grill as long as you have a pot or kettle with no wooden or plastic parts. Simply place the water over the grill’s burner and turn weber charcoal grill it on high—if you’re able to shut the grill’s lid over it, you’ll be able to speed up the process. If you can’t shut the lid, it will take significantly longer, but the water will eventually reach its boiling point. One downside during assembly was the drip pan didn’t fit properly, which necessitated a small trim to get it to slide in.
I wanted to love this model because the concept is great but it does have some flaws. For one, it feels a little bit cheap and I read in several reviews that it can rust and peel over time. Also, the grill grates are made of thin stainless steel whereas I would have preferred nonstick ceramic or iron.
Like the Q above, Weber’s Traveler uses a single burner that wraps around the entire bottom of the grill. 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.
The 320-square-inch grilling surface is big enough to grill for a crowd. It’ll still fit in the trunk of most cars, but it definitely takes up a considerable amount of space. Warm portable bbq weather is still a ways off for many of us, but this is time of year when, like a groundhog, the grill starts to poke out of the snow and show its rusty, neglected self.
If you’ll need to carry the grill a few hundred yards or more, a lighter grill might work better. While the all-natural allure of charcoal might be viewed as a more sustainable option than propane, these grills tend to burn through coals pretty quickly. This is an important factor to consider when choosing a grill, particularly considering the cost of replacement fuel.