What kind of BBQ is on your radar for this summer? A gas BBQ? A charcoal BBQ? Or something else entirely? What about looking for the best bbqs for year round cooking and make the most of your investment!
There are so many Barbecue options on offer, and the best thing is that a BBQ doesn’t need to be just for the summer. If you buy the right BBQ you can enjoy it all year round – imagine a bbq for christmas day like the Aussies!
In fact, a recent Range Cookers UK survey found that 1 in 7 of us don’t hang up our tongs and get the use out of our BBQs year round.
In honesty I’d say a Gas BBQ, Dual Fuel BBQ or Electric BBQ is the best choice for year round use, as lighting a charcoal BBQ when the weather isn’t too clement can be tricky.
However, even if it’s cold outside, you can still fire up the BBQ and enjoy tasty food any time of year. That goes for autumn picnics and camping trips too!
We even cooked our Christmas meal on our gas BBQ this year – we prefer chicken to the traditional turkey and cooked ours with this great Onlyfire Rotisserie for Weber gas BBQs.
Gary also loves to slow cook pulled pork on the gas BBQ with our Weber Smokebox – more on this handy BBQ accessory and others later!
So now lets give you our recommendations of the 12 best BBQs for year round cooking below.
Gas BBQs are often the most expensive, and as such it’s important to think carefully about your needs before you buy.
These gas BBQs come in portable versions too. As well as making them more flexible for year round cooking, this means you can also bring them along with you camping or on picnics!
The Camplux GP102B Portable (shown above) is suitable for all kinds of cooking. BBQ, grilling, smoking, roasting, braising – you name it!
It’s surprisingly roomy, and can cook a surprising amount of food at one time on its two burners. This makes it great for larger families or small gatherings.
The Camplux will sit on a table, with sturdy feet for stability. This BBQ offers a low-fat and healthy way to cook.
Excess fat simply drains away through the drip hole, into the grease cup. You can choose to fuel this BBQ with either propane or butane.
The Char-Broil X200 Grill2Go – Portable Barbecue Grill is another great option, with TRU-Infrared™ technology to ensure food cooks evenly, and retains its juiciness!
Built to last, and simple to use, the Char-Broil has an easy to clean stainless steel cooking grill, with a lid mounted temperature gauge.
It’s fuelled by a portable 450 gram disposable liquid propane cylinder.
We’re big fans of Weber in our household! We’ve currently got a Weber Spirit, and we get a lot of use from it.
The Weber Q 1000 Gas Barbecue is a great portable option from the brand. It only has the one burner, but this generates enough energy to heat the entire cooking area.
It’s of the quality you’d expect from Weber, with porcelain-enamelled cast-iron cooking grates, and an aluminium lid and body.
You can also get this Weber Gas BBQ with stand giving yourself the best of both worlds!
Top Charcoal BBQs for Year Round Cooking
I do love a good charcoal BBQ. There’s just something about the taste, I especially love grilled veggie skewers over charcoal – yummy!
At the moment we’ve just got a cheap and cheerful kettle BBQ from B&Q, but when we upgrade I’ve got my eye on this Weber Bar-B-Kettle 57 cm charcoal BBQ.
With a heavy-gauge steel fuel grate and porcelain-enamelled bowl and lid, again you’re getting that Weber quality!
It’s easy to clean, and includes a no-rust aluminium ash catcher that sits between its three legs.
Cooking on the chrome triple-plated cooking grate, is easy, and a handy heat shield helps prevent your lid handle from getting too hot!
For bigger families this CosmoGrill Outdoor XL Smoker Barbecue could be a great option!
It’s easily moveable with two wheels, and has an easily accessible coal tray with a crank handle for raising and lowering. This helps to obtain the optimum cooking temperature.
There’s a warming rack which is also great for slowly cooking vegetables (or melting cheese onto buns!). Finally, the coal ash tray is a piece of cake to clean and remove.
The side trays have plenty of hooks for utensils, making cooking for large groups easy.
The Kamado Joe KJ13RH Portable Versatile Kamado Charcoal Grill is a fantastic piece of kit. It’s also great to look at, particularly in the striking Blaze Red colourway.
I just had to include this one too, though tbh it’s a bit of a luxury buy! However, it’s firmly on my wishlist!
Ceramic grills like these are so versatile, you can grill, smoke , roast and sear with ease.
And with Kamodo you’re getting one of the best built ceramic grills on the market.
I’ve read so many rave reviews of the meltingly delicious slow-cooked meats it turns out, and stories of successfully cooking everything from veg to pork chops to pizza! It’s not cheap. But it will take your BBQ to a whole new level!
I’d also like to give an honourable mention to the George Foreman BBQ which friends of ours have – the George Foreman GFDRMBBQ Drum Charcoal BBQ.
The large grilling area on this budget price BBQ can cook for up to 10, with the integrated thermostat in the lid helping to maintain the perfect cooking temperature (and allowing that indirect cooking!)
There’s also a chrome coated warming rack to keep food how while retaining the BBQ flavour!
Top 3 Electric BBQs for year round cooking
If your budget is limited or you want to BBQ year round but indoors too then consider buying these awesome electric grill bbqs. Electric BBQs are also the best option for those living in apartments or with very small patios.
These Electric grills are also called teppanyaki plates or raclettes and can come with or without lids.
Weber & Char Broil both make their own high-end electric BBQs so the market for these is growing. For caravaning holidays where you have electric on the pitch these are the perfect caravanning BBQs.
