There’s more to great barbecue than simply tossing food onto an open flame. As with cooking on your stove, grilling requires nuance, patience, and a healthy helping of technique. The basic idea is to use charcoal or your gas grill burners to control and concentrate the heat, then consider wood chips or chunks to impart a rich, smoky taste. The good news? Great grilling is easier than you think.
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To show you exactly how to master your grill, we’ve tapped two of the biggest names in barbecue to share some of their best tips. Chris Lilly, a champion pitmaster who has won 17 World BBQ Championships, is a partner at Big Bob Gibson’s BBQ in Decatur, Ala. Meathead Goldwyn of AmazingRibs.com, author of "Meathead: The Science of Great Barbecue and Grilling" (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016), is a member of the Barbecue Hall of Fame.
In addition to their tips for getting great results with both gas and charcoal, we’ve rounded up a few of our favorite gas- and charcoal-grill models, below, too. If you’re unsure of whether you want a gas or charcoal grill, check out our grill buying guide, and for more grill options, see our comprehensive ratings. To find more ideas on how to make the most of the grill you already have, read our advice on grill maintenance and barbecue gear.
Preheat the Grill
Whether your grill is gas or charcoal, always take the time to get it hot before you begin cooking. As with preheating your oven when cooking, says Larry Ciufo, CR’s engineer who oversees all grill testing, "preheating your grill helps to achieve optimal temperature for grilling and to keep food from sticking to the grates."
Our tests on gas grills show that you should preheat for at least 10 minutes.
For a charcoal grill, our testers recommend using a chimney starter filled with coals and ignited by lighting crumpled newspaper (or a fire starter) below the chimney. Avoid lighter fluid and self-lighting coals, which can produce an off-taste that distorts the flavor of your food. Then watch the coals. "You want them to be fully lit and covered in a layer of fine white ash [before you start cooking]," Goldwyn says, noting that the process takes about 15 minutes and is well worth the wait. Cooking over charcoal that isn’t fully lit can impart an acrid taste, he explains. "Charcoal briquettes burn at their hottest and won’t distort the flavor of your food with heavy smoke if you let them ignite fully."
Grill in Zones
You’d never cook everything in your oven at 500° F, but that’s effectively what’s happening when you turn on all of a grill’s burners or distribute charcoal evenly across the bottom of the firebox. So avoid doing that, and, instead, opt for a zone defense. "On a gas grill, turn one or two burners on and leave the others off," Lilly says. "For charcoal, light your coals, then push them all to one side of the grill." Use the hot side of the grill for searing and the cooler side for cooking meats (and other foods) all the way through without burning.
"I’ll cook chicken on the indirect side of the grill until the internal temperature hits about 150° F, then move it to the hot side to crisp up the skin and cook it through to 165° F," Goldwyn says. The technique, he says, allows you to cook burn-prone foods (skin-on chicken, thick steaks, or pork chops, for example) over low heat, then finish them off on the hot side of the grill.
Season With Smoke
Smoke, from wood chips or chunks, is used by skilled grillers to impart even more flavor. "I tell beginners to think of smoke as a seasoning or dry rub," Lilly says. "You want it to lend flavor but not to overwhelm what you’re cooking."
Package instructions often call for soaking the wood chips or chunks before using them, but both of our experts agree that there’s no need for this step—the chips barely absorb any of the water, and they quickly dry in a fire anyway. If you’re cooking with charcoal, simply throw the wood onto lit coals.
If you’re cooking with a gas grill, Goldwyn suggests using wood chips in a smoker box. You can also put whole chunks of wood right on top of the shields that cover the grill’s burners, he says.
Lilly adds that the quantity and age of the wood typically influence flavor more than the wood variety (apple, cherry, or hickory, for instance), and that you need to experiment to get smoke just right, starting with small quantities and working your way up. "I encourage people to try using wood local to their area, dried or seasoned [meaning aged] for at least four months after cutting," Lilly says. You can also buy bags of pre-seasoned wood.
Chunks burn longer and hotter, but Lilly says he uses chips when smoking in a small grill because a chunk of wood that flares can raise the temperature too high.
3 Top-Rated Gas Grills
Of the close to 200 gas grills we’ve tested and scored, many cook evenly enough, or cook effectively over indirect heat—but the best can do both. The three options below excel in both tasks, making it infinitely easier to take your grilling game to the next level.
3 Top-Rated Charcoal Grills
We have more than two dozen charcoal grills in our ratings. And while we test for how evenly they cook, bear in mind you may get different results depending upon how you build a fire, the type and quantity of charcoal you use, and whether you’re cooking on a windy day. The biggest differences are in the design and features, the best of which—like the three below—provide effortless temperature control and easy cleaning.
Editor’s Note: A version of article also appeared in the July 2018 issue of Consumer Reports magazine.
Paul Hope
Paul Hope is a senior multimedia content creator at Consumer Reports and a trained chef. He covers ranges, cooktops, and wall ovens, as well as grills, drills, outdoor power tools, decking, and wood stains. Before joining CR in 2016, he tested kitchen products at Good Housekeeping and covered tools and remodeling for This Old House magazine. You’ll typically find him in his old fixer-upper, engrossed in a DIY project or trying out a new recipe.
