Portable charcoal grills for tailgating and camping are popular and effective. This is typically accomplished by piling or corralling your charcoal fuel on one side to create a hot direct cooking zone over the weber bbq fire and a moderate indirect zone on the opposite side. A two-zone setup helps you avoid charred chicken and exploding sausage, plus it gives you the option to gently roast or sizzle and sear at the same time.
I assemble products, measure temperatures, slam lids, turn dials, kick casters, study warranties, take pictures, and cook a lot of food. For grillers looking for a popular model with a modest amount of storage space, there’s the Weber 22-inch Performer charcoal grill. “The Weber Kettle 22 really is the perfect charcoal grill for weekly use. It has space for making 13 burgers at once, and hooks for hanging grill tools, along with a small shelf for keeping food nearby. This is the proper way to use a charcoal chimney to get your coals going. Many Weber gas grills feature side burners, which you can use for whipping a sauce or grilling vegetables while you prepare meat in the main cooking area.
Overall, it’s a fantastic grill for a fair price considering its features. If you’re new to the world of charcoal grills, this is an easy, user-friendly option that you can grow into as you become more experienced. There’s a 560-square-inch cooking surface for grilling and smoking, plus you can keep an eye on your steak remotely via the app. Thanks to its smart design, ashes fall into a bucket at the hopper’s base, and cleanup is as easy as opening the door to empty it. Make grilling season easier on yourself and clean your grill at the start of each grilling session, not at the end.
After your done grilling (and things have cooled down), you should always empty your ash tray. On our favorite Weber grill, this is located right below the grill and even has a handle for ease of use. 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. Kevin Cortez is a Commerce Editor for Popular Mechanics, Bicycling, and Runner’s World.
If you often grill after dark, look for a Weber model with lighted control knobs or lighted handles. These amenities make it much easier to see what you’re doing, so you can be sure that your food is grilled perfectly. The grill’s lid is secured on a convenient hinge that makes it easy to open, and the unit is mounted on a cart with four locking caster wheels.
Be mindful of marketing copy advertising how much food will fit on a grill’s grate. A charcoal grill that claims it can fit eight burger patties may only be able to cook one prime rib at a time. In this case, it’s helpful to look at user photos and consider the shape of different foods you like to cook. Charcoal briquettes and lump charcoal are easier to ignite and keep lit than ordinary firewood. That said, charcoal (especially in briquette form) produces a lot more ash than hardwood. And if you plan to cook low and slow we suggest adding a few chunks of hardwood to your charcoal pile.
Their portable grills come in both charcoal and gas varieties, and all boast a compact, lightweight design. However, because of the smaller size, Weber portable grills don’t offer much cooking capacity. Otherwise, you’ll need to cook your food in several batches. The briquettes can be somewhat expensive, so operating a charcoal grill is often more expensive than running a gas grill.
Our rib experience with a few of the other grills was far from ideal. At times, the inside of this grill hit temperatures as high as 400 degrees F. And sadly, the ribs it produced came out burned, charred and overdone.
If your favorite recipes require on-the-fly adjustments, like changing the grate height and temperature, find a charcoal grill with the features to accommodate. 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. weber portable grill Lastly, we place one rack of ribs on each grill for indirect cooking, with the meat not sitting directly above the coals. Simple construction means there aren’t too many parts to assemble or too many features to handle while cooking. A vent on the lid controls airflow and a well-designed ash tray beneath the Weber grill facilitates easy cleanup.
This gives smoke plenty of time to leisurely caress foods and impart that magic, smoky goodness. For a long while, charcoal grills were the primary tool of backyard grillers. Hasty-Bake introduced its wonderful cooker with a crank that raises and lowers the charcoal rack in 1948, and it remains one of our favorite brands to this day. When Weber-Stephen rolled out its now iconic charcoal kettles in 1952, they lit a fire in backyards coast to coast and barbecue grew into a national pastime.