Charcoal BBQ Grills
The hinged sides and pop-out center of the grate are nice for adding charcoal while cooking. We found it difficult, however, to use these to arrange or bank the coals without burning ourselves, as it required us to remove the entire grate for safety. For direct cooks where I want a low weber charcoal grill heat to slowly cook over the coals for more than 30 minutes I use the same set up; a heat source and a fuel source. The image below on the left is the setup I used to cook the half chickens shown on the right. I mop/basted the chickens while cooking directly over the coals for an hour.
There were some flare-ups during cooking, and we found about a 15-degree difference between foods cooked in the front and those in the back and center. It performed on par with competitors when it came to smoke flavor in our long-smoke tests, and it left a nice char and browning in our short-smoke experiments. It didn’t fare as well in our searing tests, however, leaving burgers looking more pan-seared than grilled.
Control the heat, enjoy the crackle of the fire and focus on the entire cooking process as you create foods with delicious, mouthwatering flavors. Cooking with charcoal requires patience but the results are well worth your time—mouthwatering, smokey flavors in every meal. Due to their comparably simple construction, they tend to cost less than a similarly sized gas or pellet grill. Another powerful draw of these grills is the intense smoky flavor they create in the food they cook. They’re versatile too since they can use either traditional charcoal briquettes or lump charcoal as fuel.
A minor complaint for sure, but I think it is an easy and obvious fix. I set up the grill in under 15 minutes, and three or four of those were spent taking it out of the box. It is an absurdly simple process that requires a hammer and a Phillips-head screwdriver. In the box, you’ll find 16 pieces including a plastic wrench only used to attach the handle to the lid.
We also drop a few chunks of smokewood on top of the snake (aka fuse). On cart-style grills, we modify the snake to run in right angles to match their rectangular-shaped fireboxes. The best charcoal grill for steak searing in our lineup was the Weber Classic Kettle. The steak had nice grill marks while keeping a medium doneness on the inside. The worst was our Tacklife review unit, which didn’t hold much heat and didn’t sear while cooking. The steak on that grill needed an additional five minutes to get to a temperature of 135 F, the minimum for medium rare.
And Joe Salvaggio of Big Apple BBQ noted that wood pellets simply don’t produce the searing heat you need to make perfect burgers or steaks. We also compared how each of these grills performed in our grilling tests and evaluated other parts of the user experience, such as vent control and assembly. For most items over 150 pounds our free standard shipping service will be freight and will include free curb-side delivery and lift gate service. Upon delivery, the driver will take it off the truck for you but it is your responsibility to bring it onto your property. We inventory many of our products in our warehouse in North Liberty, Iowa to provide quick and flexible shipping options for the entire country.