I adore the grills I have but can not help maintaining a covetous watch on anything smart fresh things are coming down the pipeline. Also added is a good sized warming rack, and charcoal pan to allow you to give your food a good sear. For others, its design is a classic, and its lighter weight and wheels makes it perfect for taking on the road camping or to a tailgate. For this reason we’ve even listed as among our best tailgate grills. The air vents are one thing but what also helps the Kettle’s excellent performance is it shape. It has an almost spherical build, which helps allow for perfect convection.
This Weber’s plated steel cooking grate is hinged so that it’s easier to load charcoal, even while cooking, onto the heavy-gauge steel grate below. With this method, the coals take about 10 minutes to light and another 10 for the grill to get hot. The Weber kettle grill has been around since the early 1950s, so chances are good you’ve eaten a burger, a hotdog, or a steak cooked on one. As a kid, our family had a gas grill, while the neighbors had a Weber. Their food was always a little bit tastier, so I made the Weber Original my first grill when I got a home of my own. Essentially just a grate sitting between two pieces of metal atop a tripod, it’s hard to imagine a simpler cooker beyond just an open fire on the ground.
Maintaining a consistent temperature is crucial, and the Weber does this better than any other in its price range. You can thank the porcelain-enameled bowl and lid, which are heat retention pros, for that. Still, keeping an eye on the thermometer will help you determine if you need to add more coal, wood, or even adjust the airflow using the rust-resistant aluminum dampers. These vents are also useful when extinguishing the fire, as closing them cuts off oxygen. The premium model adds a couple of upgrades to the nearly 70-year-old design.
Oil the grates after heating them, before you cook anything—it’ll help keep food from sticking. Attaching the vent, ash catcher, and legs to the Weber is dead easy—everything simply snaps into place. Throughout, weber genesis 2 we also tested our “necessities”—accessories such as spatulas, tongs, grill brushes, and sheet pans. We learned a lot about them , but they also helped us identify a few design strengths and flaws of the grills.
The true original Weber grill, the Weber Original Kettle Grill, can be purchased for under $100, making it our top pick for best budget grill. This grill measures 18 inches wide, which is a noticeable surface-area difference from the 22-inch grill. It does not include a lid hook or thermometer, and the ash catcher is not enclosed.
If you are new to charcoal cooking then this classic grill is the perfect place to start. 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.
As the chicken cooked we monitored the grills’ temperatures, using the built-in thermometer where available and a probe thermometer where not. 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 portable bbq 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 can dry it out. The Blackjack Kettle Grill also features two air vents, and it was easy to control the grill temperature with them.