Charcoal Grills and Gas Grills – Which One Cooks Better?

It's a classic debate among barbecue fans—much like the "chicken or the egg" question.  "Charcoal or Gas?" is one of those questions that always elicit various opinions, and just about everybody has one on the subject.  Cost, convenience, and taste are the main preferences people have; well mostly taste.  The common thought is that food tastes better from a charcoal grill, but is that necessarily true?  Charcoal grills do have the edge on price; gas grills are generally more expensive.  In fact, the lower-end gas grills can cost as much as the high-end charcoal grills.

We'll begin with this—virtually every restaurant you've ever been to cooks with gas grills.  Yes indeed.  That charring on your steak at the local steakhouse?  Probably came from a gas grill.  Since most commercial cooking is done on gas grills, you'd wonder why so many people think that food tastes better from charcoal.  While charcoal grills produce more smoke, that smoke doesn't necessarily penetrate the meat.  The smoke is produced from meat drippings hitting the hot coals below.  A gas grill produces smoke as well, but it also produces a healthy amount of steam, sending that steam right back onto the food.  This helps keep the food more moist than you'd generally find when cooked over charcoal.  However, getting that flavorful crust from gas may be a bit harder to do because of this.

The biggest detriment to cooking with charcoal grills isn't the charcoal itself, but the lighter fluid.  If you use lighter fluid to ignite your charcoal, this flavor ends up penetrating the meat.  That is usually what you taste when you eat food cooked on a charcoal grill.  It's "lighter fluid seasoning" that gives charcoal-cooked food that sometimes unpleasant outdoorsy taste.  Food cooked on gas grills doesn't have this noticeable flavor; in fact, all you taste is the seasoning you put on the food yourself, plus any chips you might have added for flavor.

Low-and-slow cooking is where charcoal grills do their best work.  When charcoal mixes with wood chips, the mixture creates a wonderful smoke and penetrates the meat nicely, giving it a distinctive flavor.  Getting that flavorful crust on slow-cooked ribs and steak is where charcoal has the advantage.  Under normal cooking circumstances on ordinary direct heat, gas grills and charcoal grills are about equal.  However, gas grills can't produce the high heat levels charcoal provides, which is probably why the dark crust on a steak cooked on a charcoal grill gives it a flavor that the gas grill in the steakhouse simply can't duplicate.