Cook too low and you risk dry meat and rubber skin; too high and you may have to snatch the bird off the grill to prevent burning the outside before the bird is properly cooked inside. We dialed up 325°F by goosing the left and right burners to Medium. Whole chicken or turkey are char broil performance good candidates for the thin side of the grates. You want to cook whole birds evenly at moderate temperatures to slowly crisp the skin. Then we placed the chicken in the middle in the indirect heat zone. Click here to learn more about the essential technique of 2-zone cooking.
With more heat per square inch and a larger grilling area than our top pick offers, this model is our top choice for dedicated grillers. This three-burner grill offers an unrivaled combination of performance, durability, and value. However, you might be wondering why there’s relatively few slices of veg on the grill.
Lesley Stockton is a senior staff writer reporting on all things cooking and entertaining for Wirecutter. Her expertise builds on a lifelong career in the culinary world—from a restaurant cook and caterer to a food editor at Martha Stewart. She is perfectly happy to leave all that behind to be a full-time kitchen-gear nerd.
We have the greasy nature of barbecue to thank for that. Besides this, the product is designed to resemble an open cart. This makes it easier to pick up your cooking tools at different points in the cooking process.
They’re compact, yet they remain big enough to accommodate a complete family dinner (say, chicken breasts, corn on the cob, and another vegetable) or burgers and brats for a party. Ah, fresh air and a juicy grilled burger—pure warm-weather delight. But a subpar grill can kill that buzz real fast. To help you keep the good vibes (and good food) going, we cooked burgers, barbecue, and chicken on seven top-rated grills—and researched dozens more—to find the best. No grill matches its combination of exceptional performance, durability, and value. The flat side of the Spirit II grill grate is half cast iron for better heat conduction and searing, and half open for radiant and convection cooking (see below).
The small grease tray slides out from the front and disposable foil liners are available. Simply scrape any accumulated grease and gunk from the funnel walls into the tray now and then. The Spirit and Spirit II ranges contain models that run on either natural gas or propane, depending on your needs and available energy sources. Hook your Spirit grill into your home’s natural gas supply for a constant stream of low-cost, high-efficiency fuel with no worries about running out in the middle of your grill session. This is one of the parts that ensure proper gas flow. As such, it’s a bit more requiring of care than they do.
But, considering the sheer power this grill packs, the size is excusable. This is a GS4 grilling system that’s based on upwards of 30 years of grilling experience. To start from the basics, this grill has three burners with an infinity ignition system.