How Does an Infrared Grill Work?

Infrared grills, as the name implies, utilize infrared technology to cook your food. It is said that this method is very effective in maximizing flavor, energy, and convenience because it radiates intense heat directly to the food.

How does it work?

To help you understand how this works, it would help to know the three basic ways to cook food – conduction, convection, and radiation.

• Conduction is cooking food by directly transferring heat from one object to another. This is used when you’re frying on a pan; the burner heats the pan, and the pan cooks the egg.
• Convection cooks food by using the flow of hot air or water. This is what happens when you’re boiling pasta or roasting chicken.

These two are what’s used in traditional gas grills. The burner heats the grates, which then cooks the food through the conduction method. At the same time, it creates a flow of hot air around the meat to help in the cooking.

• Radiation, on the other hand, uses electromagnetic energy, and this is what infrared grills use to cook food.

Instead of the flame going directly to the grates, there is an infrared element between them. This infrared element is what the gas heats up, producing heat waves instead of regular hot air. Because of this, the grill can emit higher amounts of heat, cooking it faster than your traditional grills.

What is the benefit of an infrared grill?

As you can see, infrared grills are created just because someone felt like it. There’s a purpose on why it’s designed that way, and that is to deliver a better grilling experience. If you’re looking to buy one, you can expect the following benefits.

Preheat/Fast Cooking Time

As explained earlier, infrared grills can radiate intense heat in a minimal amount of time. Compared to a regular gas grill that takes up to 10 minutes to heat up and a charcoal grill that will take 30 minutes, an infrared grill will only take 2-3 minutes to preheat. Thanks to the wonderful technology it utilizes.

This gives you a lot of flexibility in terms of having a quick barbeque. You’ll be spending less time on the grill, and no one will experience hunger waiting for the meat to cook.

Easy to Clean

Depending on the brand you get, infrared grills are generally very easy to clean. It’s almost the same as how you clean other grill types, but it comes with a special trick – the burn-off method.

The burn-off method will get rid of any food debris and grease on the grill by burning them. All you need to do is light up all the burners on the grill, turn it up so high, close the lid, and wait for 10-15 minutes.

Doing so will burn off all the debris inside the grill to ash. After the set time, turn off the burners and wait for the grill to cool. Once it does, you can easily clean the grill by removing all the burnt particles inside.

This way, you don’t have to undergo the struggle of scraping up debris.

However, besides the burn-off method, deep cleaning should also be done at least once a year. And every time you clean the infrared grill, make sure to take extra care when cleaning the infrared plate and the heating element.

Uniform Heat Perfect for Searing

Another benefit you can enjoy when using infrared grills is that you can expect uniform heat across its grilling surface. So, if you set it at a certain temperature, you can ensure that that will remain consistent for the whole duration of your cook. The same constant heat is also retained on the grilling plate.

In other words, there will be no hot and cold spots, giving you an opportunity for perfect searing. Want to produce restaurant quality steaks? An infrared grill can provide that to you.

Use Less Fuel

Lastly, infrared grills use the least fuel out of all their counterparts. As we’ve mentioned above, it preheats faster, has a higher temperature range, and cooks food faster. This makes it more energy-efficient than the traditional grills.

Most manufacturers claim that by using an infrared grill, you’ll be able to save up to 50% in fuel. So, if you’re looking to reduce your carbon footprint to help the environment, getting an infrared grill would be one way to go.

On top of that, you can buy more food from the money you saved from the fuel.

Are infrared grills better than regular gas grills?

As you can see, infrared grills offer lots of advantages. But are they any better than your regular gas grills?

Well… it depends.

This is because the decision will always be on what you need or what you’re looking for. As these grills have a lot of technology involved, it’s costly. If you don’t have that budget for one, we don’t really advise you to get one.

Why

Because in terms of functionality, these two function just about the same. They cook the meat through heat, but one is just faster. You might need a lot of patience in using gas grills, but what’s the rush, right?

Also, in terms of flexibility on the meat you cook, you can still take advantage of the low temperatures gas grills offer. Plus, it serves its purpose at a lower price than an infrared grill.

In other words, both have their pros and cons. Infrared grills produce tastier meat fast, but it’s expensive, while traditional gas grills are cheaper, still make delicious meat, but cooks a lot slower. At the end of the day, the decision is yours.

If you have a budget of over $1000 and would love to experience faster cooking, even heat, fewer flare-ups, less fuel usage, and ease in cleaning, an infrared grill is an excellent investment.