How to Pick the Perfect Grill

I get asked weekly for my opinions on different grills and the most common question is “What grill should I get?” The truth is that there is not one perfect grill for every person, every cook, or every environment and I often end up having a robust conversation to help make the best possible recommendation. I’ve thought about writing this post for a long time and have finally been compelled to write down the questions and thought process to helping make those recommendations.

Question 1: What do you want to cook? (And how much of it?)

This question is important because it really determines the shape and size of the grill. When picking a grill, you should remember that you can (almost) always cook in a smaller amount on a bigger grill. You don’t need to turn on all 3 burners on a gas grill to cook 2 burger patties. But you can’t cook more in a smaller space. A 22” longer brisket is not going to fit on a 14” grill. Try as you might. I’m going to group these into the following sections:

Small - Hot dogs, burgers, chicken thighs or breasts
Medium - A whole chicken, lobster tails, or a single pork shoulder
Large - Rack of ribs, whole brisket or a Costco-sized salmon filet

And then consider how many people to you plan to cook for:

Small - A couple or a small family (2-4 people)
Medium - A large family or small group (6-10 people)
Large - A large group or party (12-20 people)

If you’re planning to regularly cook for more than 20 people, this post is not for you. Similarly, if you’re planning to regularly cooking something XL like a whole hog or multiple whole packer brisket, this isn’t for you. Get yourself a monster offset smoker or be a multi-grill household.

Answers: Small | Medium | Large - Select the largest size between your two answers

Question 2: How do you want to cook?

This question may be answered for you by the types of food you plan to cook, but its very important to know if. you want to smoke or you want to grill. Here I’m going to define smoking as cooking indirectly and grilling as cooking directly over fire.

Answers: Smoke | Grill | Both

Question 3: How often do you plan to cook and how much time do you plan to spend doing it?

The first part here is just for you. Don’t spend $1400 on a ceramic charcoal grill if you’re going to use it twice a year. Especially if you only use it because you’re too impatient to wait on the charcoal to catch and heat it up.

I’m going to define the answers to this question as follows:

Instant - You can effectively flip a switch and have fire. This is going to be gas grills and a couple of pellet grills on the market and serves the purpose of coming home and wanting to quickly grill a burger outside.
Standard - The normal charcoal grill experience where you light coals, they take some time to take and heat up the grill. May be 30 minutes or so be ready to start cooking. Fire requires very little if any maintenance once started.
Slow - Cooking with a wood fire. Once started, this must be maintained and regulated to keep the right temperature for the duration of the cook.

Be honest with yourself on this one. There’s many very nice grills gathering dust and rust because they “take too much time” to use regularly.

Answers: Instant | Standard | Slow

Where is the grill going to live and are there restrictions?

This question is just for your consideration. Do you live in an apartment complex that has restrictions on what type of grill you can have on your balcony? Maybe you have a small backyard where there isn’t a good space to keep live fire away from the house. Charcoal, but mostly wood burning grills represent a certain risk due to how the fire is produced and burns. Gas grills also pose a risk of grease fire which is why its important to keep your grill clean and empty grease traps.

What is your budget?

It may seem like this should be an earlier question, but I prefer to learn about the person’s commitment to getting a new grill and how they’re going to use it. Ultimately there’s going to be a range of price points of every grill type. For kettle charcoal and some gas grills there may be a lower starting point, but you can also find pellet smokers from $400-2,000 on the market. Make sure you take into account quality and usage so you don’t save a couple hundred bucks but end up having replace a grill quickly. “Buy nice or buy twice” as they say, but more so check out the reviews and buy proven.

Now that you’ve consider those points, here’s some ways the answers translate into different types of grills.

Here I’ve grouped some common answer groupings and then explained how those things work together as well as made some product type and specific product recommendations to help come to the right answer for you. I recommend reading all of these answers to find the right fit!

Answers: Small/Medium, Grill, and Instant or Standard

You’re probably a casual griller with a pretty classic grill menu. You might cook burgers or chicken breasts on a week night, but probably are more inclined to cook out over the week with a beer in one hand (get it delivered with Saucey) and tongs or a spatula in the other. Your need for the amount of space you need on the grate is more determined by the number of people you’re cooking for than by the cut of meat.

