She’s an experienced product tester and recipe creator, trained in classic culinary arts and culinary nutrition. She has worked in test kitchens for small kitchen appliance brands and national magazines, including Family Circle and Ladies’ Home Journal. The Cuisinart Petit Gourmet Portable Gas Grill stands out from the crowd thanks to its unique design, which converts from a freestanding model into a tabletop model in seconds. If you don’t want to shell out for our best overall option, this is a more affordable choice that also stood up to rigorous testing. This roundup was originally written by Camryn Rabideau, product tester and grill expert for The Spruce Eats. She’s done firsthand testing of the Weber Q2200, which took the overall spot on this list, as well as the Masterbuilt Bluetooth Digital Electric Smoker and more.
Our team found that this is plenty enough room to cook for a good-sized backyard BBQ or backcountry base camp. The Coleman Roadtrip 285 tops the list of our favorite propane models when it comes to grill control and temperature regulation. There are three dials that control the different zones, but all of those heat zones overlap. The middle dial controls a burner that spans the length of the whole grill, while the other two dials control an additional burner on each side.
The Coleman Roadtrip 285 offers the cooking performance of your typical backyard grill in a portable package. There are three individual burners – a main burner that reaches across the entire grill from side to side, and two additional burners on each side. This configuration is specifically designed so that the heat zones overlap. The result is top-notch control coupled with incredibly even heat distribution. The Roadtrip 285’s instructions are clearly written and all tools required for assembly are included, making this model a breeze to put together.
A grill that rocks and wobbles will provide significant challenges when you attempt to cook on it. As a rule of thumb, a grill with thicker construction will retain and spread heat better than one with thin walls and bottoms, with some exceptions. The Everdure CUBE, for example, has thinner construction but is specifically designed to distribute heat evenly. In our tests, steak and chicken cooked quickly and weber genesis 2 got nice char marks without any flare-ups. Ash falls through the coal holder holes onto the bottom of the grill for a neat grilling experience, and the stainless grill grate is small and easy to wash in your sink once you get home. This roundup was put together by The Spruce Eats commerce writer Jason Horn, who’s been writing about food and drinks for almost 20 years, and grilling for a lot longer than that.
Compared to other charcoal barbecues, we couldn’t believe the ease with which you could cook – no need to coax the coals, simply fire it up and expect good heat for over half an hour. The charcoal is in an enclosed container, and with a fan going, you don’t get much in the way of charcoal flavour, but the efficiency and generous cooking area far outweighs this. At just 13 inches tall by 20 inches wide, the Traeger Scout wood pellet grill won’t take up much room in the car and has enough cooking surface for 10 hot dogs, 6 burgers, or a rack of ribs. Charcoal briquette disposal is another drawback of portable charcoal grills. You’ll have to budget time to let the charcoals cool before you can safely dispose of them, and find a safe place to put them.
Next, we narrowed our selection to create a manageable yet comprehensive list of the best products available. We bought all these products at retail cost to allow us to conduct an extended, objectively honest, and comparative review. These review editors rigorously assessed these grills and distributed them to friends to gather a fresh perspective. For the fans of pit-cooking out there, we offer up the Weber Go-Anywhere Charcoal Grill. This well-built barbeque is an innovative take on the manufacturer’s classic design, incorporating their enameled, cast-iron construction into a convenient, compact package. The rectangular basin can hold a coal bed that is both deep and evenly spread.
The porcelain-coated cast-iron grill grate is quite non-stick, with even delicate fish filets releasing pretty easily. The only part about using the Nomad that I didn’t love was emptying it. Because weber charcoal grill it needs to be emptied while completely open, it was hard to lift when attempting to dump the ash into a bin. On its website Nomad suggests using a shop vac to get all the spent charcoal out.
I have no doubt that that would do the trick, but if you’re off on an adventure an hour from an electrical outlet, a shop vac might not be practical. That said, I’m hard pressed to imagine a better camping grill than this. The Nomad does cost more than anything else I tested, but it was unparalleled both in how it cooked and how easy it was to move. Rounding out the bottom of the list for this metric is the Camp Chef Portable Pellet.
The grill has no lid for cooking, as the top consists of a storage compartment and cutting board. As such, you’re grilling with direct heat and should keep that in mind when meal planning. The Venture, with its picnic basket appearance, is a good entry-level grill for the uninitiated and a value model for more experienced grillers. It’s a model intended for direct-heat cooking, as there’s no lid to control humidity for “low and slow” cooking. The burner packs 9,000 BTUs under enameled cast iron, providing adequate heat for small-group cooking.
While we loved the impressive power of the grill, it was still pretty ferocious, even when cooking at lower temperatures. Experience the evolution of fire with Traeger’s next generation of wood pellet grills. Charcoal grills can be a good choice for wide-open spaces, but in any confined space (like the parking lot at the football stadium or a small deck or patio) charcoal isn’t ideal.