Choose Your Features

Feature Creep

In addition to getting the right-sized grill, you’ll also want to look for a unit that’s not all junked up with features you don’t need. As the grilling market has expanded, manufacturers have come to compete as much on these features as on quality, looks, or price. Optional grill features run the gamut from useful to ridiculous. (You can, for example, purchase expensive gas grills with built-in lighting systems that illuminate the cooking surface at the touch of a switch--just the thing for those midnight cookouts we all love so much.)

In general, grill features drive up the price, so think about the features you will actually use before you invest. Among the more common:

Most gas grills come with some sort of push-button igniter. These rarely work for more than one or two seasons, after which you’re back to matches. Some grills now come with igniters powered by 9-volt batteries and perhaps these ignition units last longer. (If you have experience with them to report, email me.)

A decent grilling operation requires a good bit of horizontal work space and many grills now offer fold-out side tables that can be popped into place to increase your work space. Many of these seem rather flimsy to me (not on the pricier products, to be sure) and do not perform any better than a plastic table pulled over to the appropriate spot.

A very popular add-on these days are side burners, which are standard equipment on many of the more expensive gas grills and optional add-ons to others. If your outdoor cooking operation is far away from your kitchen, or if you frequently haul your grill to parks, picnics, tailgaters, or the race track, then a side burner (or two) can be a great convenience.

Electric rotisseries have also gotten to be very common. These, in essence, are spits turned by built-in electric motors and they can be useful in spit-roasting chickens, pork loins, and other common grill fare. These things are more trouble than they’re worth, but if you need to spit roast as many as eight chickens at a time, then maybe a rotisserie unit is just the thing for you.

FYI, the Napoleon Ultra Chef Premier 360 comes with a rear-mounted rotisserie unit as standard equipment. The unit cranks out 72,000 BTUs at full throttle, has about 550 square inches of cooking surface, and is a high quality gas grill that retails for under $500--well worth a look if you’ve decided a built-in rotisserie unit is what you want.

You can also get gas fired grills with built-in griddles, woks, deep-fat fryers, and so on. Just so you know, your regular pots, pans, woks, griddles and such work just the same on top of a gas-fired (or charcoal) grill as on the top of your stove, so if you really want to French-fry potatoes on the grill, use a deep heavy pot from the kitchen and be done with it.

The high end of the grill market now pushes up against $10,000, and when you’re in that price range, you can get built-in warming drawers, steam tables, beer dispensers, refrigerators, and even the kitchen sink. (Yes, the kitchen sink: the Brinkmann Gas Stainless Steel Backyard Kitchen unit comes with a built-in sink. Just hook up the garden hose and presto--you’ve got running water right at the cook site.) No one in their right mind actually needs any of these features, but if you’re spending this kind of moola, it ain’t about need now, is it? At the same time, if you can afford to spend $10,000 on your outdoor cooking rig, you don’t need me to tell you what to buy. Hire an outdoor cooking equipment consultant and have yourself a ball.

Price

It’s obvious you can spend as much (or as little) as you want on your gear, but don’t make the mistake of thinking that the more you spend, the better product you’re purchasing. The more expensive grills are almost always much larger than anyone really needs and loaded with features that nobody ever uses.

Some brands are relatively inexpensive and give good service for many years. Is there a single person who has purchased a Weber grill and been unhappy with it? Doubtful. Coleman owners are also generally pretty pleased with their setup. Ditto Thermador owners. Up-and-coming brand names include Aussie Grill Company, Texas Pit Master, Holland, and Char-Broil. That said, brand is probably less important than size, features, and, of course, price.

After a long winter, the old charcoal grill can look mighty forlorn and right after the spring thaw is when a guy starts thinking about replacements. If you can hold on until the end of the season, you’ll do much better on price. Along about that first frost in mid-October, grill prices drop drastically and that’s the time to buy.

See also: