9 Essential Grilling Tools, According to Pro Chefs

Best Spatula

Char-Broil Spatula

$17 at Amazon $14 at Walmart View on Lowe's

A spatula dedicated to the grill will be one of your most-used tools. You'll want something that has a more extended handle than you would use for cooking indoors to keep your hands away from the heat. Next, look for a non-slip grip that is also dishwasher safe. Third, you'll want a head that is wide enough to flip a burger or piece of fish easily without too much overhang from the food, though a tapered tip is necessary for delicate items or working a crowded grill. Finally, you'll want a balance of all of these without compromising dexterity. A tool is no good if it is unwieldy. Weighing all of these, we suggest the Char-Broil Comfort Grip Spatula.

Although we'd prefer a slightly shorter handle for balance and control, the Comfort Grip offers all of the above details. The stainless steel construction is strong and easy to clean. The slip-resistant silicone handle is dishwasher safe and designed to stay cool when working over a hot grill. It offers a wide enough head for larger pieces of food, but its gently tapered design serves well for detailed work.

Best Tongs

Rösle 12-Inch Tongs

Orig. $36 $27 at Amazon $32 at Sur La Table

A good set of tongs is another item that's on every chef and pitmaster's list. Megan Walker, the executive chef at Made by Meg Catering and La Venta Inn in Palos Verdes, Calif., forgoes many other tools that are more specialized in their purposes for the versatility of a set of tongs when doing onsite catering. Tongs are useful for small items needing precision work, like shrimp or hotdogs, but also good for larger pieces, like cauliflower or chicken legs. As with the spatula, you'll want to weigh the length, head size, and non-slip handles with the amount of dexterity the tongs allow.

The Rösle 12-Inch Tongs won our vote for Best Splurge in our tests. This all-stainless steel pair is long enough to keep your hands away from the fire but not so long that you can't work with any degree of grace or nimbleness. The tapered tips bring this out to the front over other popular tongs. They allow you to grasp with more precision than squared-off tips. In testing these over time, however, we've found that the shape can bend with heat. While warping shouldn't affect performance, you may not reach for this pair to serve salads.

Best Grill Brush

Grillart Grill Brush and Scraper

$17 at Amazon Orig. $17 $16 at Walmart View on Grillartus.com

Nobody likes to think that when the cooking is done and your family or friends are writing songs to your grilling prowess, you still have a dirty grill to clean. A clean grill will prolong its lifespan and help prevent the spread of foodborne illnesses. Those two critical factors aside, a clean grill helps prevent food from sticking and improves the overall flavor of your food, avoiding the burnt remnants of your last-cooked meal on the new one. A grill brush will make your life much easier.

Our editor-tested favorite, the Grillart has three rows of brush bristles, tripling the coverage of each motion, that also offer 360-degree cleaning from a single head. Its scraper blades tackle hard-to-remove buildup and deposits. "This brush makes cleaning grill grates surprisingly easy from any angle. It's also durable, and I don't worry about bristles coming off because they're tightly looped around the brush head," says Commerce Editor Mary Claire Lagroue. The 18-inch handle keeps your hand away from the heat during hot cleaning and features a non-slip grip and loop for hanging when not in use.

Best Grill Lights

Permasteel Grill Lights 2-Pack

Orig. $25 $24 at Amazon $16 at Wayfair View on Bed Bath & Beyond

Grilling doesn't have to stop when the sun goes down; good grill lights make the job easier and safer. Rob Nelson, chef, and co-founder of the restaurant group Good Gravy in Bentonville, Ark., recommends lights that will swivel at any angle to reach anywhere in your grill in low-light conditions. Nelson, also a competition barbecue team member, frequently needs this ability during all-night smoking at these events. While you may not find yourself in the same position as Nelson, the ability to see your food and see what is happening around you increases your chances of making better food and decreases the risk of injury. For this, we recommend the Permasteel light set.

The magnetic base of these lights will stick to almost any metallic object, and the long gooseneck allows you to direct the light without changing its location. It features a cluster of nine LED bulbs that put brilliant light on your grill or work area while allowing your hands to remain free.

Best Thermometer

ThermoWorks Thermapen ONE

View on Thermoworks.com View on Kingarthurbaking.com

A good thermometer takes the guesswork out of cooking, especially when it comes to meat and poultry. To judge doneness, you could poke, prod, and cut open your food. You could also master the fine art of using a cake tester. Or you could do this the easy way and put a thermometer in your food and see what it says.

There are a couple of schools of thought about thermometers. The first is that most grills and smokers work best when closed. The heat escapes when you open the lid, which lengthens cooking times or leads to uneven cooking. "Looking ain't cooking" is a common phrase in the vernacular of the grilling community. This idea is antithetical to an instant-read thermometer. You need to access the food to put the probe tip in. That's where remote probe or wireless grill thermometers come in. You just put the probe in the food and watch the temperature from a nearby wired or wireless unit.

Then there's the school that wants a quick, accurate temperature. A probe is excellent for bigger items, like chicken or pork butts, but isn't as handy for a steak or a burger due to their long time to register an accurate temperature when first inserted. But you can use a quick-read thermometer with bigger or smaller items, even if it does require opening the grill. Because of that flexibility, we recommend an instant-read thermometer.

