Can I add lava rocks to my gas grill if it didnt come with them?

Question: Can I add lava rocks to my gas grill if it didn’t come with them?

Answer: Gas grills are designed with a certain configuration in mind. The burner layout has to work with the shape and size of the grill as well as the vaporization barrier that sits between the burners and the cooking grate. Changing this configuration can not only reduce the evenness of the heat generated by the grill but can cause problems with the burners over time.

What I call the vaporization barrier is that thing that sits over the burners. It protects the burners by getting hot and causing drippings to burn or vaporize. This keeps the burners from getting coated in corrosive grease, getting clogged and simply failing to work. The vaporization barrier also helps distribute heat. In the past most all gas grills had either lava rocks or ceramic briquettes. The briquettes were more expensive and tended to end up in more expensive grills. Now days most gas grills have some kind of metal plate that distributes the heat and burns or at least channels grease away though there are still units made with ceramic briquettes. Whether this is truly a better method remains to be seen. A heavy metal plate can hold and distribute heat better than lava rocks, but of course metal has a nasty habit of rusting.

So for better or worse it is best that you leave your grill the way it was designed. If it didn’t come with lava rocks or ceramic briquettes then don’t try adding them.