Electric BBQs come with a host of benefits over the traditional charcoal bbq or the more convenient gas bbq. Benefits of the electric bbq include their small size, zero fumes from gas or charcoal and safety! They also cook the food evenly with more controllable heat HOWEVER the big drawback is you don’t get that BBQ taste!
A brilliant budget electric BBQ is the KCZAZY Electric Smokeless Grill. Perfect for putting on the table and designed for use indoor and outdoor this lidded electric grill delivers!
All our reviewers loved the size as it was easy to move about. They also loved the quick cooking time and indirect cooking option when you added the lid.
The digital dials allow easy temperature control and it heats to 450 deg C to sear your meat if you want. This electric BBQ comes with grill and griddle options to increase the ammount of foods you can cook on it. Its perfect for family cookouts or cook ins and then price wont break the bank!
The Schallen Electric Black Table Top 2 in 1 Versatile Adjustable Temperature Grill Griddle is a George Foreman grill on steroids!
It’s got the griddle with grill combined so you can do a fry up or grill out no worries. Easy to clean, thermostatic temp control. Our customers use it camping, on worksites or even in the office.
Its lightweight, easy to carry and with its raised legs can rest on any type of table so you can BBQ in the home or garden.
What can i say we love WEBERS in this house, well in fact the whole family do…we have turned them on to buying a quality BBQ.
The Weber Electric BBQ is the best compact & lightweight option for table top grilling. It can also be mounted on weber stand for BBQ look.
Lid closes for the excellent WEBER indirect cooking experience for juicer food. Very easy to clean and store.
More BBQ Choices For Year Round Cooking
I really wanted to mention these other three brilliant BBQs.
First up, Char-Broil’s The Big Easy is a great buy if you want to do a lot of different types of cooking – a combo smoker, roaster and grill. It has the Char-Broil infrared cooking system that I mentioned earlier for more even and flavoursome cooking.
You can use the smoker to cook without use of extra fat – smoking food without oil. The removable and easy porcelain coated cooking grates eliminate the dreaded BBQ flare-ups, and the grill ignites quickly and easily with the turn of a knob.
The roaster is one of the best features and it’s really roomy – you can roast up to 11kg of meat using the cooking basket with adjustable racks, or use the four supplied rib hooks to cook mouth-wateringly tender ribs.
This Weber Go-Anywhere Portable is a great alternative to disposable BBQs, and we often take it along on our picnics, it’s been a great buy!
It comes with triple plated cooking grates, fold away stand and glass reinforced handle.
Although it’s expensive for a portable charcoal BBQ (at around £70.00) the price-per-use has made it work it for us.
In addition it’s excellent quality and will last for years. I love that it’s so easy to transport, there’s more than enough room for food for two (or two and a half!) and it pops neatly in the boot of the car.
If you are looking for a disposable BBQ Amazon do a great value pack of 12 Bar Be Quick instant BBQ packs.
These contain 12 instant disposable barbeques, and this is a brand I’ve used before and like! You get a burn time of about an hour and a half, and they’re super easy to light.
I love these if you happen to have the old style spanish brick built BBQs. Just pop one under grill and light and then pop meat etc in a BBQ grilling basket.
My Favourite BBQ Accessories
One of the ‘must have’ items on my BBQ accessory list is these Mountain Grillers Bear Claws.
You can lift, move and shred meat without burning your hands or damaging other cutlery and utensils. It shreds evenly, and is such a timesaver!
They’re really durable, and dishwasher safe. I’ve given quite a few of these as gifts in my time too – they’re just as useful in the kitchen as outside at the BBQ!
Even though you might not have a Weber BBQ I heartily recommend their tools. The Weber Premium Tool Set is crafted from stainless steel and really built to last.
It includes locking tongs and a spatula, with soft-grip ergonomic and heat-resistant handles.
One thing I love about these is how compact they are, so they’re great for taking on picnics and camping. I also use them in the kitchen year round too!
I love Weber BBQ books too, and really would recommend them for BBQ inspiration! I have the Weber’s Complete BBQ Book and Weber’s Mediterranean BBQ.
There are some truly awesome BBQ food ideas in here! They’re both available on Kindle too!
We recently had to replace the original Weber cover that we bought with our BBQ, and found it hard to source an exact replacement.
So instead, we went with the Grillman Premium BBQ Cover.
It’s made of heavy-duty PVC-lined material that’s waterproof, tear-resistant and wont let UV rays through to discolour your BBQ.
There are attached hook and loop straps that can be tightened for a perfect fit, making sure the cover stays secure!
We wouldn’t be without our Weber Universal Smokebox. With this BBQ add-on you can infuse your food with delicious smoke flavour, or use different types of chips (like hickory, apple wood, or even whisky!) for delicious results!
Just place the smokebox on top of your cooking grates to transform any gas BBQ into a smoker!
It’s not just for meat – you can also give your veggies, nuts and cheeses a mouth-watering smoky taste for the perfect Vegan BBQ or Vegetarian BBQ!
Lastly I’d just like to mention this Wood Smoking Chips Collection from Hot Smoked.
We got this as a Christmas present and it’s a great little ‘selection box’ of different flavoured BBQ wood chips.
The gift box includes apple, beech, cherry, hickory, maple and oak, giving you a great choice!
They’re packaged in 500g recyclable cellophane bags which is also a bonus – I do like it when packaging is sustainable!
One thing I love about these is how compact they are, so they’re great for taking on picnics and camping. I also use them in the kitchen year round too!
Which BBQ do you think is the best BBQ for year round cooking?!? Have we reviewed one you own give us your thoughts in the comments below.
Last update on 2024-10-03 / Affiliate links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API
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