For the sake of full disclosure we did not have to pay for these grills other than the taxes we will have to pay for them at the end of the year. That being said we were also told we could say anything we want to about them as long as we are honest. As you will see below, I will do exactly that.
Truth be told, when I used this grill the first two times I was not at all happy with it. I had planned on not writing a review as I just didn’t have anything positive to say. What’s the old adage? If you don’t have anything good to say, don’t say it. So I sent an email to my contact at Char-Broil explaining my reservations in very specific detail wondering if I had ruined the relationship with them. He listened to my concerns and offered a few suggestions. Of course I didn’t quit playing with the new toy after two cookouts so I took his tips and gave it a couple more tries. Since the first two cookouts I have been nothing but impressed and have come to find out that my first two horrible grill sessions were from user error and not the grill. I’ve never owned a gas grill or an infrared grill (this being both) and there is some adjustments that needed to be made on my part.
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Once I got a handle on what it can and can’t do as well as make it through the learning curve of what it means to use an infrared grill I have been able to make some seriously great food on it.
A little about infrared grilling. Originally infrared grilling was achieved by having propane or natural gas heat up a stainless steel or ceramic surface with millions of microscopic holes to create infrared heat. What happens with this grill is that the flame is isolated from the food by stainless steel to stop air flow (convection) and thus produces only radiant heat which cooks the meat directly rather than heating the air to cook the meat. The resulting heat can reach incredible levels. Infrared temperatures can get as high as 900 degrees although this grill has a max of only 575. Only? Seems crazy to say just under 600 degrees is low, but in terms of infrared it is a bit more than us Grillin Fools will ever need.
So why is this so important?
1) Conventional cooking on grills, both gas and charcoal, use convection, or hot air, to do the cooking which wicks the moisture away from the meat that will eventually dry the meat out. Infrared cooks the meat directly without the drying hot air.
2) No need to preheat, unless you are smoking in which case you need to preheat to get the wood to start to smolder, thus you save time.
3) The temperatures range of the BESRG, and the way infrared heats the meat and not the air, allows for a similar effects to deep frying. In other words, you can deep fry a turkey or chicken without oil and thus not risk burning down the deck of having an oil explosion. And with no preheating you save the time it takes getting the oil up to temp.
That is how this grill came about. It was originally an oil-less turkey fryer that Char-Broil decided to make more versatile.
4) With any gas grill, temperature control is much easier than with charcoal. You set it and forget it.
Now, on to the review. Before I get into the things I have cooked on it which include two steaks (at two different times which is significant and I will explain later), two chickens, maple plank salmon, two different pizzas, crostinis, ribs twice, and a 9 pound turkey, let me get to the assembly.
You could say this thing has the same birthday as my second son. My son was born on the morning of May 28th, 2010. That night, while momma and baby were resting comfortably in the hospital, my 2 year old and I put the grill together. I was able to put the BESRG together in a little over an hour. I probably could’ve done it in 45 minutes had my first son not been so “helpful:”
In the second go round I got grill marks in less than 60 seconds on this sirloin:
I didn’t want to risk overcooking another expensive cut so I went with the much cheaper, yet still delicious, sirloin. Rather than 6 minutes per side I had my 2 minutes per side, dropped the temp to low, baked for another couple of minutes and I was giddy with the results. Tender, juicy, delicious and red all the way through, just like I like it.