Infrared kitchen grill vs "regular" kitchen grill

7 years ago

We are building a new home and doing some research on kitchen appliances. We current have a 36" GE Monogram 4 burner range top with a gas grill. It has worked well, we are happy with it and would likely get another one (or comparable) in our new home. The one thing that could be improved upon is the amount of smoke generated by the grill. So I have 3 questions:

1 - Do infrared grills produce less smoke?

2 - Does less smoke mean that we can get away with a less powerful fan in the range hood?

3 - All other things being equal what kind of up charge should I expect to see for an infrared unit (like described above) vs a regular unit?

Thanks!

Featured Answer

teachmkt1

7 years ago

Q1&Q2: Have had Wolf IR char-broiler and currently have Capital hybrid grill. Both are gas, can't speak to electric grills other than an explicative-laced tirade on my Jenn-Air of long ago. The smoke levels are about the same (impossible to test as can't run both side-by-side). What is more important than the smoke is the total amount of effluent (hot air, steam and grease)--those should be very similar and need to be exhausted. Q1 and Q 2 pretty much noes in my opinion. We had a 600CFM VH oversized over the Wolf and a 1200CFM Modern-aire (similarly sized) over the Capital. The VH did a good job, the Modern-aire clears everything. We found the usual formulae for computing CFMs based on BTUs not so helpful given the susceptibility of the effluent to air cross currents and kitchen layout. The VH was in a fairly tight and contained northern kitchen, the MA is in a house with heat pumps that move a large volume of air and the additional CFMs were necessary. For us bottom line was to go as powerful as we could due to grill, stirfry and panbroiling.

If the grill is part of the range or rangetop, the price differential should be minimal other than overall range brand price differentials. Module installs will probably vary by brand. A separate grill would probably be higher cost due to larger hood and and installation costs.

Probably not the answer you may have wanted . . .

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Comments (9)

User
7 years ago
note the combustable hood height requirements if you go with the grill and an insert ventilation. Combustable above the grill must be higher. If you have an all stainless hood planed - no problem. But, if you have an insert - read the instructions and measure twice. We have a Wolf IR grill and I believe the counter to noncombustable height was 44 inches for the charbroiler option. I cannot directly answer your question because I have nothing to compare. But, it works fine with a 1200 CFM hood I am not sure I would do less. Ultimately I am glad we changed the hood plans, but it took a bit of scrambling.
schreibdave thanked User
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schreibdave
Original Author
7 years ago
Thanks for the replies. I was not familiar with IR grills until recently when I read that they create less smoke because the drippings don't fall onto a hot surface. I wonder if that was just a feature of the Williams Sonoma table top grill that I was reading about.
User
7 years ago
on my IR, stuff falls onto the heating element. It is just so hot it disintegrates.
Max Muller
3 years ago
last modified: 3 years ago
what grill to choose?
Megan Klenney
3 years ago
it was so tough for me to choose a reliable grill...ugh
Grace Gear
3 years ago
It's nothing hard when you need reliable sites where are described best appliances, text me and I'll help you
Megan Klenney
3 years ago
last modified: 3 years ago
To tell you the truth, I wholly understand your confusion. When I have just taken up cooking, I was thinking that the most complicated thing would be to choose a reliable kitchen items, however the whole thing is in finding a reliabe "advice" source, where are maybe professionals who know exactly what is good and what is bad or just simple people who have already gathered all info in one article. If I were you, I'd check well fed blog. There is a special article describing 3 burner gas grills, I personally ordered my Weber Spirit II E-310 3-Burner Grill thans to this review.
Larry Novack
2 years ago
last modified: 2 years ago
Now there is a very large selection of what you can buy. I think it just depends on how much money and space you have in your backyard. As for me, I bought a grill after consulting with experts. But I can also advise you on a great option for cooking meat. It is to use Electric Smokers https://lilgrill.com/best-electric-smoker/.

Infrared kitchen grill vs "regular" kitchen grill

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