Grilling in Cold Weather: What Changes and What Breaks

The grill still works in winter. What changes is that the margins disappear: everything takes longer, wind costs you more than you expect, and a couple of failure modes appear that never happen in July.

Your propane grill will feel weaker, and here is why

This is the winter call we get most often. The grill was fine in September and now it will not get hot.

Usually nothing is broken. Propane is stored as a liquid and has to boil into gas before it can burn, and that boiling happens more slowly as the tank gets colder. On a cold day a tank simply cannot supply gas as fast as it can in summer.

The part people miss: it gets much worse as the tank empties. Vaporization happens at the surface of the liquid, against the tank wall, so a nearly full tank has a large wetted surface and keeps up. A quarter-full tank in the cold does not, and it will frost up on the outside while your grill runs at half power.

So the practical answer for winter is to keep tanks topped up rather than running them down, and to own a spare. Swapping in a full tank fixes the symptom immediately, which is how you know that is what it was.

Natural gas grills are unaffected by any of this, which is one of the quiet arguments for a gas line.

Wind matters more than temperature

A cold, still day costs you very little. A moderately cold, windy day costs you a lot, because wind strips heat off the cooking chamber continuously.

If your grill has a permanent position, think about what is upwind of it. A fence, a wall or a screen makes more difference to winter cooking than anything you can change on the grill itself. Just keep any windbreak at the clearance distance the manufacturer specifies, and never enclose the grill.

Everything takes longer, so plan for it

Preheat noticeably longer before you put food on, and expect the cook itself to run over. Keep the lid closed, since heat you let out in winter is far more expensive to replace.

Charcoal and pellet cookers use meaningfully more fuel in the cold. Start with more than you think you need. Running out mid-cook in January is a different kind of problem than running out in July.

And use a thermometer rather than the dial in the lid, which is now reading air temperature in a chamber that is losing heat unevenly.

The safety part

Never move a grill into a garage, a shed, a porch or any enclosed space to get out of the cold. Grills produce carbon monoxide. This is the single most dangerous thing people do in winter grilling and it is fatal. An open carport with a roof and no walls is still a judgment call; a garage with the door open is not safe.

Beyond that:

• Clear snow and ice from around the grill and from the path you will carry hot food along.
• Check hoses and regulators before the season. Rubber stiffens in cold and small cracks open up.
• Make sure the grill is on stable, level footing. Frozen or uneven ground moves.
• If the grill lives outside, keep a cover on it and clear snow off the lid rather than letting it sit.

What is worth cooking

The cooking style that suits winter is anything that wants long indirect heat and does not need you standing over it. You are outside less, and the grill is doing the work with the lid down.

Whole chickens, pork shoulder, ribs and beef roasts all fit. So do root vegetables, which take heat well and finish sweet. Grill peppers, tomatoes or corn before they go into a soup or chili and you get a depth of flavor that is hard to get any other way.

What does not suit winter is anything requiring repeated lid-opening and constant attention. Save that for spring.

Before the season

If your grill struggled at the end of last season, deal with it now rather than in February. Burners, flame tamers, igniters and regulators are all consumable parts, and a grill that was marginal in autumn will be genuinely frustrating in the cold.

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