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Whether for the beach or outdoor adventures, these are the gas, charcoal and pellet BBQs to know
From images of abandoned disposables at various beauty spots around the UK to fingers being pointed at silver tray barbecues as the cause of wildfires in our tinder-dry countryside, it’s fair to say that barbecuing in public has got a bit of a PR problem at the moment.
However, that doesn’t mean you need to be confined to the back garden or balcony as barbecue season gets under way. A quality, purpose-built portable means you can change the backdrop for your latest burger broiling session and feast on all your favourites, wherever you’re headed to.
Gas or charcoal, a good portable should be able to do almost everything their more rooted versions can do, just on a smaller scale. With gas models, we were looking for barbecues that allowed us to control the heat easily and feature a gas cylinder attachment that works with, not against you. While charcoal versions needed to be effortless to load and light and make it easy to manage the charcoal throughout cooking.
That’s where the differences end though, because both need to provide even heat distribution across the grill, so you’re never caught out with hot spots that will lead to burnt food. And speaking of the food, portables are usually best at quick cooking (rather than low and slow) so they should be particularly suited to searing, while also imparting a mouth-watering charred taste to everything else that ends up on your plate.
It needs to do all this in a usable design that makes it easy to carry to your destination or just load up in the car boot. So, we grabbed the barbecue sauce and went mobile, firing up as many portables as we could get our tongs on to see which ones were best at replicating what the big grills do.
We took our grills with us for days out on the beach and on to Dartmoor and thoroughly tested their searing credentials, loading them up with burgers to see which ones would pass the patty test by delivering juicy protein with a nicely fired crust. We were feeding a family who all had different requirements when it came to how they wanted their burgers cooked, which gave us an opportunity to see how easy each barbecue made it to cook to order.
Throughout each grilling session, we also noted how stable the barbecue was and how easy it was to manouvere our food around the grill without losing it to the sand (or the dog). And when we were done cooking, we focused on how hassle free the packing up process was from cooling to cleaning up, so that we left a minimal footprint behind. These are the hottest ones on the market.
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As the brand name would suggest, this UK manufacturer knows a thing or two about cooking with gas away from home and it shows in this well designed one burner that’s designed for easy storage in transit. There are handy holes in the legs, which make it very easy to move quickly from one spot to another – useful for when you’re on the beach, cooking up a storm and the tide starts lapping at your sliders. The legs are certainly robust enough to provide a rock-solid cooking platform too.
Also in the plus column when it comes to portability is the fact that the attitude runs off lightweight CV470 plus cartridges which are a cinch to fit (push and turn) and held in a basket at the back so you can move the gas supply and barbecue as one. The 2400W stainless steel burner lit first time with the igniter and provided excellent heat distribution across the non-stick surface, so quality control of the burgers was never an issue. The responsive flame also meant everything was cooked to order. Efficiency was helped with the built-in thermometer so we could check the temperature without lifting the lid. The sliding grease tray and two-piece grill makes cleaning up straightforward too.
With no assembly required, this smartly designed, well thought out portable is up and running as soon as your charcoal turns white, and it gave us really juicy burgers and some nicely charred veggie sides. What we really liked about this model was that it’s fit for purpose as the grate sits nicely underneath the porcelain enamel firebox so you don’t have to worry about wind whipping up the ash and cooling your food. The bamboo lid doubles as a prep board and the chrome handles mean you can move the BBQ around, even during cooking. Simple to clean once cooled, this is a very competitively priced portable that will keep you well fed all summer long.
A funky table top model that comes in three different colours and is ideally suited for a camp site cookout. The citi chef boasted a really good, compact design and sturdy, rubberised legs that meant it wasn’t going anywhere once you’d placed it on your camping table. The cooking was even and the heat distribution across the ceramic coated aluminium grill took any stress out of an alfresco meal.
The fact that the domed lid hooks behind the grill was a really nice touch, as it doubles as a windshield and also means that you never have to look for a lost lid during cooking. The built-in thermometer was accurate and the modular design meant that the barbecue was easy to take apart, scrub down and rinse.
The Q series has been around for a long time now but we still rate its evolution as a portable. It’s a real tardis griller that looks from the outside like it won’t be able to fit much more than a pork sausage and a veggie kebab, but open it up and you’ll be amazed how much grill space you have to play with.
This means that it’s very compact to travel, with side tables that fold down and a gas canister which is incorporated into the Q’s body and adds to the overall portability. The stainless-steel burner was efficient and heated the whole grilling area uniformly, so we knew exactly how well everything was cooking, even when the grill was loaded up with the maximum amount of burgers (a whopping 13).
Thanks to the porcelain enameled iron grates we didn’t end up losing half our meat to the grill when turning or serving and the whole unit was sturdy and stable, even when we plonked it on the sand. The Q 2000 also held its heat well so we didn’t have to keep fiddling with the controls and could just concentrate on the cookery. Cleaning was straightforward with a removable grease tray, but you need to supply this yourself.
