When it comes to barbecuing, choosing the right grill for your home is important. With the right grill, homeowners can make a wide range of great dishes, from breakfast to dinner and everything in between. Often, you can even use the food you barbecue as an ingredient in another dish or make a baked or boiled dish on the barbecue instead. The best barbecue for a family’s outdoor kitchen can be incredibly useful and versatile under the right circumstances.
Finding the right kind of grill can be a surprising struggle, though. Today, there are a massive range of grills that are all different from each other. Each grill, while similar to its line and type, can still have different features that you need to consider first. And while these features can be incredibly handy to have, you might just be wasting money if you don’t see yourself using them.
To help you narrow down your choices and find the best barbecue grill for your outdoor kitchen, we’ve put together some of the first few factors you should consider before you make the big choice. Once you’ve considered the available options and what your own home’s needs are, Dickson Barbeque Centre has a wide range of grills that you can buy, all at a reasonable price.
Fuel types
One of the most important things you need to consider when choosing the best barbecue is what fuel source it uses. Each kind of barbecue can vary greatly from each other and have their own benefits and disadvantages. If you’re new to barbecuing, some grills might be harder to use than others, since there are specific techniques that you need to know first before you can properly use a certain type of grill.
Charcoal grills
Charcoal grills are one of the two most well known grills that use charcoal briquettes or lumps to cook. The grills that use charcoal as a fuel source are known to give food much more of a smokier taste than other kinds of grills, easily allowing barbecuers to toss a handful of wood chips in if they want to. Charcoal grills also frequently tend to be cheaper to buy than other kinds of grills, due to the fewer needed parts.
Gas Grills
As a contender to the popularity charcoal grills have, gas grills are the next most known option. Gas grills often use a tank of liquid propane or natural gas as fuel, pushing it through tubes and connections to an igniter close to a set of burners where it’s turned to a gas and lit. Thanks to this ignition system, starting and using a gas grill is incredibly quick and only needs a push of the grill’s igniter button to start heating up.
When compared to charcoal grills, this kind of grill doesn’t give the same smokiness to food. It does however make grilling incredibly easy for beginners. Thanks to the ignition system a gas grill has and the ability to control how much gas the burners use, the grill also heats up much faster and with a much greater level of control. Then, once you’re done grilling, all you need to do is turn the knob to off and the fire stops.
Pellet grills
Pellet grills, though just a bit more like a smoker than the other kinds of grills, burn little wooden pellets to cook the food that’s on the grate. Though a more complex machine than a charcoal grill, pellet grills allow a much larger range of smoky flavours due to the fact that any type of wood pellet can be used. As long as the pellets can be moved from the hopper to the firepot without creating a clog, you can easily use maple wood pellets for one cooking session and hickory for the next.
Number of burners
If you’re considering buying a gas grill, one of the key factors you should consider is how many burners the grill has. Many gas grills can be as unique from model to model, each using a single burner or as many as six burners on some brand’s grills. While you can easily cook all sorts of food on a single-burner grill, having more burners can also open up new avenues and ways of grilling. While those same ways can be used on a single-burner grill, it’s much easier to do so with more burners.
Don’t let that stop you, though. If you would much rather focus on grilling meat and veggies without the extra techniques, a grill with a single burner is just perfect.
Size of the grill
The overall size of your grill can also play a big part. Often, large families or couples that often host large parties and get-togethers often need to make a lot of food and at a much faster pace. To make it easier on those with a higher and faster food demand, larger families and groups should look into getting larger grills with more surface area. Smaller families or groups, on the other hand, can easily make do with a smaller grill.
Side burners: yes or no?
As a feature of many larger-sized grills, side burners are often an optional choice. Though more likely to be available on gas grills and other similar types, these side burners are great for people and families that want to cook other side dishes while their food is barbecuing. Additionally, the side burner can also be used to keep food warm while waiting.
Takeaway
If there’s a thing you absolutely must know, the larger and more complex your grill is, the more expensive it will end up being. So, if money is an important factor or if you have a set budget, skip out on the big six-burner grill with infrared side burners. Just because a grill is smaller or doesn’t have as many features as a more expensive model doesn’t mean it’s any worse at its job. The main use of a barbecue grill is to grill whatever meat, veggies, fruit or even bread you put on it, and a simple charcoal grill will work just as well as a big gas one.
If it suits your family and home’s needs, get the grill that suits those needs!
