We tested six kettle-style charcoal grills because when it comes to grilling, simpler is just better. After a handful of cookouts over the last few weeks, there were two clear winners. I’ve been reviewing grills and smokers full time since 2012. To my weber charcoal grill knowledge, nobody else does this full time, and nobody else has cooked on as many grills and smokers as I have. I assemble products, measure temperatures, slam lids, turn dials, kick casters, study warranties, take pictures, and cook a lot of food.
The Napoleon’s vent assembly consists of two metal collars, one inside the other. When you invert the assembly to screw it to the grill, the inner collar can slip down unnoticed and prevent the screws from attaching to the grill body. That happened to us twice before we figured out what was going on.
Similarly, you’ll probably have to scrape stuff off the lower charcoal grate, though possibly not after each use. It’s a fairly large grill with lots of primary cooking space. Grilling for a large family or a crowd of guests is no problem. We love this grill, and it always appears highly in our roundup of the best charcoal grills available. Although it’s not a purpose-built smoker, it is certainly possible to do some smoking on your charcoal grill with the help of the charcoal snake method and some good temp control via the vents.
When he’s firing up his charcoal, Karl likes to shove all of it to one side of the kettle. You can spread the briquettes out across the bottom once they’ve transformed into hot coals. I prefer the weber, coated cast-iron grates to the plated steel grates the Original Kettle comes with, but there are worse things, and the plated steel still cooks relatively well.
If you like to switch up your cooking style once in a while, you’ll love The Original PK Grill & Smoker. This model delivers the best of both worlds, and it’s perfect weber genesis 2 for both casual grillers and professional chefs. For a lower price point and a little less grilling space, check out the Weber Original Kettle 18-Inch Charcoal Grill.
Then, I called my friend and resident AoM meat-cooking consultant, Karl Engel, and asked him to show me the ropes on how to cook with it. To get reacquainted with the Weber Kettle Grill as a grown man, I first went down to my local Home Depot and bought the classic model for myself. Once the victuals were hot and sizzling, they were eagerly placed inside soft Wonder Bread buns, slathered with ketchup and all the other fixins, and devoured with gusto. After enjoying the sound of a newly birthed charcoal fire, we’d stand around the grill and watch the flame slowly get smaller and smaller, and the charcoal get whiter and whiter. 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.
The Weber can also smoke low and slow at a rock-steady cooking temperature. For the high-heat, whole-grate burger test, we lit a chimney’s worth of briquets—the equivalent of six quarts, or about 90 coals of a former runner-up from our extensive briquet tests. We then oiled the grates and distributed 10 to 12 six-ounce patties across the whole cooking surface . While the burgers cooked we kept an eye out for undesirable weber q flare-ups, which can char the meat and create acrid smoke, and examined the evenness of cooking on the different areas of the grates. After about 10 minutes of cooking , we compared how well each grill had seared the burgers, looking for any patties that were charred or unacceptably raw, and took a taste. The Smokey Mountain Cooker™ smoker has two cooking grates to smoke two large items at once or plenty of ribs.
The porcelain-enamel blast-fired coating allows for effortless removal of soot with just some soapy water. Many folks strongly believe charcoal produces better flavor than gas. Let’s just say different fuels have different characteristics—and we won’t even get into all the different types of charcoal available today. If you’ve ever found starting a grill to be a hassle, and even if you haven’t, this will make grilling so much easier. Is there a portable grill that works as well as a full-sized one? Meet the Kudu Open-Fire Grill, which allows for all the romance of this kind of cooking, with none of the hassle.
With the 18-inch Weber Original Kettle Grill, you can still get the full Weber charcoal grilling experience for under $100. I love cooking outdoors over live fire and smoke whatever the weather, using various grills, smokers, and wood-fired ovens to produce epic food. My goal with this site is to help as many people as possible enjoy and be good at doing the same. There’s nothing quite like the simple pleasure of cooking over charcoal on a nice grill like this.
After 45 minutes, we flipped the chicken parts, slathered on a coating of barbecue sauce, and closed the lid for another five minutes. We repeated this step twice more, rounding out the cook time at an hour flat. Then we had a taste, paying special attention to the breast meat—a long cook can dry it out. Over the course of two days, we put three charcoal grills through a battery of tests designed to demonstrate their qualities and highlight their differences. We cooked burgers on high heat to see how well the grills seared meat and how even and intense a heat they could generate across the whole grate surface.