These wallet-friendly options offer efficient heating, even distribution, and overall performance. If you’re looking for a larger electric grill, Weber also has the Q 2400, which boasts 280 square inches of cooking space for a slightly higher price. Despite being light and very portable, the Venture features a heavy-duty cast iron grilling surface that cooks evenly and sears well. In fact, I rarely turned this one up past medium, because it gets plenty hot on low.
However, if you’re planning to cook frequently with your grill, it might be beneficial to purchase an adapter hose, which will allow you to use a larger 20-pound propane tank with your portable grill. Cuisinart’s Venture portable gas grill looks like something Apple would make if Apple got into grills. It’s really a two-part grill that packs up into a lightweight, easy-to-carry package.
We have found the 7112 covers to protect your Weber from all-weather and make it last for many years. This newer model of the Q320 has the same great feature as the older model but is restyled and looks a lot nicer.The control knob and handle are larger and easier to use. You can boil water on any type of grill as long as you have a pot or kettle with no wooden or plastic parts.
After the initial heat-up stage, the grill registered 555°F at the 30-minute mark, more than hot enough for a good sear. There is some heat variation, with a 10- to 20-degree difference in final temperatures during our burger tests, with the burgers on the front and sides cooking slower than those on the back row. The built-in ignition system is adequate, and the burners are responsive to adjustment.
I’ve got to say, the results were really impressive – the fish was perfectly cooked and it definitely had a light texture and very pleasant smokey flavour. Despite its diminutive size, the Lumin Compact is a versatile piece of kit that can grill, sear, smoke, steam and warm. For its heat source, it uses a simple old-fashioned oven-style heating element that weaves a path directly beneath the two-part high-quality cast-iron grilling grates. Camryn Rabideau is a freelance writer and product tester for The Spruce Eats who’s an expert on all things grilling. She’s personally tested several grills and smokers, including our top pick for a portable grill, the Weber Q2200 Liquid Propane Grill, and the splurge-worthy HitchFire Forge 15.
My next experiment involved smoking a salmon fillet so I followed the instructions and replaced the left-hand grill top with the smoking tray and filled it with wood chips. Why Weber suggest the left side and not the right I don’t know – I mean it’s not as if the left side of the heating element is a different temperature to the right. But anyway, Weber recommend starting on full heat for about 5 minutes to get the chips smoking and then reducing the temperature by turning the dial to the smoke icon.
The porcelain-coated cast-iron grill grate is quite non-stick, with even delicate fish filets releasing pretty easily. What makes this grill special is that the telescoping VersaStand holds the grill at ideal cooking height, yet shrinks down for easy transport and storage. Our tester did find the grill was a bit wobbly at its full height, but it put great sear marks on a variety of food, from tofu to Brazilian-style steak skewers, with minimal sticking.
Do yourself a favor, throw away your lighter fluid and get a charcoal chimney starter ($27). It weighs 22 pounds and has a handle with a bar that fits over the top to keep the kettle and lid together for easy carrying. I tossed mine in the back of the car for trips to the lake and the park and it never tipped over. The ash catcher at the bottom makes cleaning less of a hassle weber portable grill by allowing you to dump the excess without removing the grill grates. After that, we grilled 12 thick onion slices, 12 burgers, and 12 accompanying buns per grill. We cooked each for a prescribed amount of time at a specified temperature setting and observed how the grill behaved, noting any variations of doneness on varying spots of the grill, flare-ups, or sticking.
The Weber BBQ grill has the option to use a smoke box for extra smoke flavor just like most grills. This means that the flame can be controlled from low to high without any steps but in any stand. There is a different knob for both of the burners to weber portable grill adjust the temperature from low for a kind of slow cooking to high for searing a steak. If you lower the side tables you can use the smaller standard 6553 model grill cover. This Weber gas grill is available in propane gas and a natural gas edition.
With its rectangular shape and easy-carry handle, the Cuisinart Venture looks a bit like an insulated cooler, but it does the exact opposite. Its base conceals storage for a propane tank, the wooden top becomes a cutting board/serving tray, and the middle section is the grill itself, with a 9,000-BTU burner and a 154-square-inch nonstick grate. It’s a small grill and doesn’t have a heck of a lot of power, but it’s also extremely compact and easy to carry down to the beach or toss into your backpack. The Big Green Egg is a Kamado-style cooker (Kamado is a Japanese word that roughly means “stove”), which makes it much more than a grill. The ceramic construction retains heat and turns it into a portable oven as well. The MiniMax Big Green Egg is identical to its larger cousin in nearly every way, but smaller.