This grill offers a rust-resistant aluminum damper and 2 glass-reinforced nylon handles with tool hooks. This grill is made from cast aluminum for superior heat conduction, and its unique shape and four-point venting system make it ideal for both grilling and smoking foods. It has over 305 square inches of cooking surface—that’s big enough for a whole turkey! Plus, it’s lightweight and easy to set up if you need a portable option for outdoor parties or tailgating.
At $129, Weber’s original, kettle-style charcoal grill continues to stand the test of time. In our high-heat searing tests, Weber delivered the best balance of seared exterior and medium-rare interior steak. The Weber kettle grill gave us tasty chicken too, with crispy chicken skin.
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.
If you’re committed to charcoal, but envious of your neighbor’s shiny gasser, the Napoleon Charcoal Professional Cart Grill may be the answer. Only a few premium and luxury BBQ brands offer stainless steel charcoal grills. Napoleon’s Professional is one of the more beautiful models we’ve seen in this price range. This stainless steel charcoal burner feels right weber q at home in a shiny outdoor kitchen ensemble. It has 605 square inches of cooking surface, with an adjustable-height charcoal grate that has several notched height positions to place the heat closer to or further from the cook surface. A front door allows easy access to the charcoal during cooking and the double-lined hood is a nice feature to help hold in heat.
Updated the last year 2021, the $139 Nexgrill Cart-Style Charcoal Grill is a compelling alternative to the Weber, especially if you prefer a cart-style backyard cooker. That design gives you a handy side tray and more cooking surface room. In fact, at 572 square inches, this updated larger grill has even more cooking space than the previous version, which offered 390 square inches. It’s also a lot compared with the Weber’s 363-square-inch cooking area. Grilling with charcoal takes a little more time and attention than grilling with gas, but the payoff is that delicious smokey flavor you just can’t get from a propane flame. After spending two days cooking 40 pounds of burgers, BBQ, and whole chickens, we recommend the Weber Original Kettle Premium Charcoal Grill 22″.
Brian Bennett is a senior writer for the home and outdoor section at CNET. He reviews a wide range of household and smart-home products. These include everything from cordless and robot vacuum cleaners to fire pits, grills and coffee makers. An NYC native, Brian now resides in bucolic Louisville, Kentucky where he rides longboards downhill in his free time. But the biggest problem is that the instructions completely overlook what we found to be a potentially dangerous design flaw.
The main cooking grate is actually three separate pieces that can be lifted off of the grill for access to the charcoal tray—which has holes big enough to brush ash through. Below, a slide-out ash tray/shelf/drawer runs the entire width of the grill. Due to their comparably simple construction, they tend to cost less than a similarly sized gas or pellet grill.
The Weber 22-Inch Original Kettle charcoal grill is, as the name explains, a charcoal-fired grill. It’s a basic grill, as most charcoal barbecues are — no side burners, shelves, infrared, glowing temperature knobs, etc. Deanna McCormack has reviewed dozens of products for The Spruce and thoroughly tested her portable grill out in her backyard and a beach campsite.
When it comes to cleaning the lid and bowl, burning charcoal and cooking food will cause carbon to accumulate on them. This is normal, and if you’ve used charcoal before, you’ve seen it; it looks like peeling paint. Our home tester used this to cook up barbecue classics like chicken wings weber q and ribs, and she was highly pleased with its performance. Other aspects she liked were that the grates became more nonstick as the testing went on and the warming rack proved itself to be the perfect bun warmer. Since then, Hasty-Bake has refined and polished off the rough edges.