If you are new to outdoor cooking you may be pondering the purchase of your first grill - or as we like to sometimes call them "a cooker."
What you purchase is affected by many variables: budget, family size, location (home, apartment, condo, city, suburbs, weather, climate) what you want to prepare, etc.
The primary differences:
Charcoal comes in several forms: briquettes made from a combination of wood-coal-petrolium products or 100% hardwoods that are burned in controlled fires to produce charcoal. A charcoal cooker uses hot air from the fire and generates infrared energy glowing off the coals to cook your food. Charcoal smoke can add a distinct surface flavor to the food as well. Charcoal requires preparation time to optimize the heat and requires tending (adding more coals) to ensure it maintains constant temperatures. Charcoal fires require some experience to learn how to manage and because they are "live fire" must be monitored at all times to ensure safe operation.
Gas is available in three forms: propane is the most common form of gas used by home cooker and is available in portable tanks of several sizes; natural gas is generally a available through a public utility using a common pipe that is buried in the street adjacent to your home with a line added to deliver to your home for use in the furnace, range, etc. Butane in small compressed canisters is used in a few ultra-portable cookers. Gas cooks using hot air in 99% of all cookers, but in some newer models gas flames are converted to infrared energy providing hotter and more even heat.
Electric: Most made-for-home cookers use 110V power and cook by heating solid a solid surface with grooves or grates, although some use use hot air to cook and some actually expose the meat to the electric element using both hot air and minor amount of infrared energy (from the glow) for cooking. Recently some newer electric models convert the energy to mostly infrared energy for hotter and more event heat.
