Fire, Honestly
What each grill is actually for, why the charcoal matters more than the grill does, and which proteins belong over which fire. Plus one rule with no exceptions.
The tagline of this site is precision when it matters, fire when it doesn't, which rather implies that fire is the part where you stop thinking.
It isn't, and I should admit that.
Fire has its own precision. It just isn't the kind you measure. You cannot weigh a fire or set it to a number, but you can absolutely be exact about what you're burning, how close the food sits to it, how long it's been going and which part of the grate you're using. Those are real variables and they decide the food, and ignoring them is not the same as cooking by feel.
So the tagline is still right, and it means something narrower than it sounds. The thermometer stops being the useful tool. The thinking doesn't stop.
Most grilling advice is about equipment, and equipment is the least interesting part of it. What matters is how hot the fire gets, how long it stays there, and what the fuel tastes like.
So this is sorted by what each setup actually does, not by what it costs.
The rule with no exceptions
Never lighter fluid.
It is petroleum distillate. It does not fully burn off, it coats everything you cook, and it is the reason people think charcoal food tastes acrid. If a steak tastes like a gas station, that's why.
A chimney starter costs fifteen dollars and does the job in twenty minutes with a sheet of newspaper. There is no argument on the other side of this and I'm not going to pretend there is.
Propane
What it is: clean, instant, controllable, and it tastes of nothing.
That last part is not a complaint. A gas grill is an outdoor stove, and treating it as one is the way to be happy with it. It does heat, not flavor, and heat is most of what grilling is.
What it's good at: Tuesday. Chicken thighs, burgers, sausages, vegetables, anything where you want char and a quick dinner and nobody is being impressed. It's also the only one you'll use on a weeknight in February, which makes it the one that gets used.
What it's bad at: anything where smoke is the point. Wood chip boxes on a gas grill produce a thin, acrid smoke rather than the real thing, and the result tastes like a grill trying to be a smoker.
Proteins: chicken thighs, sausages, burgers, pork chops, shrimp, vegetables, fish in a basket. Anything under twenty minutes.
The Weber kettle
What it is: the most capable piece of cooking equipment per dollar ever made, and it has barely changed since 1952.
Charcoal, a lid, and vents, which is everything you need. You can run it screaming hot with the coals banked on one side, or hold it at 250°F for six hours. Two-zone cooking on a kettle is the single most useful technique in grilling and it costs nothing to learn.
What it's good at: almost everything, slightly less conveniently than a specialist would do it. It will sear a steak, roast a chicken, smoke a pork butt and grill vegetables, none of them perfectly and all of them well.
What it's bad at: capacity. Cooking for twelve on a kettle is a logistics exercise.
Proteins: steak, whole chicken, pork chops, ribs, a small pork butt, burgers, anything. If you own one grill, own this.
Santa Maria
What it is: an open grate over a wood fire on a crank, so you control heat by raising and lowering the grate rather than by adjusting the fire.
This is the oldest idea in the book and it's still the best one for large cuts over live fire. Red oak traditionally, which is what the Central Coast burns, and post oak works the same way.
What it's good at: big pieces of meat over real wood, with genuine control. Tri-tip is the dish this was built for and it remains the best argument for the whole category. The crank means you can sear low and then finish high without touching the fire.
What it's bad at: convenience, cost and weather. It's a commitment.
Proteins: tri-tip, picanha, whole chickens, large steaks, racks of lamb, anything big enough to benefit from a slow approach to a hot grate.
The kamado, the Big Green Egg and its relatives
What it is: thick ceramic, so it holds heat like nothing else and uses remarkably little fuel doing it.
Two superpowers. It will run at 700°F for pizza and searing, and it will hold 225°F for twelve hours on a single load of lump. Very few things do both.
What it's bad at: adjusting. The ceramic that makes it stable makes it slow to change its mind. Overshoot your target and you're waiting twenty minutes to come back down. Learn to sneak up on a temperature rather than correct from above.
Also: it's heavy, it's breakable, and the hinge is a real purchase decision.
Proteins: pork butt, brisket, whole chicken, pizza, steak at high heat, anything that wants hours at a steady temperature.
Yakitori and the konro
What it is: a long narrow box, no lid, and a bed of binchotan close under the grate. Nothing else.
It is the most focused fire in this list and it does one thing extraordinarily well: small pieces of food, on skewers, very close to intense radiant heat, turned constantly.
The lack of a lid is the point. There's no convection, no ambient temperature, just radiation from directly below, which is why yakitori gets a crust on something the size of a thumb without overcooking it.
What it's bad at: anything thicker than an inch, anything that takes more than ten minutes, and anything you want to walk away from.
Proteins: chicken thigh, chicken skin, hearts, livers, tsukune, scallions, shishito, beef skewers, shrimp, mushrooms. Small, skewered, quick.
Why the charcoal matters more than the grill
Here's the part most people skip, and it changes the food more than upgrading the grill would.
Briquettes. Don't.
Kingsford and its relatives are sawdust, coal dust, borax, sodium nitrate, limestone and starch, compressed into pillows. They burn consistently, which is their one real virtue, and they produce ash in quantity and a faintly chemical smell for the first twenty minutes. The food tastes of the fuel and the fuel is a manufactured product.
The only case for them is a long low cook where absolute consistency beats flavor, and even there lump does the job once you've learned your vents.
Hardwood lump. Use this.
Wood, carbonized, nothing else. It lights faster, burns hotter, leaves a fraction of the ash, and tastes like wood rather than like a factory. Post oak lump is the Texas answer and it's excellent. Mesquite burns hotter and harder and is easy to overdo. Any hardwood lump is a straight upgrade at roughly the same price as briquettes.
This is the default. If you change one thing after reading this, change this.
Binchotan. Use it for yakitori and nothing else.
Japanese white charcoal, oak carbonized at very high temperature, so dense it rings like a stone when you tap two pieces together. Almost smokeless, extremely hot, and it burns for hours.
It is also expensive, genuinely difficult to light, and unforgiving. It is the correct fuel for a konro and the wrong fuel for a kettle, where you'd be paying a great deal for heat you could have had for a tenth of the price.
Coconut shell. Use it instead of binchotan.
The value version of the same idea. Dense, long-burning, low smoke, and a fraction of the cost. If you want to cook over a konro without the binchotan budget, this is the answer, and most people won't taste the difference.
Lighter fluid, self-starting briquettes, match-light bags. Never.
Covered above and worth repeating here, because the self-starting bags are the trap: they're briquettes with the lighter fluid already in them, which is worse rather than more convenient.
The short version: lump by default, binchotan or coconut for a konro, never briquettes, never fluid.
What you're actually trying to do
Every one of these is a way of answering two questions: how hot, and for how long.
Hot and fast is a crust. Maillard on the outside while the inside stays where you want it. Steak, chops, skewers, anything thin. This wants intense radiant heat and a short exposure.
Low and slow is collagen turning to gelatin. Hours at a temperature, which is a different cooking problem entirely, and smoke happens to come along with it.
Two-zone is both, and it's the technique that makes a kettle able to do everything. Hot side for the crust, cool side for the finish, and a lid to make it an oven when you need one.
Choose the fire for the answer you want. That's the whole decision, and it's why propane on a Tuesday and a Santa Maria on a Saturday are both correct.
If you own one thing
A Weber kettle and a chimney, with lump charcoal.
It's under two hundred dollars, it does everything the others do slightly less well, and it will teach you more about fire than anything else on the list. Buy the rest later, or don't.