The 3 Best Portable Grills of 2022 Reviews by Wirecutter

Char-Broil Liquid Propane Gas Grills comes with two 12,000 BTUs for a total BTU of 24,000. This is good for a grill of this size, but you can check out the Weber Spirit II if you’re looking for something of a similar size that’s slightly more powerful. The Char-Broil also features an instant-on propane tank so your preheat time is only about minutes.

At a little over 80 pounds, and with four-casters, it’s more than easy to move around the yard or, if you’d like to bring it with you to the cottage, to disassemble and load into a car. If you’d prefer a pick-up and carry style of barbeque, check out our Weber Q1200 Gas Grill review. The Char-Broil Performance 475 provides an ample cooking space with four powerful burners and some great features. For a large family cookout, this grill has all the necessary features you’d expect, plus high-quality materials at a reasonable price. The 475 square inch cooking space’s design allows for a lot of food to be cooked at once, and the additional lidded side burner is a huge plus. We were impressed with the high-heat grilling performance of the Weber Go Anywhere Charcoal Grill.

We did notice, however, that the Spirit was slightly hotter in the back of the grill and less hot on the left side. We accommodated this discrepancy by shifting food towards the center or far right, when we wanted to sear the steak. We spatchcocked a whole chicken, cut it in half and seasoned each half with Kosher salt and black pepper. Then we turned off two or four burners, depending on how many burners each grill had, and cooked the chicken with indirect heat by putting the chicken on the unlit burners for 30 minutes. When the leg and thigh were cooked through, we transferred the chicken to the lit burner and crisped up the skin until it was golden brown. Have a rusty, old, or damaged handle on your gas grill that needs replacing?

Preventing grease and fire contact is especially important since the cooking grates on portable gas grills sit very close to the heating element (usually a 1- to 1½-inch clearance). Steel inserts that sit over the flame ports can help, as can a char broil performance cleverly designed grilling grate that channels grease away from the fire. “Performance” is one of the series of Char-boil, but What does “300” mean? Having 300 square inches of primary cooking space, which is why it’s called “Performance 300”.

char broil performance

With consistent heat distribution, the Char-Broil can sear steak and burgers and also slowly cook chicken to juicy and crispy perfection. We put four beef hamburgers on each quadrant of the cooking grate to determine whether the grill was hotter in the back, sides or front. We seared the burgers for three minutes, turned them and using a digital meat thermometer, cooked them to medium-rare, between 140°F and 145°F.

An ordinary wire grill brush will generally get the job done very effectively. The last assembly steps, involving hookups for the burners and other details, are where things can get tedious, but they’re pretty straightforward in the instructions. The lid-mounted thermometer keeps accurate readings only when the lid is closed, which is typical for most grills. Grease-management system, again similar to Char-Broil’s, in which a tapered pan forces the grease to drip into a tray with a replaceable foil inset. Finally, we kept to a budget of no more than $300 each for the other two finalists.

The Spirit also has a unique device that attaches to the propane tank and indicates the level of propane gas inside the tank. The temperature gauge is located on the front of the hood, so it’s easy to see the grill’s internal temperature even from across the patio. The five-burner Char-Broil also has a side burner with 10,000 BTUs, which can be used char broil performance for sauteing onions or peppers or making a pan sauce for your grilled meats and vegetables. Despite being classified as a budget grill, the Char-Broil actually offers many benefits not normally found on budget Monument grills. Aside from being very affordable, the grease pan is larger than the ones you will find on even higher-end barbeques.

The side shelves are Gear Trax enabled for extra workspace with custom accessories . It has a simplified design with standardized hardware for quick and easy assembly. The electronic ignition for reliability starts every time makes grilling hassle-free. The durable cart design with convenient LP tank storage is a plus and the removable grease pan makes for easy cleaning.