Burger testing points out any hot spots across the grill’s cooking surface if one burger consistently reaches 145 F before the others in every round. With the weber portable grill grill preheated for 10 minutes on high, the basket goes onto the grill. After six minutes of cooking, we flip the basket and monitor internal temperature.
Their well-known designs, tried and true cooking systems, and outstanding customer service have helped them become the company people have known and loved for generations. We were remodeling our outdoor kitchen and needed help finding the right grill. He spent a lot of time talking with us about our needs and helped us get t … I was most comfortable purchasing from bbqgrills.com for one reason…follow up. I have purchased 3 grills and loads of accessories never an issue.
One of them, the Spirit S-315, is similar to our top pick, the Spirit II E-310, but has a few cosmetic differences, such as a stainless steel lid and metal dials. In our eyes, the S-315 seemed likely to perform about the same as our pick—and did not seem worth the higher price. With only two burners on this model, cooking with indirect heat means the food gets heat from only one side while it sits over the other, inactive burner. So you have to maneuver and rotate your chicken or roast to make sure it cooks evenly throughout. If you think you’ll frequently use your grill as an outdoor oven to cook roasts and whole birds, we recommend choosing one of our other picks instead.
If you want to splurge on a grill with exceptional temperature control and a dedicated searing zone, go for our upgrade pick, the Weber Genesis E-325s, instead. This little two-burner grill puts a mean sear on steaks, chops, and burgers. It provides good heat control and can maintain a steady medium to medium-low for grilling chicken pieces with rendered skin and sticky glaze. With almost no fiddling on our part, the Spirit and Genesis grills we tested both produced perfect barbecue chicken, while other contenders produced either flabby barbecue or charred chicken and burnt sauce. And in our indirect-cooking test, the Spirit II E-310 turned out a pair of flawless roasted birds that were deeply browned with skin so crisp, it puffed up like a balloon. Ah, fresh air and a juicy grilled burger—pure warm-weather delight.
We monitored the grills’ temperature for the hour-long cook, and we noted the depth and evenness of browning at the end. We restricted our search to grills that burn propane from refillable tanks. But you can find versions of all of our picks that work with natural gas. They didn’t perform well, and we knew that they wouldn’t be durable. Ultimately, if you want to spend less, we recommend that you get a smaller, two-burner grill or consider a charcoal grill or portable grill instead. The Weber Spirit II E-210 is a smaller, two-burner version of our top pick; the materials and build are identical.
That may not seem like much, but if you’re working in a small patio area, every inch counts. Like the E-310, the E-210 has an open-cart design and an easy-access side-mounted hook and gauge for the propane tank. The advantage of stainless steel over the porcelainized cast-iron grates on the Spirit II E-310 is its resistance to rust and corrosion. Two-burner grills like our budget pick can save you a little space and a little money—as long as you are prepared to cook your food in smaller batches and don’t plan on much indirect cooking. The grates are made of cast iron, but they are coated in porcelain.
Charcoal is easy to pick up at just about every grocery store, home improvement store, or gas station, so you won’t need to make a special trip. But you’ll need to have a charcoal starter on hand, will have to wait for everything to cool down before you can dispose of it, and need to deal with the messy ash afterward. For this recipe, we use the KettlePizza attachment to make a crispy crust grilled buffalo chicken pizza on our Weber Kettle charcoal grill. Those temperature probes are connected to a data logger and laptop with software that records the internal temperature of each chicken breast every two seconds. Each chicken cooks until the temperature in both breasts reaches a food-safe 165 degrees Fahrenheit. Wirecutter is the product recommendation service from The New York Times.
The key to using the Q 1400 successfully is to wait a sufficient amount of time for the grill to come to temperature. Once you do, the 189 square inches of cooking space can handle the grilling needs of anywhere from one person to four or weber bbq more—depending on what you’re cooking up. We were really impressed with the meal created using this grill, especially the quality sear marks it left on veggie shish kebabs, hanger steak, zucchini slices, and marinated chicken breast.