New electric, gas and charcoal grills and griddles were on display at KBIS 2024 in Vegas. Find out which ones really stood out.
I just went to the Kitchen and Bath Industry Show in Las Vegas where I saw some really cool new things in grilling. Everything ranges from electric to gas to some amazing charcoal cookers.
Listen to the BBQ Tips Podcast on
Table of Contents
What is KBIS?
The Kitchen and Bath Industry Show is part of the National Association of Homebuilders. So the show is really targeted to those within the industry who build homes like contractors or those type of retailers who sell the products that you’re going to sell to those contractors.
For the barbecue industry, it would be like those premier barbecue stores that you go to where you can get those built-in kitchen islands. Everything in the show was super dreamy.
Americans want color
One thing that I noticed both in the indoor space and outdoor space is that color is still super popular. People want a variety of colors.
One of the sessions that I attended said that 69% of Americans surveyed feel that they can introduce new and exciting colors in their outdoor kitchens that they don’t necessarily introduce in the interior of their homes, which was definitely prevalent.
Save this BBQ Tip
Enter your email, and I’ll send this link directly to your inbox. Plus, you’ll get new BBQ recipes and tips weekly.
When I stopped by the Lynx Grill booth, they have a whole new system with their grills and new modular cabinetry that comes in eight colors plus stainless steel.
The colors were really beautiful and everything was seamless. Whether you wanted to insert a kamado-style grill or whether you wanted a Lynx Gas Grill, everything worked really well, and it had more than you usually get in an outdoor kitchen.
You had cabinets, drawers, cabinets on top of drawers, and it was all made out of metal, so it was all weather safe.
It was really like having an indoor kitchen constructed with materials that are ideal for outside, giving you all the space and functionality that you need. So I was really impressed with that and the colors were all really beautiful.
Electric grills are on the rise
One thing that I’m noticing when I go to these different conventions is that electric is definitely on the rise in the grilling space.
If you listened to my podcast about the Consumer Electronics Show, you heard about the indoor smoker from GE Profile. That’s electric with the introduction of some pellets.
You also heard about the Current Brand, which is an outdoor electric grill that runs on 120 volt.
Well, Fire Magic had an exhibit. They are traditionally a luxury line gas grill, but they’ve now introduced an electric grill, as well.
And their electric grill runs on 240 volt, which means it’s going to provide more power, more electricity to those burners to help you maybe get a more even or at least a more high intense heat cook.
Because it’s 240 volt, it’s not the type of grill that you’re just going to roll into your backyard and plug in like you would a pellet grill or even the Current Brand Grill.
No, this one is actually a built in. You actually have to have it installed in an outdoor kitchen and have an electrician hardwire it for you.
It comes in a couple of varieties. They have one with a window, one without. You can have two controls for two separate burners so you can do some indirect and direct cooking, or they have one with just one burner control that covers the whole span of the grill space.
The price ranges from about $7,000 to $7,500, which is pretty high. But they consider it the first luxury electronic grill.
I didn’t have a chance to cook on it or eat any food that was cooked on it, so I can’t tell you how it compares to the Current Brand. I will say that I liked the Current Brand display a little bit better than the Fire Magic display.
But again, if you’re looking for a built in, that’s electric, this is the first one that I’ve seen on the market.
The EVO Centre electric griddle
EVO showed off their new electric griddle called the EVO Centre, which will be released later this year. I have an EVO griddle in my backyard. It’s a round griddle. Mine is free standing and runs on propane.
The new EVO Centre is a built-in, and it can be installed indoors or outdoors and runs on 120 volts.
It has the same two-burner feature, so you have an interior burner that you can control and an exterior burner that you can control so that you can have flexibility in your cooking.
It also has a similar style kind of drip tray, so if you have any bacon grease and stuff, you can push that off any side of the griddle, which is one of the things I love about the 360-degree design.
This one is 23 inches in diameter, and they have a new cooktop surface, which is a ceramic style surface for super easy cleaning so you don’t have to season it like cast iron.
The price for the new EVO Centre is going to be around $4,000.
Cook with light with the Brava Oven
Another cooker that I was introduced to at the Kitchen and Bath Show was the Brava. So this has been around for several years, but I’ve just never seen it.
It’s not a grill. It’s not in the grilling space, but it supposedly cooks steaks, amazingly, with an incredible sear similar to what you would get with cast iron.
It runs on electricity, but the power and the heat are actually these light bulbs that are super intense.
They described the technology to me as being similar to the way that solar panels work. They reach these intense degrees, and they kind of pulse on and off. Then, they cook your meat just in time to create that Maillard effect on your steaks while still keeping it medium rare inside, if you want it nice and juicy.
And it has this three-zone cooking where on the pan you can put your steak and then you can put your asparagus and then you can put your butternut squash. And it has a digital control panel on top where you choose your zone and you choose the food that you’re cooking.
It has hundreds of different foods that you can choose from, and it will cook evenly in each of those sections and have your food all done at the same time.
