Weber Charcoal Grills & Smokers at Ace Hardware

Those designs offer attractive versatility, but they’re also expensive—$350 at minimum, and the most popular and best-regarded styles run twice that or more. And Salvaggio noted that wood pellets simply don’t produce the searing heat you need to make perfect burgers or steaks. Our experiments ran the gamut from grilling burgers to smoking .

The idea is that the fire spreads slowly from the center of the coal bed outward. Without fail, there comes a point weber genesis 2 when all of my coals are burning at once. Most grills come with analog hood thermometers, if they have one at all.

weber charcoal grill

There’s the elevated ash catcher, which makes dumping the remnants easier than with the original model . 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. The pill-shaped Smokey Mountain drops the coalbed down a foot or two, adds a door to throw new coals on and comes with a porcelain-enameled water rack to keep things nice and humid. If you want food closer to the fire, there’s a grate beneath the top grate for charring.

The Weber can also smoke low and slow at a rock-steady cooking temperature. For our tests, we cooked hamburgers on direct heat for four minutes on each side and then compared their level of doneness. The two Weber grills both cooked our hamburgers to medium rare, while the Oklahoma Joe’s, Cuisinart and Char-Griller all ran slightly hotter and cooked our test hamburgers to medium. We cooked burgers on the Napoleon grill with the cooking grate at its highest level, which was pretty far away from the briquettes. Each grill did a great job searing the chicken leg quarters while still leaving them juicy on the inside. The Oklahoma Joe’s Kettle Grill and Weber Original Kettle Grills gave the chicken skin the deepest sear.

The charcoal briquettes form a line two coals wide and two coals deep. On cart-style grills, we modify the snake to run in right angles to match their rectangular-shaped fireboxes. Next, we tested each grill’s medium heat cooking capability by roasting whole chickens. The trick here is to keep the grills at a hot enough temperature to cook a chicken for upwards of two hours. We measured charcoal in a chimney by grams, and in a ratio for that grill’s specific surface area.

Its main cooking grates are porcelain-enameled, which helps to retain heat as well as distribute it. This is always a key feature I look out for on modern grills as weber genesis 2 its helps to reduce uneven cooking temperatures. Due to their comparably simple construction, they tend to cost less than a similarly sized gas or pellet grill.

If you prefer meat that’s more well done, you can extend the cooking time, or sear and finish cooking in an oven. They’re bulkier, the assembly is more involved and you’ll likely need more fuel to weber genesis 2 keep the larger space at a high temperature. Our results, however, were almost as good as with the kettle-style Weber, so if you’re interested in a cart-style charcoal BBQ, this is your best bet.

The main difference between the standard and more premium models is a home for the lid; the premium model (about $10 more expensive) has a hinge that holds the lid when not in use. For more grill content, check out our guides to the best charcoal grills, pellet grills and gas grills. You can create an indirect heat zone by placing briquettes, or lump charcoal if you prefer, only on one side of the charcoal grate. You leave the other side empty then cook food above the cool spot. The trouble is that it’s tricky to control the grill’s heat level this way. It’s harder to do that with a Weber Kettle, at least without lots of practice.