Grill Maestro

Popular Science has a little piece out with six different and new high tech grills and grill accessories for all you aspiring maestro’s out there.

First on the list is the TEC Sterling G 4000 FR Ifrared Grill (sic). Infrared heat is what your grill cooks with (it’s heat) but this $6,610 monstrosity is the most fuel efficient (runs off gas) because it puts the burners right next to the ceramic or glass plate (less space between burner and plate = less heat loss). Why is this better than your Weber? The use of the ceramic plates evens out the heat and is better at it than regular charcoal briquettes… but you can buy a lot of charcoal with $6,610.

Number two is the Chef’n Hot Rod Mop Brush, a silicon brush that allegedly brushes on more sauce than conventional brushes. It’s probably true, regular brushes generally suck, and it’s pretty slick looking.

Wear Duncan’s Bar-B-Que Grill-N Grips Mitts and you can withstand 500 degrees F and all the lovely microbes in uncooked meat. They claim you can rinse these and then touch cooked meat, no problem, because the bacteria can’t get onto the chemically coated mitts.

A solar power flashlight? Actually yes! It’s a lamp that stores charge off the sun and gives it back, pretty slick… not just a tired run down joke about Germany’s hapless neighbors to the east.

This is the coolest of the five, a see through propane tank for $85-$95 made of resin and fiberglass. The only downer is that it’s simply too easy and convenient to just swap tanks instead of refill them. Your eyes do beat the stupid warm water tester if you don’t have a fuel strip.

The Coleman Heat ’N Serve Slow Cooker is the last one on the list and is billed as the first propane fueled slow cooker. Eh… whatever.