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. A porcelain-enameled lid and base help you retain heat, while Charcoal Grills Combo Grills the double vents allow you to control the airflow for the best grilling results. The plated steel grate is easy to remove, clean, and heats up evenly, too. The one downside to this camping grill (if you can call it such) is the ~10 minutes of assembly required right out of the box.
It’s big enough to roast a chicken, sear a couple of large steaks at a time, or fit about six 12-inch skewers. But if you’re doing meat and veggies for a family of four, you’re going to be cooking in batches. Most meats need to rest when they’re done cooking anyway, giving you time to do your veggies.
We’ve also tested a slew of portable grills as part of our typical grill testing over the years. Each time we test, we use the same testing methodology and ingredients to make sure our results are comparable. We also update our tests as needed to ensure they’re still relevant and we’re keeping up with the trends and latest innovations. Curious about which portable grills were worth buying, we tested seven popular models from trusted brands. If you’re searching for a gas grill you can bring on all your adventures that also performs well enough to be used at home, look no further than the Weber Q 2200.
We recommend this grill to cooks who are interested in grilling for a crowd, as the XL surface area tends to lose heat quickly when accommodating just one or two pieces of steak or fish. The tiny Cuisinart CGG-180T Petite Gourmet Portable Tabletop Gas Grill suffered major flare-ups when cooking burgers and turned into a raging grease fire when cooking chicken pieces. Everything we cooked on this grill had a dark, sooty film and tasted like torched fat. Wirecutter staff who have used the Q 1200 at home have found it easy to clean both the grates and the grease tray under the grill. You don’t need to buy Weber’s specialty tins for the grease tray either—instead, just line the catch pan with aluminum foil and pull it off when you’re done.
Cooking tests showed good caramelization and even cooking of meats and vegetables, with the heat concentrated at the center of the grill. Performance-wise, it cooks consistently across the grates without hot or cool spots. While it is one of the heavier grills we tested, the wheels make moving the grill around a simple task.
Check to make sure that your grill of choice has a snug-fitting lid, as this will allow you to control airflow. If it has vents or dampers you can control temperature and airflow even further, giving you greater control over the status and quality of your food. While most of these factors are still important, obviously for a portable grill you need to consider size and weight most of all. It’s extraordinarily easy to carry thanks to its three separate handles and light 14-pound design.
A temperature dial lets you control the heat as easily and quickly as on a kitchen range. My only complaint about the Venture is that the grease tray is small and therefore prone to spilling if you aren’t careful when you slide it out. Despite that, this is a clever, fun, well-designed grill that’s perfect for searing on the go. It’s big enough for a family of four and strikes the best balance between ease of use and cooking performance. It has a thermometer and some side tables to hold your plates and tongs.
For the purpose of this review, we’ll be discussing gas grills exclusively, although we did review portable charcoal grills here. We learned that the coal bed can be adjusted for better temperature control — a useful feature that we find highly important in charcoal grill tests. The grill grate is narrow, especially compared to other portable grills we tested, but can still fit about four to five chicken thighs side-by-side, or two large steaks. We tried this grill out along with the brand’s grilling kit (available for purchase separately), and found the accessories to be good quality and useful. Grill size isn’t necessarily tied to value — in fact, some of the smallest grills in our review are among some of the most expensive. When considering carrying dimensions, grilling surface, and overall performance, the more average-sized grills tend to fall into a more reasonable price bracket.
The design features an anodized aluminum suitcase, small enough that it might be able to fit in an overhead compartment; within it you’ll find a cast-aluminum cooking box and heavy-duty stainless steel grate. When closed, this portable grill is easy to carry one-handed (as easy as something that weighs almost 30 pounds can possibly be) thanks to a soft, grippable handle. When opened it has 212 square inches of cooking space—that’s enough for a whole chicken with room to spare, a rack of ribs, or close to a dozen turkey burgers.