Grilling season is here!
Although really, there’s no such thing as grilling season for us die-hard grillers who grill all year round.
But for many people, spring is when the grill craving hits.
With this article I want to help you choose right when you’re facing a grill purchase.
But what kind of grill should you actually get?
That question is of course individual, but I’ll try to guide you through the grill jungle out there.
Charcoal or gas?
My answer is usually both, but if you have to choose, you should look at your life situation and how much you intend to grill, and how much time you can spare.
I can tell you the gas grill gets used heavily on weekdays at my place.
It’s quick to fire up and get hot, and it’s also easy to regulate the temperature.
It works perfectly well to grill indirectly in a gas grill, and you can even use wood chips if you want extra smoke flavor on your food.
Charcoal is a bigger challenge and takes a little longer, but it’s definitely more fun to use than the gas grill.
My opinion is that charcoal and gas grills complement each other.
Does charcoal-grilled meat taste better than gas-grilled?
This is a question I often get when I’m out at events.
There’s always someone who claims that food grilled on gas doesn’t taste of anything. That is not the case.
You get the same effect in a gas grill as in a charcoal grill.
Meat juices drip down either onto the coals and/or onto the flavorizer bars in the gas grill, and then it flares up and gives flavor to what you’re cooking.
I’ve done many blind tests where people have tried meat grilled on the charcoal grill and an identical piece of meat on the gas grill.
You can’t taste any difference.
This is argued about a lot every year, but I can assure you that if I didn’t get any flavor from the gas grill, I would never have used it.
Not a chance.
If you have plenty of time, and maybe only grill on weekends, I recommend a charcoal grill.
If you grill often and need it to be quick, I recommend a gas grill.
But most of all I advocate having both; they complement each other in a fantastic way.
I often have something going on the gas grill at the same time as I’m using the charcoal grill.
So it’s not the fuel that sets the flavor, although different woods can give different flavors to the meat.
Read more about this in the article on smoking wood.
Which brand of grill should you choose, then?
That’s of course individual, but I recommend investing in quality.
You get it back several times over.
It’s no fun when your new grill starts to rust already in the first or second season.
I mostly use Weber products. Really good quality and a very generous warranty.
Give your grill a little love now and then and it easily lasts at least ten years.
For example, Weber’s kettle grills have a 10-year warranty against rust-through, while some of the gas grills have a 25-year warranty. That really vouches for quality, and Weber’s products really have it.
What grill should you buy, then?
I want to start by raising a warning finger about cheap “Rusta grills”.
You can’t get a good gas grill for 995 kr. The equation simply doesn’t add up. In those cases you pay more for the gas cylinder than for the grill.
If you choose to spend a few thousand kronor on a gas grill, I recommend the following products.
Weber Genesis E/S-330
A real quality grill with a generous grilling surface, plus a side burner.
You’ll be able to keep this grill for maaaany years without any problem. It has enough grilling surface to serve many people at the same time, and you can easily fit, for example, several beer can chickens at once.
Weber Summit S-470/S-670
If you want to go a step further, you should get a Summit. The Rolls-Royce of gas grills.
A really big grilling surface with many burners, a built-in rotisserie with a rear burner, and a cooking plate.
Here you also get a so-called sear station. An extra burner that gives serious heat over part of the grate. This is perfect when you want to sear, for example, a piece of entrecôte over high heat right away.
Weber Q Series
The Q grills are definitely my favorites. Small gas grills, but with a good grilling surface and very fuel-efficient. I often recommend these when you want a simple complement to your charcoal grill. They also have fantastic quality and will give you grilling joy for many, many years.
Charcoal Grill
When it comes to charcoal grills, the eternal winner is the Weber One Touch Premium Plus 22 ½ in.
This is truly an all-round grill you can cook just about anything on. Here you can smoke low and slow, grill directly or indirectly, just however you like.
I really recommend spending a couple of hundred kronor extra for the Plus model. You get a lid holder and briquette baskets. These are really worth their weight in gold, and I promise you’ll miss them if you skip them. All of Weber’s One Touch grills have a smooth ash catcher that you easily detach to dispose of your ash conveniently.
But sometimes you need more surface, and there the 22 ½ in can be a bit small. Then there’s also the 26 ½ in model. Here you get a bigger grilling surface, but otherwise it’s exactly the same grill as the 57 cm.
It’s not a bad idea to have two 57s, where you can have different temperatures in the different grills.
OK. Now maybe you’re an experienced griller and want to take the next step.
So what is the next step?
A smoker, of course. Here you get plenty of room and a whole new grilling experience.
In a smoker, it’s mostly long cooks at really low temperature that apply.
As a first smoker I recommend the Weber Smokey Mountain, or WSM as it’s called.
This is a so-called bullet smoker with two different levels for the food and a water pan above the coals/briquettes. It helps keep the temperature down while also adding moisture during the cook.
If you buy a WSM, you have nearly endless possibilities to play with different woods and types of smoke.
There are three different versions of the WSM.
37, 47 and 22 ½ in.
Here you choose the size yourself according to need.
Once again I want to stress investing in quality. It’s almost even more important with a smoker. Here you want to hold an even temperature for many hours, and with thicker material you hold the temperature more easily in weather changes like wind, and also in the winter half of the year.
If you want a grill/smoker that isn’t weather-dependent, you should invest in a kamado grill. These are ceramic grills that don’t depend on weather and wind. They perform exactly the same whether it’s minus 30 degrees Celsius or plus 30 degrees Celsius. A kamado is also very fuel-efficient. Here you only use pure lump charcoal, and you can keep it going many hours on just one load. You can also use the leftover charcoal at the next cook, which makes it very efficient.
These grills are quite expensive to buy, but last a lifetime. Here you can do proper low and slow and also go up to really high temperatures. The kamado is actually my absolute favorite grill.
Here I recommend the Kamado Joe models, which come in several different sizes.
If you want to read more about Kamado Joe, go and check out grillhouse.se
The last type of grill is an offset smoker. Here you have plenty of grilling surface and usually a separate firebox where you build the fire. I have no personal experience with this type of grill, but I know it’s very popular among well-known grillers around the world.
I hope this article has given you some insight into the grill world’s many types of grills.
I hope you find a grill that suits you, and as I said before, these types complement each other, so why have just one grill.