I didn’t taste any food on it, but it really sounded quite amazing and like futuristic. I felt like I was watching a Back to the Future movie, seeing all of this work. So I’m hoping that I can get my hands on one of these because I really want to see how it cooks a steak.
It’s nice and small, like a like a toaster oven, but it can toast, it can air fry, it can bake, it can do all these things.
It also has a cool kind of social component to it. To where, if you develop your own recipe, you can upload it to the app and then you can share it with all of the other people who have this Brava Oven so they can make your recipes.
So I thought that was kind of cool. It’s really interactive. Again, I didn’t cook on it. I didn’t taste it. But the concept sounds neat.
Cooking with light bulbs is definitely different. So we’ve got the electric, we’e got the gas, we’ve got the charcoal and wood, we’ve got pellets and now light bulbs.
German innovation in gas grills
Although there’s been a surge in electric grills. Gas is by no means dead. All of the big luxury brand gas grills were there from Hestan to Lynx to Thor to Napoleon to Blaze, you name it.
They were showing off some of the newer things that they have in their gas lines like modular cabinetry, colors again, were really big.
But there’s one grill company that stood out to me as being the most innovative gas grill of the show, and that was Flammkraft, which is out of Germany.
When I first walked up to this grill, it looks different than any American-style grill. The top is not domed, it’s not rounded. It’s more square. Similar to a Space Grill that I used to have. That was a European grill that I picked up at the National Hardware Show several years ago.
When I walked up to the Flammkraft Grill and looked inside, I was confused. I didn’t understand how this grill worked, and I actually turned to the guy and asked him, “How does your grill work?”
He showed me that there are infrared burners inside, but it’s not like any American grill where the burners are underneath your food and underneath the grill grates.
No. Instead, there’s an infrared burner along the back wall, and then there’s an infrared burner along the front wall that I didn’t actually see until I looked into the grill further.
I would describe these as the style of infrared burners that you would see in a luxury and grill if you have a rotisserie setting. So it’s that thin, rectangular burner that’s usually in the upper back wall.
And if you have your rotisserie turned on, your meat’s going to spin and it’s going to get the heat from that burner. Same function, but these are in the bottom of the grill on the back wall and the front wall, not in the upper section of the grill itself.
Under your grill grates is completely indirect cooking. So you’re never going to have flare ups because any drippings are not going to drip on any burners. They just drip on the bottom.
The rotisserie itself is actually set inside the grill a little bit deeper in the grill, instead of resting on top of the grill grates. And you’re actually getting that rotisserie heat from both sides since there’s an IR burner in the front and in the back. So I think that’s going to provide more even cooking.
The heat on the grill ranges from about 210 F degrees at its lowest setting up to 900 F degrees if you’re using the side with the infrared burners that I just described. So that can definitely get you a wide range of cooking styles.
And it’s really cool that you can do that indirect cooking as well.
Then when you want that super high heat for searing, it comes with the sear station as well on the side. The sear station goes up to 1,650 F degrees. So I’m talking about creating a serious crust on that.
Again, it’s really neat innovation. It’s fun to see something new in the grill line industry, especially on the gas side of things.
Other Flammkraft Grill features
Some other features about this grill that stood out to me is the quality. The construction was top notch stainless steel, no plastic elements. I mean, it was just really hefty and sturdy. Lifting the lid, it was heavy, but not too heavy.
It’s also super insulated. So you can still touch the outside of the wall even when the grill is on and it’s supposed to be cool to the touch.
The warming racks were also unlike anything I’ve ever seen. Most gas grills or any type of grill really that has a warming rack, it’s just a small little tray. Well, this has some slide out containers that are metal that you can slide under the warming rack.
So you could put mac and cheese in there. You could put broccoli casserole in there or mashed potatoes in there. And you’re getting that indirect cooking so you can cook that all at the same time, giving you kind of that oven experience where you’re not going to overcook your food. But it’s in these these cool trays.
The Flammkraft Grill comes in both built-in and freestanding. And if you go with the freestanding, it’s a very cubic kind of cabinetry, but it is so well thought out.
There are multiple different colors. When you open the drawer, you can access the drip pan for cleaning out the grill.
There is also a storage tub. There are a couple other storage compartments. There’s a place where you can store the side wooden shelves. There is a place for your propane tank, as well.
It’s just very well thought out, very organized. I really liked that.
Then, there’s another modular cabinet that you can get to go beside it. It has some other compartments. It has a drawer, has a paper towel holder, another cutting board that can be slid and used as a prep station and more cabinetry underneath.
The price range is going to be $8,000 to $12,000, depending on whether or not you want the built-in or whether you want the one on the freestanding cabinet.
Grilling safety
Speaking of gas, there were two companies at the show who exhibited some safety features for gas grills. One is Ome Kitchen and the other is the Gas Plug.
Ome Kitchen has invented these new knobs that you can install on your gas grills that allow you to control your knobs from an app on your phone.
The woman who invented this product, actually started the company because her mom left the stove on and it started a fire in the kitchen. So the device was originally created for stoves, but she’s now expanded it to the grilling industry.
