I guess it’s time to brave the fire(hehe) once again.
Gas is better than charcoal for grilling!
Notice I never said the word barbecue, and I never said the word wood.
A slow barbecue over real wood at low temp is by far the king. But that is not the issue. The issue at hand is for a burger or steak for 7 minutes or so. Now in that time Charcoal really doesn’t get much of a chance to add smokey flavor. In order to get smokey flavor you need actually wood. I use the wood chips in a large tuna method. Soak in water, then put near the fire. They smoulder create great volumes of smoke. I will estimate the wood chips put 15 units of smokey flavor into the meat. The charcoal puts 1 unit of smokey flavor into the meat, not nearly enough more to make a difference.
But with my gas grill I can control the temperature I need. I can do a nuclear level flavor sear for a few seconds, then drop down to a candle and the smoke infiltrate while it warms up. You just don’t have that level of control with charcoal, the vents arn’t good enough to do it, it’s still too damn hot, or the meat is too far from the smoke source.
Now I know somebody is going to say ‘If it’s just as good why don’t steak houses just use gas’. Well, every good steak house I’ve ever seen uses a two grill process. One hot as hell grill, and one slow and low. They have to volumn to justify it. Plus they do so many they have to cook open grill style(all that opening and closing doesn’t let smoky goodness build up. So that extra one unit of smoke makes a bigger deal. Add to the fact they are charging out the ass for it, and people have the expectation that chrcoal is better, so they do it.
I guess it’s time to enter the fray once again.
Gas is better than charcoal for grilling! Notice I never said the word barbecue, and I never said the word wood.
A slow barbecue over real wood at low temp is by far the king. But that is not the issue. The issue at hand is for a burger or steak for 7 minutes or so. Now in that time Charcoal really doesn’t get much of a chance to add smokey flavor. In order to get smokey flavor you need actually wood. I use the wood chips in a large tuna method. Soak in water, then put near the fire. They smoulder create great volumes of smoke. I will estimate the wood chips put 15 units of smokey flavor into the meat. The charcoal puts 1 unit of smokey flavor into the meat, not nearly enough more to make a difference.
But with my gas grill I can control the temperature I need. I can do a nuclear level flavor sear for a few seconds, then drop down to a candle and the smoke infiltrate while it warms up. You just don’t have that level of control with charcoal, the vents arn’t good enough to do it, it’s still too damn hot, or the meat is too far from the smoke source.
Now I know somebody is going to say ‘If it’s just as good why don’t steak houses just use gas’. Well, every good steak house I’ve ever seen uses a two grill process. One hot as hell grill, and one slow and low. They have to volumn to justify it. Plus they do so many they have to cook open grill style(all that opening and closing doesn’t let smoky goodness build up. So that extra one unit of smoke makes a bigger deal. Add to the fact they are charging out the ass for it, and people have the expectation that chrcoal is better, so they do it.
So it comes down to 15 minutes of gas, plus one large tuna can of wood, about 40 cents. or two grills set up with charcoal for 5 times the cost (in my experience) for marinally if at all better food.
I’m 4-0 in propane vs charcoal ‘who can make it taste better duels’.(plus I’m just a damn good griller. 
)
So we end up using an electric grill for the times when ‘broiled in the oven’ just won’t do.
I had this epiphany while out in the desert racing motorcycles. I was struggling in a light wind to light the charcoal, dumping a whole can of the junk only to get a pitiful flame that would blow out immediatly. I looked around a realized I had 10 gallons of race fuel within 10 feet. I dumped maybe an ounce on an Presto! BBQ was ragin’!