My grill bit the dust two years ago and I have been using the Weber Q that I carried in my RV. It's too small and with summer coming, it's time to retire the Q.
What are your must haves in a grill?
Anyone use the rotisserie feature?
Anyone use the side burner? (I never used it on our last grill but my wife claims she did)
TIA
First question is, what is your budget? Second question is, do you still need to carry it in your RV?
I currently own two grills & don't plan on buying anything else ever again. First one is a Gustavsen Grill (aka the GG, $2,110 shipped), second one is a Traeger pellet grill (most people recommend Green Mountain Grills now, which start at $549). The GG is a huge investment (for me, at least!) & is made to last a lifetime; we were looking at doing a kitchen remodel ($$$ bleargh), but I decided that I would rather do most of the non-appliance cooking outside & take the heat out of the kitchen, so with that pricing perspective, the grill made more financial sense for us. It's a fairly unique, custom-built grill that uses 3 fuel sources:
1. Gas
2. Wood
3. Charcoal
The gas burner is 100,000 BTU's, so it gets pretty toasty in short order. The top unit is interchangeable & has 5 functions:
1. Grill
2. Griddle
3. Pizza (sliding dome)
4. Wok
5. Dutch oven (basic baking)
It gets hot enough for 90-second Neapolitan pies. It is also fairly compact, which is nice. Here's a
random picture off google images. I like it a lot because you can use any kind of fuel source with it & you can basically do everything with it. Shipping weight is something like 140 pounds, so it will basically last forever as it's made from very thick metal. Like I said, it's quite an investment, but it will probably outlive me.
The one thing it doesn't do is smoking, and that's where the pellet grill comes in. The pellet grill uses food-grade pellets as the fuel & plugs into an electrical outlet. It doesn't do a true cold smoke; it's more like a convection oven, but with smoke. You can set the temperature (accurately) from 180F to 400F. It's basically a bulletproof way to smoke foods, and you can do long smokes really easily without having to tend to the coals all night. I typically smoke my food for a few hours, then "bake" it after that...smoked turkeys, smoked pork top loin (tastes like bacon steak, mmm), etc. It's not a true grill though, because you can't really do your basic hamburgers & stuff because there's no direct flame. The combination of the GG & the Traeger cover the gamut of everything I want to do with cooking outdoors.
As far as side burners go, there are a couple options. For starters, I use an Instant Pot (electric pressure cooker) for most of my sides...broccoli, rice, corn on the cob, beans, etc. Once you nail down the total cook time & recipe procedure, the sides pretty much come out the same every single time. For example, with corn on the cob, I do 4 minutes on manual with one cup of water & as many corn on the cobs (cut in half) that I can fit. Doesn't matter if they're fresh, frozen, or in the husk, cook time is the same. I like the flavor & texture way better than boiling or grilling them. I also use an electric induction cooktop, which is nice when you want to use a pot or skillet for something in particular. I have a Nuwave unit that goes up to 575 watts & gets hot FAST.
So that's basically my setup. If I'm indoors, I'm typically using appliances, and if I'm outdoors, I'm either smoking on the pellet grill or grilling up something on the GG. I still go out to eat once in awhile, but this combination of equipment is so good that I do the majority of my cooking at home. Especially due to the price of quality take-out around here...a single large pizza from the good shop down the street is a whopping $24. I can make awesome pizza at home for a few bucks, max, and we sometimes do pizza up to three times a week (red pizza, white pizza, "naked" pizza, etc., plus stuff like calzones, spinach pies, and so on).
There are a million tools to look at in the grilling market, however. There are awesome Kamado-style grills like the Big Green Egg. There are gas, wood, charcoal, induction, electric, etc. power sources. One interesting company to look at is Blackstone. I previously had their 36" griddle, which was awesome (but my GG has a griddle, so I downsized). Blackstone also makes an amazing pizza grill, which my buddy has, and it works super awesome. Another one of my buddies just picked up the new Blackstone kebab grill, which you may be interested in:
https://www.amazon.com/Blackstone-Charcoal-Barbecue-Automatic-Rotisserie/dp/B01CTS3DFY/
$175 and uses charcoal for fuel. It has regular grill grates, BUT - it also has a powered kebab rotisserie. And you can mix & match the grates with the motorized kebab spears, which is great for cooking a bunch of stuff all at once. We've used it a couple times this month so far & it is really awesome. If you prefer a full-sized rotisserie (like for chicken), there are a lot of aftermarket vendors that have units that fit on standard Weber grills.
It mostly boils down to what you want to do with your grill & what your budget is. I use my grills way more than I use my regular kitchen range & oven, and over the years have gone through a lot of cheapie grills that fell apart after a season or two, before figuring out what I really wanted to do outdoors & finally investing in quality equipment that will last. But there's nothing wrong with budget grills either...I used Walmart grills & eventually cheapo Home Depot grills for a long time with great results. Cheapest one I ever bought was $80 and lasted two full years of grilling with charcoal, so at under $4 a month 'amortized', I'd say I definitely got my money's worth out of it!
Facebook
Twitter