To add the Ome knobs to your gas grill, you simply remove the knobs of your grill and add their knobs, and there’s just a little bit of installation that takes place.
Then you connect those to the app using your Wi-Fi, and then you can control the knobs from your phone. You can increase the heat, reduce the heat, or most importantly, turn your gas grill off.
If you realize that you’re out and you think, my gosh, I don’t know if I turned my grill off, you can open the app. You can see if the knob is turned on and from the app on your phone, you can turn your gas grill off. It’s a great safety feature.
There’s also an auto shut off. So in case you forgot to remember that you forgot to turn your grill off, it can automatically turn that off for you as well. And you can set a timer to adjust for how long you want the grill to stay on before that auto shut off occurs.
The other safety feature related to gas grills that I saw was the Gas Plug. This connects to the gas stub on your house, if you have a natural gas connection.
The way it works is that it has a special dial that if you ever want to disconnect your gas grill, before you can disconnect it, you actually have to physically turn the gas line off.
It also has a thermal valve, which will automatically shut off your gas line without you doing anything, if the temperature reaches 300 F degrees in the event that there was some type of accident. So that way, it stops the gas from flowing for safety.
And lastly, they also have an emergency stop feature which you can set a timer and then it’ll turn your girl off after an hour or two hours or however long you want.
It’s not app enabled. It’s completely manual with just a little like kitchen timer looking device. But again, a nice little safety feature for those who may or may not remember to turn their gas off.
Charcoal ovens and grills
Even though charcoal grilling is the most primitive style of grilling, I will say that the charcoal grills at the Kitchen and Bath Show were the most impressive grills that I saw on the floor.
Let’s start with the Josper Charcoal Oven. Josper Ovens have been around for decades, but now they’ve teamed up with Middleby Residential to create the Josper Casa line.
So usually you would see a Josper Charcoal Oven in a commercial kitchen at a restaurant. But now you can actually install this in your outdoor kitchen in your own backyard.
The way the Josper Charcoal Oven works is that you open the door just like you would for an oven, but on the bottom is where you put your fuel, whether it’s charcoal or wood. You light that, let it burn, spread it out evenly.
Then, close the door. On the bottom, there’s an air intake that you pull in and out, and then at the top is your exhaust with a dial where you can control your heat. Basically you can control that heat temperature with both of those devices similar to any other type of charcoal grill.
It’s all air based and it has natural convection. Then it has multiple racks inside. So not only can you cook foods directly over that heat like your steaks or your burgers, but you can also bake things in it like an oven.
And it’s going to taste amazing compared to your indoor oven because everything is cooked with charcoal or wood. So you’re getting that really amazing essence of that wood flavor right into your food.
Again, this is something that’s been used at high-end restaurants for years, and now it’s something that’s been introduced for your backyard.
The Josper Casa comes in five different models with a variety of colors. The models that I looked at at the show range in price from $22,000 to $43,000, so they are pretty pricey, but they’re quite dreamy.
So if that’s within your budget, congratulations. I think that it would be a really cool addition to your backyard.
The sexiest grill I have ever seen
All right, I am saving the best for last. If you follow me on Instagram or Facebook, you saw my posts about this.
The sexiest grill at the Kitchen and Bath Show by far was the Grillworks that was installed with the Hestan Commercial Cabinetry in Orange, my favorite color.
This is the first time that a Grillworks has been installed in a professional suite. For those of you who don’t know what a Grillworks is, it’s an Argentine-style grill, I actually have one in my backyard and I love it.
The way that this grill works is that it has two grates that can be adjusted by spinning a dial. You either burn wood or charcoal under the grates, and then you can adjust those levels to control the heat and control the temperatures.
There’s also a brasero in the back, which is basically a fire cage. You can add your wood and burn that. And then as the charcoal comes out, you can rake that forward and control your heat that way.
It’s a really, really fun grill to cook on to see it on the Hestan cabinetry was stunning. I also have an Aspire by Hestan Grill and outdoor kitchen in my backyard, so I’m a fan of both of these companies. Seeing them merged together at the show was again, just stunning. Like like the sexiest grill that I’ve seen ever.
It is designed for a commercial kitchen indoors. Some of the restaurants here in Vegas have Grillworks Grills and then they have amazing ventilation systems so that they can use them indoors.
But I don’t see any reason why you couldn’t also put this in your backyard.
It’s a brand new marriage and partnership with Hestan and Grillworks, so they’re looking to basically get a feel from people at the show to see if they’re interested in this to see if there are other expansive ways that they can build their cabinetry and their grills together. So it’ll be exciting to see where this partnership goes.
That’s a wrap from Las Vegas and the Kitchen and Bath Industry Show.
Like I said, it was so fun. I wish I just had endless amounts of money to buy all of the things at the show because it was just tremendous. I’m loving to see where the grilling industry is going.
I’ve got another show coming up in the future, the National Hardware Show. But next week I’m judging a barbecue competition. I’m going to talk to you a little bit about the judging process compared to the cooking process in next week’s podcast.
Tune into more of my BBQ Tips podcasts or scroll around the website for even more helpful BBQ Tips.
