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When you consider that this grill has it all—performance, sturdy construction, and solid design features—its easy to see why it's a top pick.
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It doesn’t get more classic. Our only real criticism is its height, which is too low. Despite being just over five feet tall, I had to bend over to flip burgers.
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If you’re looking for a large barrel-style grill, this is a well-built, sturdy option with a few nice add-ons. But some design elements in the coal rack and grates gave us trouble.
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Folds down, making it easy to store and wheel around, but didn’t feel like a portable grill. However, the lid felt too heavy, bottom vents were hard to access, and it lacks an ash bucket.
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Gas grills are convenient, boasting instant, even heat, and precise temperature control, but you can’t beat a charcoal grill when it comes to taste. The briquettes that fuel a charcoal grill infuse everything you cook with a smoky flavor. Plus, that high heat achieves a better sear on delicious foods like steak and burgers.
That might be a simplified answer to the gas versus charcoal debate. Things get more complicated when it comes to choosing a specific charcoal grill. Other than the obvious choice of design style, the classic kettle-style grill—like our favorite Napoleon NK22L-LEG-2 Charcoal Kettle Grill
(available at BBQ Guys)
—you may wonder what really sets one charcoal grill apart from another.
After all, by arranging the briquettes into a mound, ring, two-zone or three-zone fire, you’re in full control of the amount of heat applied to your food.
To find the top charcoal grill, we put eight of the best-rated grills through a grueling set of tests. While every grill was successful at producing smoke-infused, delicious-tasting burgers and chicken, the design and layout of each grill are huge factors in our ratings.
Based on what we learned, here is our charcoal grills review to help you find your top pick.
Credit:
Reviewed / Lindsay Mattison
The Napoleon NK22L-LEG-2 is the best charcoal grill that you can buy, right now.
Best Overall
Napoleon NK22K-LEG-2
Recently, our former pick for a great charcoal grill, the Napoleon NK22CK-L, was discontinued and replaced with a newer model, the Napoleon NK22L-LEG-2.
We were excited to get our hands on the replacement to see if it impressed us as much as its predecessor did. It didn’t disappoint, acing our cooking tests and its design features set it apart from the competition.
The Napoleon NK22L-LEG-2 sits on four legs instead of the standard three that most kettle grills come with, making it both sturdy and stable. Its ash bucket is larger than those featured on most grills. It has a wide-grip handle keeps your hands nice and clean as you remove the ashes. Thanks to a minor redesign, it’s easier to slide back into place on the grill once you empty it.
Finally, the grill’s wide, convex dome that rests in the middle of the coal bed while you’re cooking. Initially, we thought this rim was designed to keep the briquettes out of the center of the grill. However, we quickly realized that the rim’s metal heated up along with the coals. This distributes the heat evenly throughout the grill.
When it came to cooking for Napoleon, we had no complaints. It proved to have excellent heat retention and was capable of holding 12 to 13 burgers at a time. When we cooked over direct heat, this grill created a gorgeous overall char.
Raking the coals for indirect cooking is nearly effortless. Its wire cooking grate has hinges on each side that allows easy access to the briquettes underneath.
Additionally, Napoleon’s vent system is easy to use and allows precise airflow control. Being able to control the airflow is important when cooking over charcoal. The bottom vents control the heat of the fire, while the top exhausts hot air and smoke out of the grill.
The new bottom vent system features a series of notches to allow more precise amounts of air into the grill. All of this works together to create an ideal heat distribution for indirect cooking. We were able to cook at hotter indirect heats with the new model.
As if we needed any more good news, at the time of this publication, the new model is less expensive than its predecessor. This puts its pricing on-par with most of the charcoal grills on this list. When you consider that the NK22L-LEG-2 has it all.
It’s got performance, sturdy construction, and solid design features. It's easy to see why this grill is our new pick for Best Overall.
Big Green Egg's kamado cooker is incredibly versatile—but you'll pay a high price for its famous adaptability.
Most Versatile
Big Green Egg Large
If you’re looking for a charcoal grill that can do it all—grill burgers and steaks, smoke ribs and pork shoulders, or bake bread and pizza—and budget isn’t a concern, you might want to consider the Big Green Egg.
Kamado-style grills like the Egg use charcoal as their fuel, but they have thick, ceramic sides which store a ton of heat. Since most charcoal grills aren’t made from ceramic, this feature makes kamado grills stand. These ceramic grills radiate heat around the food as you cook.
The ceramic sides also improve efficiency with the coals themselves. After we finished our tests, the Egg had more charcoal left than any of the other grills. This charcoal is ready to relight the next time the grill is used.
The Large Egg we tested had an 18-inch grill space that could fit about a dozen burgers. It excelled at both high- and low-temperature tests, cooking up burgers with perfect grill marks and golden brown, crispy-skinned chicken drumsticks.
