Add in the fact that the carrying handles got extremely hot as you used it and it was a touch on the heavy side at 30 pounds, and this one fell to the bottom of our list. Although the Weber Smokey Joe did a fantastic job of grilling our food, it lacked a few features that would have bumped it up in our rankings. You can get a premium version that has a lid lock, but the basic version provides no way of carrying the grill. That means when it’s full of hot coals, it stays where it lies until it cools down. We were pretty happy with the way the vents were positioned, but the ash catcher isn’t removable, making it pretty difficult to clean when you’re done cooking.
This infuses smoky flavors into the food, similar to what you’ll find when grilling over wood or charcoal. When set to higher temperatures, less smoke is produced, and the fire pot focuses on creating heat. Since the heat deflector plate prevents direct searing and grill weber q marks, the food crisps up like it would when roasted inside a high-temperature oven. As its name suggests, BioLite designed this as a fire pit, but it includes a top grill grate that turns it into a hibatchi grill with roughly 240 square inches of cooking space.
Most grills performed about as well as advertised, with some topping out at as much as 100 F hotter than others. The better grills also generally ended up reading out a more consistent temperature throughout cooking. This multifunctional charcoal grill doubles as a wood-burning fire pit, and it even features a small fan attachment to blow smoke out of your face for comfort.
The bottom vents were also really hard to access and hot coals fell out if you opened them during the cooking process. The grill also lacks an ash bucket; it does have two ash catches, but they were impossible to clean out without making a mess on my driveway. All in all, the Traveler is a solid choice for anyone who cooks for five to six people, or for someone who wants to routinely use their portable grill on a deck or patio.
You will need to carefully manage indirect heat when cooking thicker things like chicken on the bone—we kept it over the open grates around the edges of the grill. The 25 x 12-inch cooking surface will hold a lot of burgers, dogs, or whatever your preference. And, if you want to mix things up, the grill grates swap out for griddle or stove grates . The Ranger’s 176 square inches of cooking space fits about six burgers, which isn’t enough to feed a crowd but is more than enough space to feed two to four people.
Nomad’s Grill & Smoker is a portable, all-in-one cooking tool that’s the perfect tool for tailgaters, campers, or anyone who loves meat. The suitcase-shaped grill is made almost entirely out of metal, with a hard plastic handle, latches, and switch tips to avoid burning you if you touch them while the grill is still hot. It’s possible to store Kenyon’s grill in an apartment, and well worth keeping on your countertop if you like to grill a lot. If you’d like to bring it outdoors, the grill’s handles make it easy to carry. Another unexpected feature was the grill’s overall build quality, which was astonishingly good. GrillGrates amplify heat, prevent flareups, make flipping foods easier, kill hotspots, flip over to make a fine griddle, and can be easily moved from one grill to another.