Once in the box, it would easily fit under patio furniture or could be stored in a small cupboard. Outback’s range of portable barbecues makes mealtimes in the wilderness super easy. Barbecues are easy to take with you and easy to start when you get there. Quickly create a breakfast that will set the whole family up for a day portable bbq in the great outdoors or get ready for a fun beach barbecue. Your mileage may vary depending on what you cook, but you shouldn’t notice a huge difference between a portable and a full-size grill if you’re just cooking the basics for a few people. This folding GoBQ is a novel, innovative portable grill unlike any other.
The first issue can be solved pretty easily by just leaving the lid closed while you’re cooking, especially at high temperatures, but the second one is kind of annoying. You’re not supposed to remove the grate to clean it, and its small holes catch a lot of food bits, portable bbq so there’s a lot of scrubbing involved. This Camp Chef model has a stable cooking surface that prevents any wind from getting through to the grilling grate. Both of these electric grills appeared to be completely unfazed by convective heat loss, as far as we can tell.
We spent several days testing 14 of the most popular portable charcoal grills to help you find the best product for your next camping trip or tailgate. After firing up the grills, we measured how hot their grates got, then used each one to cook hamburgers, bratwursts, and corn on the cob. Once we finished cooking, we took note of how much of the charcoal was used up and how easy it was to clean each grill. If you’re looking for a heavy-duty charcoal grill that you can take camping, tailgating, and more, the PK Grills PKGO is our top recommendation.
It’s cooking, the old-fashioned way, but if you haven’t done that much you might want to practice before you have hangry kids clamoring for dinner. Still, if your primary criteria is portability, this is the best grill around. The Nomad ships with a single grate, giving you 212 square inches of cooking space, slightly less than the Jumbo Joe above. I managed to smoke nine chicken breasts, and another time I fit two racks of ribs. If you need to grill for a crowd, pick up the second grill grate for $128, but even without it I never felt cramped while cooking for five (two adults, three ravenous children).
Sort of like electric grills, the Blackstone griddle is a flat cast iron cooking surface featuring 339 square inches of cooking surface. It is great for cooking breakfast items like pancakes and eggs, but can also easily grill up burgers! The grease falls into a removable grease tray (drip pan), making cleanup a breeze. Cuisinart is better known for kitchen appliances than grills, so it makes sense this petite model is designed with an eye toward food prep, not just grilling.
Another tabletop option, this portable gas grill from Weber was a standout for our testers, who named it the winner of the group, and even noted its performance rivaled standard-size grills. “This thing could be priced even higher and I would buy it,” a tester noted, although at under $300, it’s attractively priced as-is. In addition to the actual dimensions of the grill, you’ll want to take its capacity into account. The cooking area of grills is typically measured portable bbq in square inches, and the larger the cooking space, the more food you’ll be able to cook at once. We were impressed with this grill’s performance during testing — it heated up to over 500 degrees in just 10 minutes, and it left nice sear marks and charring on the hamburgers and sausages. There was plenty of room on the cooking surface to spread food without crowding, but we found that the side drawer was a bit tricky to remove when it was time to clean the grill.