The bonus with the Egg is you can also use it as an induction oven to cook bread. You can also turn it into a smoker with the purchase of the ConvEGGtor. This ceramic plate facilitates indirect heat cooking.
Overall, we loved cooking on the Egg, and its vent system had the best temperature control of any charcoal grill we tested. It is large and heavy, but the wheels make it easy to move around and it locks firmly in place. Unfortunately, we weren’t stoked about the lack of an ash bucket.
Cleaning out the spent ashes from the bottom of the grill was a bit of a chore and required a proprietary tool. It also took significantly longer to cool down than the rest of grills. The body of the grill stays super hot to the touch. This is something to want to keep in mind when planning grilling sessions.
Unlike the other grills on this list, the Big Green Egg isn’t available at national chain stores. It’s available at most Ace Hardware stores, but they’re usually sold through individual dealers. The prices tend to vary by dealer as the Egg is often sold as part of a package deal or a special. Find a dealer near you to get the price of the Large (it was available at my local store for $850).
It doesn’t get more classic than the Weber Original Kettle Grill. It was invented in the 1950s by cutting a buoy in half to create a dome-shaped grill. Its design protects food from the elements while sealing barbecue flavor in.
We weren’t disappointed in the slightest by its performance. Our burgers cooked perfectly, and the chicken cooked over indirect heat was evenly browned all over.
We loved the fan-shape bottom vent. It not only helps us control the airflow inside the grill but also works to scrape coals into the bucket below. The hinged grate gave us access to the coal bed. The lid also has a hook for easy storage on the side of the grill.
Our only real criticism of this grill is its height, which is too low. Despite being just over five feet tall, I had to bend over to flip the burgers. This is something I didn’t have to do with the rest of the grills in our test group.
If you’re looking for a large barrel-style grill, the Dyna-Glo Heavy-Duty Charcoal Grill is a well-built, sturdy option with a few nice add-ons.
You can move the coal bed closer or further from the grill grate using a crank handle. This handle is located on the front of the grill. It’s a nice way to manage the heat inside this almost 500 square inch grill. Plus, you get an extra 200 square inches of cooking area on its warming rack.
Unfortunately, the coal rack has a grate with bars that run both vertically and horizontally. That may not sound like a drawback, but it made it challenging to move the coals to one side to create indirect heat.
We also disliked the grate design. They slid back and forth to allow access to the coal bed below, but one grate sat at a higher level than the other two. It makes it hard to cascade burgers across the entire grilling area.
The highest grate was perfectly aligned with a space in the hinged lid. We almost slid a burger through the space, and our asparagus definitely rolled right through and fell to the ground.
The PK Grills Original Outdoor Charcoal Grill & Smoker is great for anyone with smaller spaces. The grill folds down, making it easy to store and wheel to tailgating events.
It didn’t feel like a portable charcoal grill, though. It was sturdy with 300 square inches of rectangular cooking area that could fit about 10 burger patties at a time. The grill’s vents promote air flow suitable for all cooking methods. The grill grate hinges in half to allow plenty of access to the coals underneath.
On the flip side, we didn’t love the lid. It’s heavy and feels like it will fall off if we don’t open it carefully enough. The bottom vents were also really hard to access and hot coals fell out if you opened them during the cooking process.
The grill also lacks an ash bucket. It does have two ash catchers. Sadly, these are impossible to clean out without making a mess.
The value-priced Char-Griller Patio Pro Charcoal Grill certainly gets the job done, but at a cost. The 250 square inch cooking area maxed out at six burgers. Its hinged-lid barrel design made it harder than it should to get in and flip your food. Since the lid only opens halfway up the barrel, the smoke blows into your face when cooking.
The side door access to the coals is a great idea in theory. Sadly, the door gets too hot and sticks badly when rearranging coals. All in all, I’d rather spend a few extra bucks for a more pleasant grilling experience.
The Char-Broil TRU-Infrared Kettleman Charcoal Grill had a few features we liked, including a hinged lid and a grill grate (which Char-Broil calls TRU-Infrared) that created a beautiful sear and grill marks on our burgers. Unfortunately, the grill’s performance was trumped by a few design features that dropped it down in our rankings.
The grates have no hinges or easy access to the coal bed. This putts our hands in a dangerously hot situation when adding additional coals. And the v-shaped grill grate might have seared nicely, but it was very difficult to clean. Burnt bits of burger and chicken grease wedge into its crevices.
To top it off, the grill is wobbly and more unstable than the competition. We hate getting our hands dirty to grip an ash bucket that doesn’t have a handle. For the price, there are certainly better grills out there.
While gas grills have a BTU—British Thermal Units—rating to measure the amount of heat each grill can produce, you get full control of how much heat your charcoal grill produces.
It takes a little practice to get the hang of it. It’s all about controlling the airflow, the coal patterns, and the food’s proximity to the hot coals. You’ll learn to allow oxygen in by opening up the bottom vents, fueling the coals and creating intense heat. Close ‘em up to choke off the oxygen and lower the temps.
