The Bottom Line
This grill has been Discontinued. This is Char-Broil's Big Easy grill. It comes with a large pan that you put charcoal in and light from the gas burners. This might be a good feature if the grill was a better unit and the charcoal conversion and lighting worked as well as they claim. While the Big Easy version of the Charcoal/Gas hybrid is better than the Quickset Traditional there are still some weaknesses with this unit.
Pros
- Does both gas and charcoal
Cons
- Uneven gas grilling
- Low BTUs for the size
- Charcoal doesn't light well
Description
- Charcoal insert allows charcoal grilling
- Two or Three main button-type burners deliver 36,000 BTUS. Number of burners depends on model
- 645 square inches of total cooking area
- Porcelain coated steel cooking grate
- Handle mounted grill light on some models
- Push button igniter
Guide Review - Char-Broil Big Easy Charcoal/Gas Grill
This Grill has been Discontinued. If you are looking for the Char-Broil "The Big Easy" Oil-less Turkey Fryer, go here.This is one of Char-Broil's lesser grills. By adding in the charcoal pan they market it as a Gas/Charcoal hybrid grill. It basically works like this. You take out the cooking grates and burner covers. Place the charcoal pan in the grill and place the top rack on the charcoal pan grate supports. Pour in the charcoal and light the grill. The charcoal is heated until it burns and now you can grill over charcoal.
The problems with this is that charcoal doesn't light well simply by heating it. The charcoal isn't exposed to direct flame to it has to get burning simply by being heated to a high enough temperature. While it works, it takes more time than lighting the charcoal with a chimney. Anyway the charcoal pan has two grate positions for adjusting the grilling temperature. All in all it works okay if you are looking for a grill that will do both. The problem is that this grill doesn't do gas or charcoal very well since it was never a very good gas grill to start with and since it was never designed to be a real charcoal grill.
Having said this, Char-Broil has sold a lot of these units in the past year. While I like the idea of a hybrid grill I wish this one was built better. This version of the Charcoal/Gas hybrid grill is certainly better than the Quickset Traditional version.