At the end of the day, your decision needs to be one of two things. First, do you want to wait on charcoal to catch and heat up? Second, do you want to have flavor imparted on your cook from your grill? Gas grills do not impart any flavor on the food they cook, but they turn on with the twist of a knob. Charcoal grills add flavor with the cook. Here I’ll recommend kettle charcoal grills instead of ceramic ones as they’re more cost effective and also can use lighter fluid to help start the charcoal which ceramic grills cannot.

Gas Grills - Char-Broil, Weber - Generally people do not need a grill with more than 3 burners, but this will ultimately come down to how many people you’re cooking for an the number of simultaneous items on the grill.

Kettle Charcoal Grills - Weber Original, Kingsford - The classic and original grills come in a standard 20-22” grate and don’t have many options for scaling up. Upgrade to the Weber Genesis line if you need more space.

Pellet Grill Exception - Generally pellet grills are not a good fit here because they cannot get hot enough to char or sear. Traeger makes a couple of portable grills like the Ranger that do high heat better than the standard grills due to the shape but would not be my primary recommendation here.

Answers: Large, Both and Standard

You’re looking to level up your grill game and either focus on smoking or dabble in it with desire to cook larger cuts like ribs or brisket with some regularity. You might even want to try more non-standard dishes on the grill like pizza or baking. You probably host BBQs regularly and want to show off your smoking skills for a group, but may also have the need to grill up some sausages or corn to round out your meal. Flavor is key.

You have two choices that are determined by your need for high heat (and maybe by your patience.)

If you are a little patient and can wait for charcoal and spend a little time learning to use your grill, and you have the desire to char and sear, then ceramic charcoal grills are a great option. The ceramic allows the grill to maintain heat for long periods of time for smoking, but also can withstand super high temperatures. Smoke a pork shoulder for 12 hours at 225F or make a pizza in 7 minutes at 600F.

If you want to be able to set it and forget it and have perfect food every time, then consider a pellet smoker. Plug it in, add the compressed saw dust wood pellets and turn it on. It’ll hold whatever temperature you set it at until it runs out of fuel and several of these grills even come with apps that can let you know when your pellet level is low so that never happens. These grills add great flavor and the consistency of quality in the cook is undeniable. The downside to them is that they can’t really hit high temperatures and with no open flame, you can’t really sear or char. Some that advertise high temperatures get close, but beware that they can be a risk for a grease fire if you haven’t cleaned the drip pan before you go hot.

This is a complex answer and both of these grill types really deserve deeper explanations which I may write one day. Generally, ceramic charcoal grills can truly due it all, but they’re more expensive and they take a little bit of time to master. Pellet smokers are great for consistent and delicious food, but can’t hit high heat required to char and sear.

Pellet Grills/Smokers - The gold standard here are of course, Traeger Grills. These guys are absolutely innovators in the space and are making a wider variety of sizes and price points than ever before with a lot of bells and whistles. I’m also a fan of Green Mountain Grills who have some lower price points for more space. If you’re on a budget, Camp Chef has some great options with fewer features but high reliability.

Ceramic Charcoal Grills - Big Green Egg is the name everybody knows and they come with a lifetime guarantee, but must be purchased from a dealer. The good versions of these will last forever, so if you don’t want green, Kamado Joe (red) and Primo (black) are both also fantastic options.

Answers: Small, Smoke and Standard

This isn’t a really thing. Smoking in a small space and small cuts of meat isn’t effective or practical. That’s going to hurt somebody’s feelings probably, but Medium food options are going to be the smallest options. Choose a pellet smoker to add flavor to your cooking, but remember that they don’t do high heat and won’t be able to char which is desirable for many small foods like burgers, hot dogs and steaks.

Pellet Smokers - Traeger and Green Mountain both make small grills meant for tailgating and camping that may be just what the doctor ordered.

Answers: Medium, Both, and Slow

This also isn’t really a thing. Wood burning grills tend to being either designed for smoking (ex offset smokers) or for direct fire (ex. Santa Maria grills). Some low grade grills on the market can do both, but most people would use charcoal in these and they don’t have a long life span.

Hopefully you’ve found this article helpful and have the answers you need to pick your next grill. If you’re still having trouble deciding, feel free to leave a comment below or DM me on Instagram and I’ll be happy to help!