Coleman LXE is not a "Barbe-que Grill"

For those of you looking for the typical grill with charcoal below and a closeable lid for that great smoky barbeque taste, think twice about the Coleman LXE. Our old grill was a gas grill with a layer of charcoal briquettes between the gas jets and the open grill above with a lid that could be closed to hold in the "smoky" flavors.

I received the Coleman Roadtrip Grill LXE for father's day as did most of the other reviews on Epinions. Setup was easy and the grill had the feel of a quality product (like all Coleman camping products I have purchased).

Instructions are unclear in a couple of areas and I was particullarly mystified about the part that suggested I take the grill top off (about 10 screws) to check that the gas supply was directly beneath the burners. This seems like a quality control issue that should be handled in the factory. If it's an issue of the supply shifting during shipping, I wonder why they call it a portable grill.

Our first "road test" was performed on our back deck at home cooking some steaks with basic seasoning. I used to heat up our old grill before hand to sear the steaks when you put them on. The LXE top has vents in it and is not supposed to be in a down position during cooking, so there is no way to preheat the cooking area. I did run the grill for several minutes to heat up the cooking surface.

Upon putting the steaks on the grill, the first thing I noticed is that the cooking surface is not a completely open grill. The area directly above the burners and to the left and right of each burner is solid with ridges built in to match the rest of the open grill area. Since I was not planning on frying the steaks, I place the steaks as much as I could around the edges of the burner where the grill was open. Our steaks were not particullary large, about 12oz, and about 1/3 of each of the 5 steaks rested on the solid area over both burners. Since I did not use PAM or similar product, the steaks stuck quite a bit (especially in the solid areas) each time I turned them. The steaks cooked in about the same time period as our old grill.

In eating the steaks, the meat tasted more like it had been fried than grilled. There wasn't much of the seared, seasoned crust on the steak and the flavor was not at all like the deep and "smoky" our old grill provided.

Cleanup was nice with all surfaces wiping down easily. I noticed the drip tray was plastic which seemed odd for a receptacle of hot grease (bacon or sausage) and other cooking liquids.

I will try to post more experiences here as we try the grill with other types of meat.