The perfect example of a product that’s in between a low performance and a high-performance option is the 4 burner grills as it can provide you with a power greater than a 2 burner, while it doesn’t require the same amount of power as a 6 burner grill. That being said, it is safe to say that 4 is the perfect number of burners a grill ought to have, but they are some other features you should know prior to making a purchase.
Construction
The quality of the welds and the type of materials used to make a grill play a big role regarding its durability, and the more rigid it is, the longer life span it’ll have. While some grills will last you a couple of years, a 4 burner BBQ made out of stainless steel, enamel bonded steel combined with cast iron and cast aluminium will easily last you a decade. Stainless steel and cast aluminium are materials that won’t rust but over time, but there’s definitely going to be discolouration. Cast iron, on the other hand, will rust unless it’s painted well, so make sure to inspect the paint job too. You can tell a quality grill by its weight and the heavier it is, the thicker the construction which also makes for better heat distribution.
Fuel
In this case, you can either go with natural or propane gas. While both options are environmentally friendly, the latter won’t make for an uninterrupted cookout as much as the former one. With natural gas, you can just connect the hose to the grill and run it for as long as you want while with propane gas you will need to refill tanks and hook a new one every time you run out of gas. Units that run on natural gas are slightly more expensive than their propane counterparts.
Grates
The quality of the grates also depends on the materials and coatings they are made of. For example, what you want to avoid are chrome and nickel-coated wire grates which although cheap, tend to rust easily and don’t leave wide sear marks. Cast iron grates, however, are a solid option which conducts heat well and leaves nice sear marks but these must be oiled regularly in order to avoid rust.
A substantial upgrade from cast iron grates are stainless steel or porcelain-coated stainless steel grates which leave very nice sear marks and are very easy to clean. The best option on the market are porcelain-coated cast-iron grates which leave the best sear marks and are also very easy to clean, but remember they are the most expensive grates you can have on a 4 burner BBQ.
Burners
While a lot of people say that gas burners aren’t able to produce the same temperatures as charcoal grills, a gass burner that uses infrared technology can. With infrared, your burner will heat faster and it will reach high temperatures faster too. Infrared burners are also going to waste less energy and provide you with higher cooking temperatures, while traditional ones will give you more control over the temperature and allow you to keep low temperatures steady. Traditional ones are still the most commonly used option and because of that, they are cheaper than infrared ones. Material is also an important factor with quality burners being made out of stainless steel and brass – stainless 304 grade is the material with the best quality.
Flavour Bars
These bars can be made out of metal, rocks, ceramic and lava rocks and they help distribute the heat more evenly and protect the burners from dripping grease. They are positioned between the cooking surface and the flames and also increase the burner’s longevity, but they need to be replaced occasionally as metal bars, for example, pick up rust and rocks get soaked in grease.
Igniter
No matter what type of 4 burner BBQ you get, there will always be some sort of igniter and while on electric ones there is a battery for this purpose, on the rest you will usually find a button or a dial that creates a spark. There are some gas grills equipped with crossover ignition which will turn on one burner first and then send the flame across to light the burner.
Multi-Zone Grilling
With multi-zone grilling, you are able to have different temperatures on each burner and with a 4 burner BBQ, you will have the perfect conditions for it. Since it does not limit your temperature settings to low, medium and high as a 3 burner BBQ does and it doesn’t make things complicated like a 5 or 6 burner BBQ, it is easy to see why it is the perfect in-between.