Whatever your charcoal grill budget may be, I strongly advise getting a model that has an ash removal system, such as Weber’s One-Touch removable ash bucket. Even if it costs a little more, you’ll be glad you shelled out the extra dough for that convenience, which takes away much of the pain in the ash. It’s a three-probe temperature tracker and ventilation control system that feeds all the grilling data you could want to your phone. If your fire is gaining too much heat on a low-and-slow pork shoulder, the Tempmaster will cut back airflow to cut the heat down.
It has a cooking area of 240 square inches and features a carry handle for portability, the brand says. The grill has steel cooking grates and dampers that help you control the temperature inside the kettle, according to Weber. Starting a charcoal grill is definitely not as easy as starting a gas grill, so it’s important to understand how to do it correctly. 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.
The Rib-O-Lator solves this and acts as a horizontal rotisserie for whatever you’re cooking. Broadrick says that consistency has elevated the charcoal grill into something more. “At this point, the Weber Kettle is more of a platform than a stand-alone product,” he says. Out of dozens of community-driven updates and upgrades, these are the best Weber Kettle add-ons that money can buy. The Napoleon Freestanding Charcoal Kettle Grill took the longest to set up, clocking in at an hour and five minutes of build time.
Burgers for my kids—no cheese, please, and not too pink in the center or else Dad will have to bring them back to the grill for a little extra cooking. And, if you already know charcoal, but you’re looking for a better experience than what you’ve got now, you can’t go wrong with a Weber. Overall, it’s well-designed, well-built, and deserving of the Weber name. Lid thermometers are seldom accurate, and they tell you the temperature at the top of the dome when you really need to know what’s going on at the grate.
A front door allows easy access to the charcoal during cooking and the double-lined hood is a nice feature to help hold in heat. The Professional Cart Grill has an interesting rotisserie design, too, that uses a special charcoal basket across the back for a dedicated rotisserie fire. We were underwhelmed with the performance of the Napoleon 22-inch grill, which is most likely a result of the grill needing more briquettes to really work well. The kettle on this model is pretty deep and you can adjust the cooking grate to two different levels. We wouldn’t advise cooking with the grate at the highest level if you’re looking for a nice sear since it’s too far off the heat.
Before the cooking tests, we spent a day assembling the three grills. Overall, the cooking tests were far more important to us; you typically only assemble a grill once. But poor instructions can make assembly slow, frustrating, and full of retraced steps. And a simply bad design can make assembly needlessly difficult. Plus, poorly finished parts can have dangerously sharp edges—sometimes sharp enough to cause a nasty cut.
Overall, this is a good basic barrel grill, but assembly was frustrating and it lacks many of the features that made the Classic our pick for best upgrade. The true original Weber grill, the Weber Original weber q Kettle Grill, can be purchased for under $100, making it our top pick for best budget grill. This grill measures 18 inches wide, which is a noticeable surface-area difference from the 22-inch grill.
Clean the grates before or after each use by brushing them free of cooked-on gunk and wiping them with a wet rag. Oil the grates after heating them, before you cook anything—it’ll help keep food from sticking. After much discussion, we also decided not to insist on a built-in cart, with side tables, on weber q our charcoal contenders. Most manufacturers offer them as an option, but they can tack on hundreds of dollars to the grill price. They’re handy, no doubt, but if your patio or deck already has a table or countertop, you’re paying for something you don’t need and giving up valuable living space, too.
For the indirect-cooking test, we cooked a whole chicken at as close to 500 °F as we could get (emulating Barbara Kafka’s famous oven-roasting method). We moved the remaining coals to one side of the coal grate and added half a chimney’s worth of freshly lit coals. In effect we were testing whether the grills could function as ovens—a really nice feature in the hot summer months, when you may not want to warm up your kitchen.
After you pop the cooking grate over the red-hot briquettes, you’re ready to start cooking. The enormous capacity of the Ranch® kettle charcoal grill sets the tone for a party that lasts weber genesis 2 until tomorrow. With more than 1,000 square inches of grilling space and a stainless steel hinged cooking grate for easily adding charcoal, you’re set up to grill for the masses.