Hot Grill Summer: Everything You Need To Know About Buying A New Barbecue

Outdoor cooking season is in full swing.  And, if you are in the market for a new grill, there are many good options.  

If you’ve never grilled before and don’t know what kind of outdoor cook you want to be, answering a few questions should help you figure it out.  This used to be a much easier, but as more and more people are grilling, there are more [grill] options, better grills and some great innovation which can make it seem overwhelming and a really big decision. 

Take my friend Bill, he moved to a house with a backyard a few months ago, and he asked me what kind of grill to buy. He had done some research on grills and polled his friends and was more confused than he needed to be.  He told me that his friend Bob, was a big smoker/barbecuer, but he didn’t know if he wanted to be a smoker; his friend Debbie grilled everything, and she had a big gas grill, and another friend, Alex, loved her traditional kettle charcoal grill and wouldn’t use anything else.  As he was talking, I realized that buying your first grill, is akin to buying your first car.

It’s a lifestyle decision and only you can decide if you are a Ford truck kind-of-driver, a BMW, a Subaru or a Tesla, etc.?

Ask yourself the following questions and hopefully, it will help narrow down the choices. If you need more specifics after answering these initial questions, checkout my How to Buy a Grill Guide on GirlsattheGrill.com

1.     The first question that you need to ask is: do I want a charcoal grill, a gas grill or a pellet grill?  

Five years ago, the choice was between a charcoal or a gas grill.  But today there are many great pellet grill options, and if you want to make delicious wood-smoked barbecue in your backyard or on your balcony, you can do it with a pellet grill. 

2.     Just like a car, it is a lifestyle question: 

·      If you love the hands-on approach to outdoor cooking and like to tend and maintain a live fire, traditional charcoal is for you.              

·      If you like the convenience and ease of flipping on a switch, then gas is probably for you. 

·      If you want to make slow smoked foods like ribs, brisket, pulled pork and chicken, then a pellet grill is for you.  

·      And, finally, if you want the taste of charcoal with the ease of a gas or pellet grill, then there is a ‘new grill’ in town, the Spark charcoal grill.

Finally, once you decide what type of grill you want, I tell everyone to buy the best and the biggest grill that they can afford.  The reason is the more you use it, the better you get at grilling, and the more you will want to use it all year long—even, or, especially—to make your Thanksgiving turkey.  And, truth is, once you discover how much fun outdoor cooking is, and how great all your food tastes, you might end-up owning at least two if not all three types of grills.

There are so many options out there that I can’t write about all of them, but here are some of my favorites in each category:

Charcoal: People love the taste of charcoal-grilled food and the activity of building a fire.  

The charcoal options include the traditional iconic Weber Kettle, the new innovative Spark grill and the Japanese Kamado grill. The Kamado is more frequently known in the USA by their brands names including the Big Green Egg, the Primo and Kamado Joe. 

This type of grill takes the most hands-on work as you traditionally need to build a fire and tend it. Charcoal briquettes only burn for about an hour before they need to be replenished and natural charcoal burns even quicker. You also need to wait until the charcoal burns and is covered with a white-gray ash for optimal cooking.

The newest grill on the block is the Spark. And, it has revolutionized charcoal grilling in a number of ways. Primarily, it has taken the hassle out of charcoal grilling and has added a degree of precision to a style of grilling that is rudimentary. The grill uses proprietary compressed charcoal “briqs” and a fan to regulate the temperature. You light the compact, sleek “briqs” with a built-in igniter and after it is lit, you can set the dial to anywhere between 250°F and 900°F.  

If you are wondering why you would need to cook at 900°F, it’s because you can buy a specially-designed ‘Pizza Pack’ that turns the Spark into an outdoor Neapolitan-style pizza oven. That’s like getting two grills in one—a charcoal grill and an outdoor pizza oven. Finally, the grill is designed to be so efficient that you don’t need a drip pan because all the drippings are burned up during the cooking time. The company has been shipping grills for less than a year and sells direct to consumer from their website, sparkgrills.com.

Gas: People love gas grills because they are easy to light, easy to use, have consistent heat and virtually no clean-up.

