The Best Charcoal Grill to Buy in 2022: Tested and Reviewed If you’ve never cooked with charcoal before, the Original Kettle is an excellent grill for discovering this style of barbecue. First, you’ll find ample space on the steel cooking great for a whole lotta food. You could readily cook half-a-dozen steaks at once or enough burgers to feed a baseball team, including the relief pitchers. Cooking with charcoal is a pleasure, and this is one of the purest expressions of the craft. Other than a couple of convenience features, this is just straight-up grilling. By 1962, the wheels were changed from thin white wheels to a thicker black 6? metal wheels with painted whitewalls. It was also around this time that the legs were changed from steel to aluminum. All of the products below have been tested and are highly recommended. Our most important source of sustenance is people who join our Pitmaster Club. Whatever grill you choose, do not rely on the built-in dial thermometers, which can be off by 50°F to 100°F (10-38°C). These dials are usually located in the lid, not down on the grill surface where the food is—and you're not eating the lid, so its temperature is irrelevant. If you don’t install the three-leg assembly supporting the kettle correctly the first time, there’s no going back. Removing and reassembling certain parts will cause them to loosen, and sooner or later when you try to move the grill around your backyard, it will start to fall apart or even collapse. With its illustration-only manual, Weber doesn’t make this critical assembly easy—nor does it warn you of the consequences if you don’t get it right the first time. I prefer the weber, coated cast-iron grates to the plated steel grates the Original Kettle comes with, but there are worse things, and the plated steel still cooks relatively well. We were underwhelmed with the performance of the Napoleon 22-inch grill, which is most likely a result of the grill needing more briquettes to really work well. The kettle on this model is pretty deep and you can adjust the cooking grate to two different levels. We wouldn’t advise cooking with the grate at the highest level if you’re looking for a nice sear since it’s too far off the heat. The grill grate on a Napoleon is made of a thicker and flatter cast iron, which is an upgrade from the usual lightweight, stainless steel grates you see on most charcoal grills. In fact, it’s probably easier than most, given how roomy it is. Temperature is controlled with vents at the bottom of the bowl, and one up top on the lid. Initially this was a “premium” model before becoming Weber’s standard kettle vent design by 2000.