We only recommend products we genuinely like, and purchases made through our links support our mission and the free content we publish here on AoM. Karl likes to spread the charcoal so that it covers about half of the kettle. Then, I called my friend and resident AoM meat-cooking weber charcoal grill consultant, Karl Engel, and asked him to show me the ropes on how to cook with it. After enjoying the sound of a newly birthed charcoal fire, we’d stand around the grill and watch the flame slowly get smaller and smaller, and the charcoal get whiter and whiter.
The app doesn’t allow you to alter the flame, one of the few drawbacks to the EX-325S. The Weber Original Kettle Premium Charcoal Grill is a classic option for anyone who loves grilling with charcoal, and you can’t beat the reasonable price for such a well-made product. Our rib experience with a few of the other grills was far from ideal. At times, the inside of this grill hit temperatures as high as 400 degrees F.
Finally, we roasted whole chickens indirectly to see if the grills could create browned skin and perfectly cook meat without charring. Sam Sifton, editor for the Cooking section of The New York Times (the parent company of Wirecutter), joined us for these tests. The 26-inch Original Kettle® Premium is the charcoal grill you want at your next party. It’s large enough to grill an entire dinner during the week, or a bunch of burgers at your next barbecue. With premium features, such as a hinged cooking grate for easily adding charcoal while grilling, and the One-Touch™ cleaning system with high-capacity ash catcher. Toast to the authenticity of charcoal grilling, classic design, and taste loved around the world—the Original Kettle.
Whether entertaining on a small patio or in a big backyard, the need to grill has no limits. After dinner, fold down the side table, push together your chairs, and toast to the Performer charcoal grill. After testing and reviewing it for over 6 months, I can safely safe I’m a big fan of the Slow N’ Sear, however, I don’t think it’s absolutely necessary portable bbq to make smoking feasible on a charcoal grill. Having said all of this, this upgrade is not necessary to smoke on the weber kettle. If you’re someone who has never smoked meat before and you look at the lid thermometer, you might panic when you see 400F on your lid thermometer. The above is the most basic arrangement for charcoal when smoking meat.
It’s about waist level in height for almost everyone, so it’s quite comfortable to cook on. The 363-square-inch cooking area can easily handle a pair of whole chickens or about 10 to 13 burgers, depending on how large you make your patties. Any more than that and the grill can get overloaded, making it difficult to cook everything evenly and to flip the patties. The Cuisinart Black Kettle Grill is one of the smallest we tested with its 18-inch kettle. It’s similar in size to the Weber Original Kettle Charcoal Grill, though unlike that grill, it comes with an ash pan and a thermometer. However, a major downside to this grill was that the built-in thermometer barely worked.
The goal was a steady hold at 375 degrees Fahrenheit, and we adjusted the vents to get as close to that as we could. After 45 minutes, we flipped the chicken parts, slathered on a coating of barbecue sauce, and closed the lid for another five minutes. We repeated this step twice more, rounding out the cook time at an hour flat. Then we had a taste, paying special attention to the breast meat—a long cook weber q can dry it out. 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).
Our experts provide the recipes and skills you need to be a grill master. This was originally written by Erica Puisis, a writer and interior design expert, who has been writing about all things home and lifestyle for The Spruce since 2017. The Spruce Eats Editor Siobhan Wallace compiled testing data from our official Lab as well as insights from our home testers’ full product reviews to compile this roundup.
For the same reason, don’t let your charcoal grill sit out in the rain, as the resulting lye will quickly corrode any metal it touches. Instead, bring your grill into a garage, put it under an awning, or tent it with a grill cover (in every case, after the ash is cool). Clean the grates before or after each use by brushing them free of cooked-on gunk and wiping them with a wet rag. Oil the grates after heating them, before you cook anything—it’ll help keep food from sticking. Nothing beats the smoky barbecue flavor that can only be created on a charcoal grill.