Buying a gas grill is the most difficult in that there are so many options. Weber dominates the gas grill category and offers everything from the portable Go-Anywhere Gas Grill that is great for a tailgate, a small space or a picnic to the Weber Summit series which is their top of the line heavy-duty gas grill and the gas grill that I use most often.

If you are buying your first grill, make sure that the grill is designed to be used for direct and indirect heat. Once you start grilling, you will find that you will use indirect heat more and more. And, if you have access to a natural gas hook-up in your yard, that is the best choice because you will never run out of gas. If not, choose the LP (liquid propane) model.

The Weber Genesis II series is my pick for a first-time gas grill buyer who wants a good solid grill that will be able to accommodate the meals that you cook as you become a better and better griller. My preference is for 4 vertical burners over 3 horizontal burners, but you should look at the grill and think about how you are going to use it for the long haul. Most often, it is best to stretch your budget and spend a little more to get a better grill that you won’t outgrow.

Super premium gas grills is a growing segment of the category and these grills start around $5000.  Kalamazoo, Viking, TEC and Lynx are well known contenders in this space, and Hestan which launched in 2016 is quickly becoming a favorite in this category. 

Hestan was created by housewares pioneer, Stanley Chang and the brand name is a combination of his name, and his wife, Helen’s, name. The company makes commercial quality indoor and outdoor appliances for the home chef and luxury market. Their premium gas grill is a beautiful beast of heavy-duty stainless steel with an infrared sear burner and a patented Trellis burner system. The company offers two lines of grills, the Hestan Outdoor Grill and Aspire by Hestan.  Both grill lines are stainless steel with an option to choose a custom color that will brighten your backyard with playful colors that include orange and red to purple, turquoise, pink and shades of blue.  They come in both cart and built-in models.

Pellet:  Experience the taste of authentic smoked foods and traditional barbecue flavor in your backyard or on your balcony

Pellet grills have surged in popularity in the past few years.  They use compressed wood pellets for fuel and a fan to regulate the temperature.  You set the temperature and it will stay at that consistent temperature until you change it. By design, they are indirect heat grills and most do not exceed 500°F.  The temperature limitation isn’t an issue because but you don’t need a higher temperature for most of what you will cook on a pellet grill.  If you only have a pellet grill and you want to get a good sear on a steak, you can use a pre-heated cast-iron pan—or griddle—or buy a set of GrillGrates for your pellet grill.  

GrillGrates are made of hard anodized aluminum and are designed to minimize flareups and sticking, and give your food distinct, deeply caramelized grill marks.  They are sold as an after-market product for most grills; charcoal, gas and pellet grills. 

Pellet grills can range from about $399 to more than $5000 so it is important to do your homework.  Most of the bigger companies have a range of ‘good, better, best’ grills to choose from.  Besides the grill, more and more companies have apps that allow you to control the grill from your smartphone and some even can be controlled from your smart watch. People are very loyal to the grills that they use and love, and I am no different, two of my favorite pellet grills follow.

Traeger pioneered the Super Smoke feature which—in my opinion—is a must have for anyone who wants to smoke traditional barbecue meats like pulled pork, ribs, brisket, turkey and chicken. The Super Smoke button gives you an extra burst of smoke, a.k.a. flavor, with the push of a button.  The feature is available on their Ironwood and Timberline grills.

With practice, you can cook all your favorite foods on the grill, but since it only reaches 500°F, you won’t get the same sear on a steak or a chop that you get with your gas or charcoal grill.  You can cook steaks and chops using the reverse-sear method and preheat a cast-iron griddle or GrillGrates to get a better sear on your meat.  Traeger has as an easy-to-use, well designed app that will both help teach you how to cook and let you control the temperature from afar. The app also alerts you when you need to clean the drip pan and add more pellets to the hopper. 

Memphis Wood Fire Grills are made of heavy-duty stainless steel and very well designed. They are built like a tank and have a streamlined integrated drip pan that is an upgrade to the hanging bucket drip system that is common in pellet grills. You can also buy a Direct Flame Insert that will let you cook using direct heat when you want to make a steak, burger or a chop.