Taking your barbecue on the road (or trail, or footpath) usually restricts the size of the grill available to you. However, Weber has tried to overcome this by starting with a good-sized grill that wouldn’t look out of place on a full-sized barbecue, and constructed a mechanism around it for wheeling it behind you like a shopping trolley.
It’s a mechanism that works exceptionally well, with a simple lever-pull being enough to collapse everything. That means it’s well-suited to being pulled behind you as you make your way from the car to your weekend’s accommodation as well as being set up at home, knowing that you can store it away in the garage without it taking up any more space than necessary.
As you’d expect from a Weber single-burner, it was more than adequate to heat the cast-iron grill evenly and get it up to cooking temperature quickly with the food prep area and tool hooks adding to the overall usability. You will need to supply the grease tray, which sits in a removable tray at the bottom to catch the fat and make for an easy clean when the cooking’s done.
We always enjoy cooking on the big Char Broil grills that incorporate their TRU infrared cooking tech, because it’s a sure-fire way of getting really good heat distribution across the grill surface. It retains the TRU infrared system of its beefier cousins with a grate made up of strips of triangular stainless steel, which we found stopped the burgers sticking, reduced flare-ups and provided even heat so that our burgers seared super quickly and tasted amazing. There are also two sturdy carry handles either side and a hooded lid that has enough room to store a couple of tanks of gas inside when the barbecue is fastened down for transport too.
There’s a reason that this delightfully dinky charcoal barbecue made the list – it’s just perfect for an impromptu park or beach barbie. Lightweight, compact and well-designed it’s really hard to beat in terms of how easy it is to use and how convenient it is to carry. The plated steel legs pivot to keep the lid in place during transit and although it doesn’t boast a sizeable grilling area, the shallow rectangular shape keeps the charcoal close to the food, so it excelled at searing juicy burgers on high heat.
Also, the flat-bottomed fire box made cooking with indirect heat much simpler, as you can simply pile the coals at one end and place the food at the other. Easy to clean, the lid handle has been fitted with a heat shield, so you won’t have to wait around for the barbecue to totally cool before you pick it up again.
Another really good tool box barbecue that is both compact and robust and allows you to cook on a 15in stainless steel grill within minutes of filling the fuel tray. Opening the tool-box lid reveals the grill, warming rack and a storage tray for cutlery or condiments. Quick to cool, the charcoal is easily emptied because the tool box is so light and the red paint coating is temperature resistant, so it’ll look as good as new, even after a summer’s worth of cooking.
There are three different sizes of LotusGrill to choose from, but we liked the biggest in the range because it’s still very portable, but makes maximum use out of the fan-assisted barbecue base, which blows air over the coals so that the grill was ready for its first burger in around five minutes. The grill itself is surrounded by a handy double ridge to stop you losing food over the side and there’s good control over the heat because you can just turn the fans on or off, depending on whether you’re searing or low and slow grilling. The burn was quick and because the fans are battery operated you really can take this barbecue anywhere and even move it mid cook as its constructed in such a way that the outer bowl never gets hot, even when the charcoal is lit inside.
We featured the party grill in our camping stove and cooker round up earlier in the year and it deserves another look at here because it certainly is portable, thanks to the carry bag it comes with. It uses the brand’s own CV plus gas cartridges, which secure easily to the valve underneath the base, while the integrated ignition was suitably reliable, even in windy conditions.
If you combine good flame control, heat distribution and the five different cooking platforms it really does allow you to serve up a range of meals, which is why we think it would be such a good festival cooker. You can do burgers on the grill on Friday evening and rustle up a, hangover-easing, full English on Monday morning, while you’re waiting for everyone to emerge from tent city.
Pellet barbecuing is gaining in popularity because it ensures even heat and minimal flare ups, and the Traeger ranger showcases all these advantages in a nicely compact package. You can set the temperature of your cook out and the hopper will work in unison with an internal temperature probe to deliver pellets at the right speed to keep the burn stable.
We weren’t sure how well this technology would work, but it really was incredibly accurate, making for a very enjoyable barbecuing experience because you feel totally in control of the heat getting to your food. You can switch out the grill for a griddle, if you prefer a Philly cheesesteak to burgers, however all this tech and componentry means that the Ranger is the heaviest portable on test, so it’s not one to take hiking. However, if you’re not straying too far from the car it will guarantee fabulous results.
From the integrated gas canister to the raised firebox sitting on sturdy legs, the Campingaz attitude 2go CV made it very easy to barbecue away from home and produced some mouth-watering, mobile morsels too. If you’re more of a purist and insist that charcoal is the only fuel for you then we loved our experience of cooking on the Everdure cube, which is a true portable in every sense and is also a great price.
Add flavour to your feast with our round-up of the best barbeque sauces
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