All about charcoal grills

Whether backyard brazier or high-end smoker, the charcoal grill is hot again

By David Zimmer

It’s fun to imagine what cottaging must have been like at the beginning of the last century, when outboard motors were upstart contraptions, water came in buckets, and bass jumped right into the boat. Times were simpler then and cottage living was too, bearing little resemblance to the complicated antics we get up to these days. Surely, with the exception of a stalwart few, who probably call their cottages “camps” anyway, our modern version of enjoying the lake has little in common with the way they did it back in the sepia-tinted days of yore. Or does it? Look more closely at that foxed and faded photograph, past the pipe-smoking men in their thick wool pants, past the eight-dozen trout skewered on a willow branch,past the smiling woman with her hair piled and pinned and her sleeves rolled up. There. To the left. It’s a charcoal fire with a cooking grate on top, spitting wisps of smoke from what may be two halves of a mid-sized chicken or an entire rabbit, split down the middle. Behold the eternal flame. 

Of course, back in those high-collared days, cottagers had no choice but to conduct their outdoor cooking over wood and charcoal fires. Yet we still cook over charcoal today, and with good reason: Food cooked over live coals just tastes better. And the cottage has always been
a bastion of charcoal cookery. Maybe it’s simply because of the relaxed atmosphere, where we can take the time to cook and enjoy food, but I like to think it’s because the spirits of our cottaging forebears are there, urging us on in ghostly whispers and wiping succulent juices from their lips.

There’s been a bit of a charcoal renaissance lately, and whether you're considering getting into live-fire exercises for the first time or just want to upgrade that rusted-out ash pan on legs that came with the cottage, there have never been more styles of charcoal cookers to choose from. But before you shop, there are some things worth knowing about fire-breathers, starting with the cooking methods a charcoal grill may – or may not – be able to perform.

Direct grilling requires only an open brazier, and is done over very hot coals with smaller, quickly cooked foods such as burgers, steaks, and chops. Indirect grilling, on the other hand, places the food over a drip pan off to one side of a covered grill and the hot coals on the other, making it possible, for example, to cook larger cuts of meat longer without burning them.

Smoking, or true southern barbecue, involves cooking cuts of meat, often very large ones, with indirect heat at very low temperatures (225°F–275°F/105°C–135°C). True barbecue requires extremely long cooking times (some grandmasters can take 18 hours to cook a pork shoulder), and uses smouldering logs or hardwood chunks to flavour the meat – hence the expression “low and slow” cooking. While a version of true barbecue can be attained on a covered grill, dedicated smokers have specialized features to better regulate the heat over long periods of time.

One nice thing about shopping for a charcoal-powered cooker is that the variety of makes and models available to Canadian consumers is relatively slim compared with what’s available in the U.S. It might sound odd, but with less choice, it’s actually easier to find yourself a well-built grill. The key, though, is to comparison shop at actual barbecue retailers, not just big box stores that tend to carry a very narrow selection of brands and styles. And remember the old rule about getting what you pay for: If a no-name grill sells for a fraction of the price asked for a name-brand unit, you’d best take a closer look. Finally, because charcoal cookers are so much simpler than their gassy cousins – no valves, burners, or heat deflectors to deal with – getting a well-built grill doesn’t require a training session at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

“First of all, you want a stable grill, something that feels solid,” says Steven Raichlen, host of PBS’s Barbecue University and award-winning author of the Barbecue Biblecookbook series. “With something that could potentially burn your deck down, make sure it’s not going to collapse or push over.” It’s the very simplicity of a charcoal cooker that makes assessing its build quality rather straightforward: If you choose a grill that’s steady and sturdily built, chances are you’ve picked a winner. That’s the easy part. It’s deciding which style of grill best suits your needs that gets a little more complicated.

The basic brazier: open fire!

The charcoal cooker most people are familiar with is the brazier, basically any bed of coals with a cooking grate suspended over top. Braziers can take the form of a Hibachi, a campfire, a bisected steel drum, or one of those round coal pans on rickety tripod legs that helped generations of suburban dads incinerate hamburgers and hot dogs on smoky summer evenings. Many cottages feature built-in braziers, where the coal pan and cooking surface are integrated into a brick or stone monolith. Braziers are designed for quickly cooking things like steaks and chops, small pieces of chicken, or fish fillets. And, of course, burgers and dogs. Small, portable models are handy for picnics or shore lunches and, if direct grilling is the only style of cooking you do, a brazier might be the only charcoal cooker you need. Might be. Lacking a lid, braziers can’t be used for indirect cooking or to perform smoke cooking.

Kettle grills: the cover story

In 1951, tired of wind and rain ruining backyard cookouts on a brazier, George Stephen had a eureka moment that forever changed the world. At the time, Stephen worked at the Weber Brothers Metal Works in Palatine, Ill., a company that made marine buoys. In a flurry of creative genius, he fit a grill rack on top of one of the bowl-shaped metal buoy components, then added a similarly shaped lid, and cut vents into the top – creating the world’s first kettle grill, a design that lives on as the ever-popular Weber kettle. And by fitting a lid to a brazier, Stephen not only kept the rain off his coals, now he could cook with indirect heat, effectively making an outdoor oven.

Kettle grills come in many shapes and sizes, from portable table-top units to immense grills large enough to accommodate a small pig. Some are dome-shaped, others square or rectangular, and still others a classic barrel shape with a hinged lid and a smokestack. Most kettle grills regulate the airflow to the coals with one set of vents underneath the coal pan and another in the lid, above the food. Regulating the air supply controls the heat in the cooking chamber, from relatively high roasting temperatures, to very low ones necessary for real barbecue. Cook without the lid and you’ve got yourself a brazier. 

If a Most Valuable Player award for all the kettle grills on the market were given out, it should surely go to the Weber kettle. “It’s pretty tough to beat a Weber kettle,” Raichlen agrees. “It’s sort of iconic and it’s one of the few things in modern life where you understand how it works and it does everything it’s supposed to.” While Weber kettles come in a variety of sizes, David Burt of Ontario Gas Barbecue in Concord unreservedly recommends one model in particular. “The 221⁄2-inch is better, because of the larger cooking surface, but also because most of the accessories fit that model,” Burt explains. “If you want a rotisserie or a lid holder or a work table, they only fit the 221⁄2.” Also, look for a model with a hinged cooking surface that allows you to flip up a section of grate to access the fire pan below, convenient for adding extra fuel or aromatic wood chips.

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Published in the July/August 2005 issue of Cottage Life magazine.

Copyright © 2005 by Cottage Life. All rights reserved. Reproduction of any article, photograph, or artwork, for other than personal use, in whole or in part, without the written permission of the publisher is strictly forbidden.