The Complete Buying Guide to Weber Grills: Every Model Explained

The smoke is then drawn through the main chamber, cooking and submerging your food slowly and evenly. It also has an ash catcher built into the bottom of the Kettle’s drum, which collects ash as it cooks. No nasty build-up, and no stressful clean-up operation needed between uses. The Weber Kettle offers exactly this, with its hinged cooking grates. If your coals are on the verge of burning out, you can quickly and easily swap them out. Throughout the Weber’s 6-hour, 32-minute cook time, the grill’s internal heat levels never strayed beyond 25 degrees of our target, 225 degrees F.

It’s a great performer and has a large enough chamber and grate area to take on a lot of food. Without the need for heavy-duty burners or propane tanks, a charcoal unit just portable bbq needs to have a strong build and large enough chamber to build a roaring fire within. Ribs cooked on the Nexgrill had lots of bark but were juicy and tender inside.

Because of this, the Napoleon is definitely not a grill for charcoal beginners. In our testing, the Weber Premium was hands down the easiest grill to control temperature on, with the flames inside the kettle responding expertly to any tap of the vents. During our cooking tests on the Weber Original Premium Kettle Grill, hamburgers cooked to a medium rare temperature and our chicken ended up juicy, with a solid sear on the outside. Other grills we tested either ran hotter and overcooked the hamburgers, or they weren’t hot enough and barely seared or cooked the meat. Starting a charcoal grill is definitely not as easy as starting a gas grill, so it’s important to understand how to do it correctly. You’ll need to purchase a bag of briquettes, and either lighter fluid or a handy charcoal starter.

weber charcoal grill

Over the course of two days, we put three charcoal grills through a battery of tests. After much discussion, we also decided not to insist on a built-in cart, with side tables, on our charcoal contenders. Most manufacturers offer them as an option, but they can tack on hundreds of dollars to the grill price. portable bbq They’re handy, no doubt, but if your patio or deck already has a table or countertop, you’re paying for something you don’t need and giving up valuable living space, too. From burgers to chicken to slow-smoked ribs, this Weber model’s time-tested design produces great results—at a terrific price.

Cook delicious burgers, juicy steaks, game-day hot dogs and yummy veggies to perfection with a new Weber charcoal grill or Weber smoker grill from Ace Hardware. Weber has the charcoal smokers, portable charcoal grills and all the accessories you need to become a true grill master. Find charcoal barbecue grills to handle everything from grilling to smoking your favorite foods online now. For the high-heat, whole-grate burger test, we lit a chimney’s worth of briquets—the equivalent of six quarts, or about 90 coals of a former runner-up from our extensive briquet tests. We poured the lit coals into the grills, spread them in an even layer, and then heated the grills with the lids down and all vents fully open for 15 minutes (a standard manufacturer’s recommendation).