I keep hearing this about charcoal, but I don’t believe it.
The wonderful flavour and texture of foods grilled outdoors is due to the smoke and flaming from the drippings – the juices and marinades from meats, or the drippings from marinated vegetables. Charcoal tends to absorb these drippings and turn them into a manageable amount of flame and smoke.
A good gas grill (like a Weber) can do exactly the same thing, and in a more controlled fashion. A lousy gas grill, not so much.
So yeah, charcoal barbecues are authentic things that generally produce great results, but IMHO good gas grills (or barbecues, as most of us call them) are every bit as good or better.
I conditionally agree, but with a proviso inherent in your comment. A cheap charcoal grill, all the way down to the hibachi level of the OP, is sub $50 (often far below) and can give good results. To get a propane grill that performs well, $50 will get you bupkis.
Once you reach the multi-hundred $$$ level though, yeah, it’s a lot more about preferences, how ‘traditional’ you are, and the like, both will do the job equally well given equal skills IMHO.
I disagree. You don’t want smoke from the food dripping on the coals. That produces a sooty, greasy, nasty flavor.
Also, foods cooked with indirect heat in a charcoal grill will develop a nice smoky flavor without anything dripping on the coals at all. For instance, a whole turkey cooked in a Weber with the coals banked to the sides will have a beautiful dark brown skin and a flavor you won’t get by cooking on a gas grill.
One thing about briquettes is the ash they generate. A long time ago, I saw a recommendation to make an ash scoop from cutting up a bleach bottle on an angle. It’s the perfect combination of flexibility and rigidity to really get in there and dig ash. I’m almost 100% lump, though.
My Weber chimney is about 17 years old and I’ve abused it a bit. It will definitely glow red hot if left for to long while chatting with a neighbor for too long. It’s showing signs of this treatment in the cage/basket wire thing in the bottom (it’s rusty and thinning) and I have a replacement chimney ready to go. They’re great products.
I know someone who lived in a building that banned anything other than electric charcoal starters. Other techniques make more smoke that drifted into peoples’ windows and I think the electric starter is a good compromise.
Thank you. I did not know such a thing existed. This is probably my best answer to get away from lighter fluid, although I really didn’t use much at all.
I dunno. I love that fat-in-the-fire flavor – it ain’t the sooty creosote flavor I think you’re thinking of. That’s why I sometimes do low and slow barbecued ribs or pulled pork direct over coals (though elevated like 18") because I love that smoky flavor from the drippings.
Agree. That’s why we’re using charcoal to begin with and, secondarily, why gas grills have ‘flavorizer bars.’ Food drippings falling on hot stuff makes the food tastes good.
Yeah, wood that hasn’t burnt down properly and is cooked in an environment with inadequate ventilation – you will get terrible, sooty flavors. Trust me, I know. One of my first smokes was enthusiastically on a cheap-o Brinkman bullet smoker that did not have a top vent, and I stuck the ribs in while the smoker was choking with white smoke, thinking “oh – lot’s of billowing smoke – lots of smoky flavor” (You don’t want to do this – you’re looking for clean, “blue” smoke after the initial burn – takes about twenty to thirty minutes when using wood chunks. In a more open smoker with full ventilation, you can get away with not waiting for it to burn down, but with an enclosed smoker with limited – or in this case no – ventilation, you can’t.) It tasted smoky all right – and then me and my brother were coughing as if we just smoked two packs of cigarettes, no exaggeration.
Haven’t done a turkey, but I have done whole chickens on my gas grill. No problem - light the 2 outer bands and leave the three in the middle off, or on low. There’s your indirect heat, and I get very crispy skin.
I cook whole birds in the oven, and I use the convection setting at start them at 425F-475F, and get gorgeous dark brown crispy skin, that’s my favorite part of the roast.
But it doesn’t taste smoky. Honestly, I eat a smoked turkey once a year, and it’s okay, but I prefer it unsmoked.
I have to disagree with pretty much all of that. I have done roasts (not turkey, but pork and beef roasts) on indirect heat on my Weber gas grill and they come out much more smoky and flavourful than if done in the oven, and it’s entirely due to the juices and occasional flaming.
I would also note that back in the day when I had my first gas grills, the standard heating configuration would have the burners surrounded by “briquets” of basically absorbent stone (maybe lava rock?) precisely to simulate the effect of drippings falling on charcoal briquets and bursting into smoke and brief flame. Modern grills like the Weber do this entirely with heavy metal structures designed to do the same thing, like Weber’s “flavour bars” situated over and around the burners.
I would acknowledge that a roast like a turkey that spends a lot of time in a closed charcoal grill may pick up flavour from the burning charcoal, but I’ve done this with rotisseries and with grill-top indirect cooking on a Weber gas grill, and those, too, emerge with a wonderful barbecue smokiness.
Definitely agree. The flame and smoke from grilling slightly fatty burgers or well-marbled steaks is what gives them that great smoky flame-broiled flavour.
Weber gas grills are particularly good at indirect cooking, and it’s a feature I’ve used often.
Probably outside of the price point the OP is looking for, but last year I got one of these bad boys.
My 3rd chimney rusted through and I was looking for something else. It will start the charcoal on its own but I usually wad up a piece of paper surrounded by coals and light it. After it has burned for a minute I hit it with the hot air. In a few minutes the coals are ready for smoking. If I’m grilling, I’ll knock them around to distribute and wait about 10 minutes until the heat is where I want it.
Also handy for stoking the fire pit when some of the larger pieces of wood don’t want to burn well.
There’s a lot of good advice in this thread, but something that’s rarely mentioned is that if you’re grilling hamburgers, a higher fat content is better. Don’t use lean ground beef even though it’s often what’s sold because it’s healthier. Use 20% fat ground beef if you can get it.
And don’t press the patties down into the grill with the spatula (like my stupid brother-in-law does). That’s a smash-burger technique that only works with a solid griddle. With an open grill you’re just squeezing all that yummy burger juice into the coals.
That sounds delicious. I have made a burger and a very small beef rib.
They both had a lot of burned bits, which I enjoy. My zucchini slices didn’t work out too well. I waited too long and the fire was no longer hot enough to get them cooked the way I wanted. Lesson learned.
I just soak the cob, husk and all, then put it on the grill for around half an hour. It’s way easier to remove the silk once it’s grilled. Grill longer if you like to burn it a little.