Charcoal and Kettle Grills

The Cuisinart Kettle Grill boasts on its box that it only takes 15 minutes to set up; it actually took us 27 minutes to complete the task. Both the Char-Griller Kettle and the Oklahoma Joe’s Kettle Grill took us 45 minutes to set up. Clean the cooking grate as you would any other grate — use a good grill cleaning tool to remove food debris (when it’s still warm), but don’t use anything metal. You may want to occasionally wash it with warm water and perhaps a mild soap.

These dials are usually located in the lid, not down on the grill surface where the food is—and you’re not eating the lid, so its temperature is irrelevant. With grilling, the ability to cook on direct heat means that your food will be ready quickly. However, unless you’re closely watching the grill at all times, your food can easily burn or overcook.

In 2021, it was announced that June, a home automation company specializing in kitchen appliances including a “smart” oven, was acquired by Weber for $142.2 million. 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. Insert legs straight into tubes without twisting or rocking. DO NOT REMOVE. Small buttons inside tubes create indentations in soft aluminum of legs as you insert them, ensuring tight fit. Twisting, rocking, or removing and reinserting can lead to too-wide grooves and loose legs.

While its ribs came out tender and juicy overall, the exterior bark had a few burnt spots. Clean the grates before or after each use by brushing them free weber charcoal grill 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.

From burgers to chicken to slow-smoked ribs, this Weber model’s time-tested design produces great results—at a terrific price. SAVE TIME WITH LESS SCRUBBING- No one likes cleaning up, but it’s a fact of life. Luckily, stainless steel is much easier to clean and maintain than nickel weber genesis 2 plated steel. This means you spend more time chillin’ and grillin’ than cleaning the grill grate. The Slow N Sear from SnS Grills converts a Weber kettle into a slow smoking machine. You can hold “Low and Slow” barbecue temps for about 10 hours on a single load of charcoal.

weber charcoal grill

Despite the distance from the heat, meat still seared well on this grill because it ran so hot. It took over an hour to get this grill from 400 degrees Fahrenheit to the 300-degree range. And, yes, I totally love those few features; not having to hand-scoop the ash is a blessing, and the lid hook will save you from dents and scratches. Plus, the size-to-weight ratio is fabulous; there’s a lot of grate space, but it’s light enough to move it around to wherever I feel like grilling. Heat control is relatively easy with both top and bottom vents. There’s a learning curve, of course, when it comes to controlling heat on a charcoal grill, but once learned, it’s plain sailing from there.

Then we slow-grilled cut-up chickens to see if our contenders could hold a low temperature evenly across the whole grate. 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 , joined us for these tests. Spark your passion for charcoal grilling with the Kettle that started it all. For our tests, we cooked hamburgers on direct heat for four minutes on each side and then compared their level of doneness. The two Weber grills both cooked our hamburgers to medium rare, while the Oklahoma Joe’s, Cuisinart and Char-Griller all ran slightly hotter and cooked our test hamburgers to medium.

We moved the remaining coals to one side of the coal grate and added half a chimney’s worth of freshly lit coals. In effect we were testing whether the grills could function as ovens—a really nice feature in the hot summer months, when you may not want to warm up your kitchen. The first bite of tender, fall-off-the-bone meat makes taking it low-and-slow worth every moment. The Smokey Mountain Cooker™ smoker has two cooking grates for smoking multiple items at once, and easily adjustable dampers for precision heat control. There’s nothing quite like the smell and taste of a charcoal grill in the summer.

Built to Last- Charcoal Weber Grills feature a tried and true design and solid engineering. Weber believes in the quality and craftsmanship of their grills, and offer the warranty to back it up. If you want a charcoal grill to last decades, then this is the brand for you. The Weber Kettle is capable of searing steak, grilling hamburgers and hotdogs, vegetables, etc. It can also be easily transformed into a smoker through the strategic arrangement of charcoal. The last Weber kettle I owned was given to me by my father and lasted 10+ years; The grill is so old that it doesn’t have newer features like a lid thermometer, handle heat shield, or lid hanger.

The Weber grills were the only grills that didn’t come with a hardware pack. You can easily set up either Weber grill by yourself and it only requires you to use a hammer or screwdriver for attaching the handle and wheels. The rest ranged in setup time from 27 minutes to over an hour, with varying levels of difficulty and number of persons needed to complete the task.