After testing 23 instant-read thermometers, the Thermapen ONE came out ahead as the clear winner for its quick, accurate readings. I've used it in both professional settings and at home with good results, too. It's tough enough to handle the abuse of a professional kitchen while keeping its speed of reading in one second or less and accuracy with an approximate 0.5°F margin of error. It also comes with a five-year warranty. One of its best features is the auto-rotating display, which eliminates reading the display upside down. It also features waterproof motion detection for sleep and wake mode.

Best Chimney Starter

Weber Rapidfire Chimney Starter

Orig. $28 $26 at Amazon $26 at Target $40 at Walmart

Chimney starters provide a safer, faster, more contained way of getting your coals ready to cook without the flareups and chemicals of lighter fluid. The bonus is that if you need more coals to finish cooking, you don't need to move your food off the grill and repeat the initial flaming stage of lighting charcoal under your grate. You can ignite the coals in the starter and add them under the grate when they are ready.

The Rapidfire Chimney Starter is simple, straightforward, and easy to use. As a brand, Weber consistently rates high when comparing its offerings to others, and this chimney starter is no exception. On the surface, it's an aluminum tube, but it is designed with airflow in mind to get your charcoal ready quickly. To that point, the bottom section, where you put paper or lighter cubes, has venting on all sides that keep the flow of oxygen to the fire moving. The conical grate where the charcoal sits increases airflow for fast lighting. Our only objection is common across the brand: the handle gets very hot and may require a towel or grilling glove to lift safely. These starters see frequent use in commercial settings, subject to more significant wear than most consumers put them through, and their lifespan is still great.

Best Grilling Basket

Lodge Grill Basket

Orig. $44 $30 at Amazon $35 at Williams-Sonoma $30 at Wayfair

Grilling baskets can be great tools to keep smaller ingredients or cut vegetables from sliding between the grates and into the flames, never to be seen again. They can also be perpetrators of horrible cooking crimes. We'll explain. To grill food in a basket and get the char and flavor expected, the food needs to be touching the hot pan surface that is in contact with the grill grates. Piling the food up in a pan means the food that isn't in contact with the pan steams, neither grilling nor getting any of the charred flavor or texture you want. Cheaply made pans can also warp when subjected to heat, breaking that contact with the gill. Given those, the criteria we looked for in grilling baskets were construction and a size large enough for you to spread out your ingredients.

The Lodge Dual Handle Grill Basket is of a good size (12-inch diameter) to feed a group of four and get that charred texture and flavor from contact with the grill. The molded holes in the pan allow plenty of direct heat to flow through from the grill to the food, while the cast iron construction retains that heat, giving more char to your food. The cast iron won't warp unless you try very hard, and the pans come pre-seasoned for a long life and minimal sticking. Cast iron is heavy, and this seven-pound basket may require two hands to move safely on and off the fire. There are no extended handles, so lifting by the two cast iron handles will require kitchen towels, grill gloves, or something similar.

Best Grill Gloves

Grill Armor Gloves Heat-Resistant Oven Gloves

$30 at Amazon View on Grillarmorgloves.com $32 at Ace Hardware

Ask six chefs about the necessity of grill gloves, and you'll get six different opinions. Nelson considers them essential equipment, while Matthew Dolan, executive chef and partner of 25 Lusk in San Francisco, believes they build a false sense of security in the person grilling. The nexus of agreement is that regular oven mitts have no place around a grill. Perhaps stating the obvious, many mitts are usually made of flammable materials. They are also bacteria traps, never getting completely cleaned on the inside. The mitten-like design does nothing for hand agility, either. This leaves us looking for a pair of heat-resistant, easy-to-clean gloves that allow you to use all of your fingers.

These Grill Armor Gloves gloves topped our tests for comfort, dexterity, and grip, preventing that greasy piece of pork butt from sliding out of your hands when you pick it up. While we were able to hold hot metal skewers for 40 seconds before needing a break from the heat, logs from a fire pit damaged the material. Aramid fabric provides not only heat but also cut protection. Lined with a cotton-poly blend, the gloves feel breathable and are machine-washable.

Best Basting Brush

Consevisen Silicone Basting Brush

$9 at Amazon

The styles of basting brushes available on the market range from simple paintbrush designs to more high-tech options. Deciding on one for grilling bears some special considerations. You don't want handles or bristles made of flammable materials or handles that conduct heat. You also want a more extended handle that will keep your hand away from the heat but not so long as to be clumsy. Finally, because of the charred texture of grilled foods, you want a brush that won't pick up excessive crispy bits from the food or hold all of the sauce in the bristles.

The Consevisen brushes come in sets that include between two and five brushes of varying lengths. This selection is handy when cooking multiple items needing multiple sauces or for minimizing the chances of cross-contamination when switching between foods on the grill. The handle construction is silicone, with stainless steel reinforcement running the length. Similarly, the bristles are silicone and can withstand temperatures of up to 445°F, making this a strong choice for grilling. A further advantage of the silicone bristles is the dishwasher-safe ease of cleaning.