Charcoal briquettes and lump charcoal are easier to ignite and keep lit than ordinary firewood. And if you plan to cook low and slow we suggest adding a few chunks of hardwood to your charcoal portable bbq pile. This brings about more smoke flavor in barbecue meat like pork ribs, pork butt and beef brisket. Next, we light each grill’s snake at one end of the chain with five lit briquettes .
All of our tests were designed and run by Wirecutter senior writer Lesley Stockton, who has over a decade of experience in professional kitchens, many of them spent on the grill station. Lesley conducted the testing with senior staff writer Tim Heffernan, who wrote this guide, and Michael Sullivan, a weber genesis 2 senior writer on the kitchen team. Sam Sifton, assistant managing editor at The New York Times, also joined in and added his extensive knowledge. The Weber Original Kettle Premium Charcoal Grill 22″ is a classic for good reason. Plus, you can get it in a few different color and size combinations.
Their kettle style grills are one of the most popular charcoal grills of all time, and this is due to Weber’s solid performance and dependable quality. Weber charcoal grills are portable, lightweight, and our huge selection includes all the sizes and colors available from Weber. 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. Smoking is a process in which meats are cooked at a much lower temperature for an extended period. A Weber charcoal smoker is a great option for larger cuts of meats like brisket and ham, while charcoal grilling may be a better option for classic grilling dishes like hamburgers, hot dogs and more.
That said, this Weber takes under 10 minutes to set up and requires no hardware. Like the Weber Original Premium grill, hamburgers tested on this grill cooked up to a perfect medium rare. The chicken we grilled took four minutes of sear time and 25 additional minutes on indirect heat to come up to a safe internal temperature. If you’re looking for the best affordable charcoal grill under $100 that will cook your meat to a perfect temperature, then this Weber is for you.
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. Because of its dominance, the Weber kettle has spawned a lot of copycats.