If you’re cooking something light like a filet of white-fleshed fish, you can get away with about a third of a chimney starter. When in doubt, though, just fill your chimney starter and shape the bed of coals as makes sense. It won’t cost you too much to err on the safe side, and eventually, you’ll get a feel for how many coals you need for the type of cooking you’re doing. Charcoal will take about 15 to 20 minutes to light and turn into embers, but that can vary a good deal depending on what type of charcoal and how much you’re using. The main thing to look for is that the coals are covered in a light grey ash. Once you’re done grilling, close your grill and any vents your grill may have.
Essentially just a grate sitting between two pieces of metal atop a tripod, it’s hard to imagine a simpler cooker beyond just an open fire on the ground. 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. There’s weber genesis 2 nothing quite like the smell and taste of a charcoal grill in the summer. 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. Charcoal briquettes and lump charcoal are easier to ignite and keep lit than ordinary firewood.
The worst was our Tacklife review unit, which didn’t hold much heat and didn’t sear while cooking. The steak on that grill needed an additional five minutes to get to a temperature of 135 F, the minimum for medium rare. Every grill we tested had a hinged grate, a nice feature that lets you add or adjust the coals without lifting the whole grate off. We preferred the Weber and Napoleon designs, which each have a pair of hinged sections, on opposite edges of the grate, that let you directly access the entire bed of charcoal below. We noticed no performance differences, and all worked well, with no notable sticking of the items we cooked. Our experiments ran the gamut from grilling burgers (fast, high heat) to smoking (slow, low heat).
Throughout the Weber’s 6-hour, 32-minute cook time, the grill’s internal heat levels never strayed beyond 25 degrees of our target, 225 degrees F. In fact, most of the time the temperature hovered between 220 degrees F and 230 degrees F. As a result, ribs cooked in the Weber came out tender, juicy and full of smoky flavor. Next, we light each grill’s snake at one end of the chain with five lit briquettes (tumbleweed fire starters work, too). We set all air vents on each grill (top and bottom) to the halfway-open position.
For grilling, the two important rules to follow are that you’ll need about a pound of meat per person and that you’ll need 72 square inches for each of those servings. For a family of four, 400 to 500 square inches is sufficient—that allows enough room for sides, extras, or the occasionally dinner guest without being too big a grill for everyday portable bbq use. For a gas-powered grill, the Weber Spirit II E-310 is our top choice thanks to its three burners, compact design, and useful features. If you’re looking for the classic Weber black charcoal grill, you can’t go wrong with the Weber Performer Deluxe 22-Inch Charcoal Grill. When cooking, the grate has a hinged design to add more charcoal.
The new PK 300 also comes with cast-aluminum lugs and legs, so nothing is bound to fall apart or buckle like it would on a cheaper grill. It handles about five (crowded) burgers on the grate, so it’s plenty for a normal carload of people, which we find is just right. There are tons of portable grills out there, but the most basic and familiar is the miniature version of our top recommendation, Weber’s 14-inch Smokey Joe. We like the Kamado Joe (KJ) Classic II because it makes few, if any, concessions in quality, but is priced well.
It’s relatively inexpensive as far as grills/smokers go and it will essentially last a decade or longer. The dampers are made of aluminum and the hinged grill grates are made of heavy-duty plated steel. When grilling things like hot dogs and hamburgers, you don’t need to put the lid on. 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.
You may be wondering, why not just use a pellet grill that regulates heat much better? As much as we at Insider Reviews adore pellet grills and the flavor they offer, they just don’t stack up to good old-fashioned charcoal. I love cooking weber q 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.
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. At the end of each hour-long test, we noted the depth and evenness of browning, and finally we did a taste test, again paying special attention to the breasts—ideally, they’d be fully cooked but still juicy. Because of its dominance, the Weber kettle has spawned a lot of copycats. In our research, most proved to be cheap knockoffs that weren’t worth the minor savings. We resolved instead to find a kettle that could compete with the Weber on performance, price, and value. But we also opened our search to include charcoal grills of different designs.