You’ll also want to wipe down the inside of the lid and bowl using a mild soap. After cooking, the best way to put out hot coals is to close the lid and shut both the upper and lower vents to cut off the oxygen supply. Closing the lid and vents will extinguish the coals, but it may take a while for the coals to cool down. Whether you’re replacing a well-loved grill or buying your very first one, you can’t go wrong with the Weber Original Kettle Premium 22-Inch Charcoal Grill. While widely viewed as the best charcoal grill you can buy, this thoughtfully-designed grill is also quite affordable, costing hundreds less than high-end models. Plus, our reviewer said it took him less than 15 minutes to put it together.
The Weber One-Touch Gold 22.5-Inch Charcoal Grill is our favorite kettle grill, but it has a flaw… We like to barbecue in the Parks on the weekends and bring a portable charcoal barbecue with us. Also, we go camping in a tent, and we put our gear in our SUV and there isn’t a lot of room. Cooking with charcoal is a pleasure, and this is one of the purest expressions of the craft. Other than a couple of convenience features, this is just straight-up grilling.
But we also opened our search to include charcoal grills of different designs. The fact that the kettle shape dominates the charcoal-grilling field doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the ideal. Most charcoal grills have two dampers, one near the bottom and one at the top, which work in tandem to direct the flow of air. Kamado grills also have two dampers, they tend to have a more airtight design, and most hold more charcoal than a conventional charcoal grill. It takes some effort to light and arrange the charcoal, and you have to empty the ashes regularly.
“Those early articles actually had instructions for digging a pit in the ground—a small pit,” says Moss. Those pits echoed the 19th century communal pit barbecues that eventually morphed into modern backyard grilling. Even so, weber genesis 2 “there’s a bit of a mystique in the shape,” says Kempster. “It’s a hard shape to manufacture because it takes really, really big presses to draw steel.” The design was also totally different than the boxy grills of the day.
Even worse, backyard chefs had to breathe in the excessive smoke from the grill top and the meat rarely had an even cook. Weber kettles combine traditional design with an innovative production. Made of steel and coated with porcelain enamel, the bowl and lid are formed exactly right to allow heat to circulate around the inside of the grill for even cooking. The porcelain enamel is baked on at approximately 1500°F ensuring that your grill will not only withstand the heat, but also resist rust and burn through. The world of the charcoal grill is essentially back to basics – returning to the original experience of cooking over an open fire.
The opposite is true of charcoal grills, which function best as sealed systems with solid, tight construction for effective air control. Just as with gas, the charcoal fire needs oxygen to burn, and you can use this oxygen flow to your advantage. Shut down the air dampers to drop the cooking temp or snuff the charcoal out entirely when finished. Open them wide to flood the fire with oxygen and create a rip-roaring, red-hot coal bed. Lifting the meat a few inches further from the heat source makes temperature maintenance less of a pain.
Our experiments ran the gamut from grilling burgers to smoking . 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 senior writer on the kitchen team. Sam Sifton, assistant managing editor at The New York Times, also joined in and added his extensive knowledge. I’d say it’s too large, not really portable, doesn’t break down too well and because of its shape isn’t the easiest to pack too.