If you’re looking for the best affordable charcoal grill under $100 that will cook your meat to a perfect temperature, then this Weber is for you. 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. We filled it up to the top with briquettes and then put newspaper underneath, which we lit on fire and then allowed the coals to heat up for exactly 15 minutes. Once your briquettes are fired up and ready to go, you then dump them into the base of the kettle grill.
They’re all liable to leak, spill, and trash the trunk of your car, so don’t set out without a storage bin or a large, heavy-duty sealed bag to contain grease, ash, and grit. I prefer the weber, coated cast-iron grates to the plated steel grates the Original Kettle comes with, but there are worse things, and the plated steel still cooks relatively well. It’s a fun rewarding experience, though to be perfectly honest I now never smoke on this grill because I tend to always smoke on my Kamado Joes. The bowl and lid are protected against burn-through and rust-through for 10 years.
With five locations in the Greater Houston Area (two in Houston, one in Spring, Katy, and now open in The Woodlands), we’re always here to help you find the perfect grill for your needs. Welcome to Texas Star Grill Shop, your go-to destination for all things BBQ in the Greater Houston Area! Our journey began with a love for Texas BBQ, and we’ve weber q been dedicated to providing top-of-the-line grills and accessories ever since. I do wish they had given this premium model bigger, better wheels. We purchased the Weber Original Kettle Premium 22-Inch Charcoal Grill so our reviewer could put it to the test. BBQGuys does more than test and sell grills — we show you how to use them, too.
What you will have to do after each use is remove unused charcoal and ash that falls to the bottom. Buy a wireless digital meat thermometer, you’ll be much happier over the long run. That’s just one of the questions I’ll answer in this review of the OG of Weber portable bbq grills. She was helpful, kind, thorough, and an absolute pleasure in helping me with my defective kamado smoker (apparently shipping a 260lb giant clay pot acr … At Texas Star Grill Shop, we take pride in offering the best prices in Houston, guaranteed.
Only very old models of Weber grills would require seasoning, and because they are very old, that surely happened a long time ago. If you purchase a new Weber grill, you don’t need to worry about seasoning it. The grill was able to achieve high temperatures as well as larger models, and was even able to sear meat. Lastly, we found it easy to assemble and attach a 1-pound gas canister. Our tester called it “pricey, but worth it” for anyone who regularly grills on the go. If you do want something a bit cheaper or smaller, we’ve also tested and recommend the Q 1200.
Lastly, we place one rack of ribs on each grill for indirect cooking, with the meat not sitting directly above the coals. The 22-inch Napoleon Rodeo Charcoal Kettle Grill (model number NK22CK-L) is considered one of the better Weber clones available (the pros at AmazingRibs.com, among others, rate it highly). In our cooking tests it performed well, though not quite as well as the Weber. In particular, we didn’t find its unique heat-diffusing plate—a shallow metal dome that sits in the middle of the coal bed—to be as effective as we would have liked. However, at 34 inches at the grates, it’s nearly counter height, and a full 7 inches taller than the Weber, so it was less tiring to work on.
In December of 2006, they purchased an additional property along Rt. 33 in Easton, PA, to meet the growing demand for their products, as well as facilitating significantly larger indoor and outdoor showroom. Since then they have continued to expand their indoor showroom and outdoor patio. Co-founder Matt Van Horn is the president of June while the company’s other co-founder, Nikhil Bhogal, is the senior vice president, technology and connected devices of Weber. Van Horn continued to focus on the June Oven while Bhogal works with Weber R&D programs and new products. Our highly trained team is always prepared to help you with any questions you may have about grills and accessories.
Ariane Resnick, who also updated this article, is a special diet chef, certified nutritionist, and bestselling author. She has more than 20 years experience in the food and writing spaces and believes in a joy-filled approach to health and wellness. Stainless-steel grates are inexpensive and lightweight, but you’ll need to clean them with a great grill brush after every session.
But what really sets the Premium version apart from the standard 22-inch kettle is the enclosed ash catcher, which makes cleanup easy and eliminates concerns about stray embers. Assembly is dead simple, and the construction and materials are sturdy. Add its solid warranty and well-regarded customer service, and the Weber Kettle Premium Grill is the best value going. No matter what you slap on it, the Weber can cook it—hot and fast or low and slow.
We got good results in one or another respect with the other models, but they didn’t perform consistently great on everything the way the Weber did. It’s compact yet big enough to cook an entire elaborate meal for a family, a simple spread for a party, or even a whole Thanksgiving turkey. Over the course of two days, we put three charcoal grills through a battery of tests designed to demonstrate their qualities and highlight their differences. We cooked burgers on high heat to see how well the grills seared meat and how even and intense a heat they could generate across the whole grate surface. Then we slow-grilled cut-up chickens to see if our contenders could hold a low temperature evenly across the whole grate.