I just went through the BBQ purchase process.
Propane or gas BBQ, you get heat to cook your food, quick and convenient, no added flavor may as well broil in the oven. Prices vary from cheap $250 to $1,200 plus, prefer Broil King
Pellet BBQ. Runs off pellets and can be used as a smoker to add flavor to your food, some have a sliding heatshield to sear the food. Canadian tire has a PitBoss 700FB on sale for $600
Coal BBQ, more work to use but you get the best flavor. Weber has one that has a propane coal starter with a built in table, price is $550.
I decided on the Weber coal BBQ, just to get the most flavor from the food.
Yes and no, BBQs, wether gas, coal or pellet give the typical BBQ taste using the Maillard effect where the sugars and amino acids melt to give that nice charred taste. You can’t really get that taste using broil as you need high infrared heat to be directed to the food, such as a grill grate.
Now coal and wood pellet grills also have their own signature flavour added to the meal, but one isn’t better than the other. Ideally, you’d like to have a couple different options.
Gas offers consistent, high-humidity, higher speed, jack of all trade grilling, low cost to run over time, better in windy and cold temperature
Coal offers great taste signature, lower entry cost, but isn’t as healthy and does mask some foods taste characteristics, isn’t very stable over longer cooks, hard to keep steady in windy temperature, relatively low-humidity.
Pellet offers great low-heat cooking uniformity and stability, it often uses convection baking as part of it’s design, great for cold-smoking, taste can be tuned with different pellets, but requires electricity, most don’t go above 500f/550f so aren’t the best for grilling, believe it or not not everything taste better with burned wood flavour, expensive to get into, expensive to run, more prone to break
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