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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 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.
Food grilled over charcoal has that coveted backyard-grill smoky flavor. One annoying thing about toting along your grill when out and about in the outdoors is that inevitably, after a few grill-downs, your trusty appliance portable bbq will become coated with grease. But with the HitchFire, you get portability outside of your vehicle, plus the convenience of having a swing-out grill that’s ready to go and at a back-friendly, waist height.
And it’s perfect for going from cooking a barbecue dinner to a post-meal fire pit session. This sleek portable gas grill from Weber is superior in almost every category and was a fairly clear winner as the best portable grill overall. It’s easy to assemble, with just a few parts, and once completed feels solid and sturdy, even when given a few vigorous shakes. The igniter works well and, once lit, the grill got hot, reaching its advertised 500 degrees Fahrenheit after just 15 minutes with the lid closed. The flame is easy to control and keeps a consistent temperature throughout cooking, even when grilling with the flame turned low. If you want an upgraded portable gas grilling experience, take a look at the beautiful Blaze Professional LUX Portable model.
It comes in at about 43 pounds, but two sturdy side handles allow two people to carry it at once. The Grill2Go has a maximum 9,500 Btu output, versus the Weber Q 1200’s 8,500 Btu. After we preheated it for five minutes on high, the Grill2Go reached over 600 degrees Fahrenheit, while the Weber Q 1200 never broke 525 °F.
Cast-aluminum fireboxes are durable, corrosion resistant, and excellent at evenly absorbing and reflecting heat, so you have fewer hotspots. This means you don’t have to obsessively babysit your barbecued chicken to prevent excessive charring. Porcelain-coated cast-iron cooking grates are best at searing foods.
If our top-rated portable pellet grill is out of stock, we recommend picking up the ASMOKE AS300 Portable Grill. Like the other portable pellet grills we tested, at 45 pounds, it’s a little on the heavy weber charcoal grill side. While it doesn’t come equipped with any handles to help move it from place to place, the AS3000 folds down into a compact enough package to carry from one space to another, when it’s cool.