The top vents give you some control of the heat. They also change the flavor of the food by venting the hot exhaust or keeping the smoke inside the dome. You can also control heat by managing your coal bed and rearranging their placement inside the grill.
Some grills allow you to raise and lower the coal bed itself. Most grills have a set location that determines how close the grates are to the coals. It’s important to learn how to make a two-zone fire. This way, you can move the food off the flames to a cooler area for indirect cooking.
The other thing you’ll notice about charcoal grills is that most of them have flimsy wire grates as opposed to gas grill’s heavy cast iron grates. Before you bemoan the loss of grill marks, know that they’re entirely overrated.
Sure, they look great. But wire grates give your food better overall browning, crusting your burgers and steaks with extra caramelized flavor. Plus, the wire grates are lightweight and easy to move around when you want to rearrange the coals underneath.
How to Start a Charcoal Grill
Credit:
Reviewed / Lindsay Mattison
Using a charcoal chimney, like this one, can have your grill fired up and ready to cook in as little as 15 minutes.
There are several ways to start a charcoal fire, but using lighter fluid should be last on the list. I don’t know about you, but I can totally taste the lighter fluid in the finished product. No, thank you! You can stack your coals in a pyramid, but it’s easier to use a chimney starter, like the Weber 7429.
To use it, simply place some wadded up newspaper underneath the chimney, add your coals, and light the newspaper on fire. They’re ready to dump into the grill base about 15 to 20 minutes. Add them when coals in the middle glow bright red and the ones on top become white and ashy.
Using a chimney is also a good way to know how many briquettes you need. A full chimney will produce temperatures in excess of 550°F. For cooler grilling temps, fire a half chimney (about 400°F) or a quarter chimney (about 300°F).
Kettle or Barrel: Know Your Charcoal Grill Shapes
When it comes to the best charcoal grills, there are two iconic shapes: round or oval kettle-style grills and barrel-shaped grills. The former was invented by Weber back in the 1950s when Weber’s founder, George Stephen, cut a buoy in half. It creates a grill with a half circle on the bottom to hold the coals and a circular. Its removable lid seals in the barbecue flavor and protects the food from the elements.
Today, you’ll find round- and oval-shaped kettle grills made from porcelain-enameled steel, stainless steel, or heavy ceramic. These types of grills are generally lightweight and easy to transport, but they have a smaller grilling area than barrel grills.
The original barrel grill starts life as an oil drum. Then they’re cut in half and welded together to create long, hinged-lid grills. These grills are usually heavy and difficult to transport. They do pack a larger grilling surface area, making them ideal for cooking for a crowd. Many barrel grills also have add-on features, like adjustable coal beds or side-mounted charcoal boxes.
Gas or Charcoal—How Do You Choose?
In the eternal debate over whether a gas grill or a charcoal grill is better for outdoor cooking, there is no wrong answer. If you’re cooking your food on the grill instead of inside, it captures that beautiful charred essence and smoky flavor from cooking over open flames.
You likely already have strong opinions on the topic of gas versus charcoal and we’re not here to change your mind. If you’re still on the fence on the subject, however, here are the pros and cons of using each type of grill to help you choose the right one for you. Let’s talk gas grills, first.
Gas grills are more convenient than even the best charcoal grills. That they don’t use charcoal as fuel not only makes them easier to clean a charcoal grill (no ash!). It also cuts down on heating time. Gas grills also come equipped with electric starters to ignite its gas burner. This helps to get you cooking faster than charcoal users can manage, as well.
It's easier to control the heat while you’re grilling with gas than it is when using charcoal. To adjust the heat up and down, simply twist a knob instead of fiddling around with hot coals. It is a bummer when you run out of propane, though, so we love these newer grills that have a handy meter right on the side of the grill.
Charcoal grills, on the other hand, are significantly less expensive than their gas counterparts. Many people prefer the flavor of cooking over a charcoal grill. The briquettes they use for fuel infuse smoky elements into the food.
The coals created by burning those briquettes can burn hotter than propane or natural gas. This can be a pro or a con. You’ll get a serious sear on your food if that’s what you’re going for. However, it’s also easy to burn your food over 700° F temperatures.
What About Pellet Grills?
We eliminated pellet grills from our testing group because they’re more akin to smokers than grills. They cook over indirect heat instead of exposing your food directly to the flames. Those types of grills are in a category of their own, so we saved them for another roundup.
Prices were accurate at the time this article was published but may change over time.
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Lindsay is a professional chef, recipe developer, writer, and developmental editor. After years of working in restaurant kitchens, she turned to writing to share her passion for local, organic, and seasonal ingredients with home cooks and food enthusiasts.
Our team is here for one purpose: to help you buy the best stuff and love what you own. Our writers, editors, and lab technicians obsess over the products we cover to make sure you're confident and satisfied. Have a different opinion about something we recommend? Email us and we'll compare notes.