The Cuisinart Venture, with its picnic basket appearance, is a good entry-level grill for the uninitiated and a value model for more experienced grillers. It’s a model intended for direct-heat weber charcoal grill cooking, as there’s no lid to control humidity for “low and slow” cooking. The burner packs 9,000 BTUs under enameled cast iron, providing adequate heat for small-group cooking.
Before testing, we pored over other professional reviews, such as those at Meathead’s AmazingRibs.com, and analyzed online customer reviews of dozens of models. The compact fold and overall design makes traveling and storing as seamless as possible. The Weber Traveler grill takes up minimal space in your garage and is designed to fit easily in the trunk of a car. The durable painted cast-aluminum material is easy to clean and requires minimal maintenance.
With your Go-Anywhere gas grill in the trunk and map in hand, there are no limits to the open road. For retail purchases returned without a receipt, the refund will be issued as a store merchandise
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Our journalists combine independent research with (occasionally) over-the-top testing so you can make quick and confident buying decisions. Whether it’s finding great products or discovering helpful advice, we’ll help you get it right (the first time). Lesley Stockton is a senior staff writer reporting on all things cooking and weber bbq entertaining for Wirecutter. Her expertise builds on a lifelong career in the culinary world—from a restaurant cook and caterer to a food editor at Martha Stewart. She is perfectly happy to leave all that behind to be a full-time kitchen-gear nerd. Keeping coals lit in the Weber Smokey Joe Charcoal Grill 14″ was a challenge.
A clip on the lid keeps everything in place in this beach- and apartment-friendly grill. Minor faults aside, this “exceedingly beginner friendly” is “cute, functional, and just a delight to hold.” It is a super option for the fair-weather griller, or first-timer concerned with aesthetics. It’s also undeniably great for camping, due to its efficient packability and included cutting board.
Weber Q1200 Portable Propane Gas Grill with Side Tables on Scissor Cart (WEB-Q1200-PCART) offers surprising utility in a seriously compact package. The Weber Q 1000 Series grill is the smallest portable gas grill in their collection, making it easy to take with you on camping trips or any other scenario where you need to grill on the go. Despite its small size, it provides smart features like porcelain enameled cast iron cooking grates and a durable stainless steel burner for impressive performance. You’ll want to consider things such as the grill’s cooking area, weight, and features like collapsible stands as you compare different models. To make your choice a little easier, we tested 10 top-rated portable gas grills to find the best option for every situation.
Compact in size to easily fit in a car, carry to the park, or grill a quick meal on your patio. Rounding out the bottom of the list for this metric is the Camp Chef Portable Pellet. This model is really heavy compared to the others, and it has a short handle. You also have to lay it on its back to convert it from travel to cooking mode, which is not ideal.
“This thing could be priced even higher and I would buy it,” a tester noted, although at under $300, it’s attractively priced as-is. We conducted two sets of tests for scoring, depending on whether the grill was gas-fueled or charcoal. The first step for each was to assemble the grill, rating it on the clarity of instructions and how easy it was to accomplish the task. Next, we judged the grills’ portability, such as how easy they were to move and if lids or grates fell off easily.
This model is actually the next size up from the Q1200, and it provides 280 square inches of cooking space, making it better-suited for large-batch grilling. This Camp Chef model has a stable cooking surface that prevents any wind from getting through to the grilling grate. Both of these electric grills appeared to be completely unfazed by convective heat loss, as far as we can tell.
Some portable grills have dishwasher-safe components, although all we tested can be wiped down with a damp cloth, scrub brush, or even hosed down. For the purpose of this review, we’ll be discussing gas grills exclusively, although we did review portable charcoal grills here. The grill runs a little hotter with the lid down than the temperature indicated on the built-in thermometer, and there were minimal flare-ups in cooking. Cleanup is easy; using a grill brush on the grates and wiping down the inside of the lid to prevent grease buildup did the job. It’s ultimately a reliable compact grill that does double-duty as an indoor or outdoor workhorse. Weber has a reputation for building grills that gracefully blend cooking performance and reliability, and that tradition is rolled into a portable package with the impressive Weber Q 1200.