Fire Sense Large Rectangle Yakatori Charcoal Grills

First off: it took forever to arrive. I ordered the skewers and the grill at the same time. The skewers arrived first while the grill arrived 3-4 weeks later. This was supposed to be a present; I ended up buying a replacement present. Shipping delays aside, this is a practical little grill that has been working quite well so far. The cooking capacity is good, specially if you have the right skewers for the job. Assembly was a breeze; it comes practically assembled already. That said, the packaging material (styrofoam) does stick to the grill, so make sure to thoroughly clean it before first use. On the looks side, I think it looks quite adorable and I quite like the peach/light pink color. That said, the paint/coating is a matte one, so it can be stained a bit too easily. We've managed to keep it stain free so far by immediately wiping down anything that lands on it (granted that the grill is not piping hot, of course). Regarding durability: will have to revisit the review for this, but so far, so good. I imagine that the big impact to durability is regarding the grill's integrity. So, don't drop it or crack it, and you should be fine.

This is an excellent grill for a single person who wants to grill single entrees in a limited space like an apt or condo. The drawback with most small grills such as the 14 inch Weber Smokey Joe or the Lodge Sportsman Hibachi is that they are still too large for one person and end up wasting a lot of charcoal. This is because it takes high heat and many briquets to reach the necessary heat level to sear a thick steak but once you reach that heat level, it doesn't take long to cook the steak. Then your remaining briquets and their heat is wasted as they continue to burn to ash unless you put the lid on and close the vents. Also with iron and metal, much of the heat is transferred to the grill housing. This is heat that is robbed from the cooking process. The small ceramic Yakatori is like a fuel efficient Japanese car. It sips charcoal but still gets hot since heat isn't being conducted to a metal surface other than the grate. All the heat goes to your food so you need less charcoal. This grill has a somewhat flimsy cooking grate so I recommend pairing it with the Weber Cast Iron Sear Grate whose 12" diameter is a perfect fit for the 11" diameter of this grill.(http://www.amazon.com/Weber-8834-Gourmet-System-Grate/dp/B0044ERTDY/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top) Then buy a few small spring clamps to act as retainer tabs such as those that come with the original grate to keep it from sliding around. It doesn't come with a lid but as someone else mentioned, go to the 99 Store and pick up a cheap stainless steel bowl of 11" diameter and with either a drill or epoxy glue, fasten a cheap wooden drawer knob on the top and drill a hole or two near the top to vent. You now have yourself a super efficient personal steak machine that will get high mileage out of every bag of briquets. FOLLOW UP: I have had this grill now for over a year and I still like it. I think a few follow up comments are in order. The grill comes with a clay disc perforated with numerous 3/4" holes that sits on a small ledge at the bottom of the grill. This is what the briquets sit on and through which air passes from the side vent. It is somewhat fragile. Once I was gently tipping the grill over on soft grass to pour out the ashes and the disc rolled out onto the grass and broke in half. No way such a gentle impact should have caused it to break. However, the customer service was excellent and the vendor promptly sent me a new disc at no charge. However, the two broken halves are still serviceable since they can be fitted together and placed in the bottom of the grill like before. HOWEVER, I noticed that my coals seemed to lose heat and not burn hot as soon as I poured them into the grill from my charcoal chimney. It was frustrating to pour in blazing charcoal and then for them to quickly lose heat so much that I couldn't even sear a steak. Things took forever to cook. It finally occurred to me that the clay disc is blocking a lot of air that otherwise would pass through the typical wire grate that most grills have. Even with the perforations, the clay disc is mostly opaque. The material to space ratio is probably 60-40 which blocks a lot of air. I had an epiphany and decided to use the wire trivet that came with my Rival model 3100 crockpot. This is the classic original crockpot. It came with a trivet to use in the bottom of the crockpot. The trivet fits almost perfectly where the clay disc sits. You just have to bend the three wire footings inward slightly. Let me tell you. IT MAKES A WORLD OF DIFFERENCE. Now the material to space ratio is around 5 to 95. Tiny pieces of hot charcoals can now fall down under the trivet and continue to work their magic while the larger hot coals blaze away above. It's like night and day. So if your Yakatori grill just doesn't seem hot enough, try to get this trivet. I found another one at a thrift store for 25cents recently or maybe you can order one from Rival in Kansas City. Or maybe Amazon carries it although it is an obscure part. It is an old crockpot and I don't know if the part is still available but you may be able to get one from Rival for a few dollars. If you go to enough thrift stores often enough, you WILL find one eventually for practically nothing. P.S. I mentioned in my original post that spring clamps were necessary to keep the Weber Sear grate from sliding around. This is false. The sear grate is heavy enough so that it sits on the grill without movement and no clamps are needed

I got this to do Japanese yakitori as my wife was missing it and we don't have a good yakitori place near where we live. I had apprehensions about this grill since some of the reviews indicated some negative themes. But, it was very affordable and we thought it would be a "fun" experience even if only once or twice and we can later invest more into something more substantial. Keeping in mind the things I learned from some of the negative reviews, I made sure to keep the clay dry and to be gentle with it. We used lump charcoal from the local home improvement store which was only $14 for 20 lbs. I did use the grill on top at first, but after trying it once, I realized for Yakitori, it's easier to just rest the skewers on the edges of the clay grill itself and that saves us from having to clean the grill top. If you're cooking something other than yakitori, like some fish or slices of meats, then you will certainly have to use the grill top. However, it's not hard to clean and most burnt on stuff just chips off when it is dried. As far as cleaning the clay grill, since I knew not to get it wet, i simply dump the ashes out (it's small, so this is easy) and used a hard bristle brush to clean out any remaining ashes. As with any barbecue event, drips of our marinade (we were doing tare-yaki style yakitori instead of shio-yaki) did drip onto the clay and various other places, but I just left it as-is and considered it "seasoning" the clay. I didn't let it bother me, after all, it's where the charcoal burns, not where it would make contact with our food. There are many ways to start a charcoal fire, the user instructions suggested lighter fluid. But since there's an air gap under where the charcoal sits, you'd probably have fluid dripping to the bottom and out the air intake doors. In which case, you may be better off starting your charcoal in a metal can with the lighter fluid first and then transferring them over when they are burning. I decided to just use some newspaper to start the fire and stacked my charcoals into a mound around it which worked fine but took a little longer to get started. The depth of the grill isn't very high so you can't really stack the charcoals really high. After the charcoal started burning, I rearranged them into a lower mound before I started cooking. Overall, our yakitori experience was a great success! I couldn't give this a full five star rating because I felt like some of the complaints are legitimate. The clay appears to be unfired and so indeed it would probably not hold up to any cleaning under water. I think the manufacturer could have raised the cost by just a little bit and glazed and fired the clay to make it more durable and possibly easier to clean with a smooth glaze. Overall, if you keep in mind some of the drawbacks and workaround them, it still works and provides plenty of value for the price. If you decide to get something more substantial, there are certainly those options, but the most affordable one I could find was at least 5x the price of this. This is a very small and reasonable investment to enjoy some yakitori cooked over charcoal with family and friends.

- original review written in 2016: This is a fantastic yakatori grill, I love it. This is not styrofoam painted with fireproof paint its cast diatom cement which is classic construction for a small yakatori grill like this. (Big would be restaurant size). This is a nice large size for a table top BBQ, Don't mistake this for a hibachi, yakatori is a different style of cooking and this is a different kind of grill. The body of of the BBQ is very thick and solid, it's designed for very hot burning binchotan or other hardwood charcoal and to hold in the heat. But I did knock off a star because the metal doors and trim is flimsy and just tacked on but even if they broke off or rusted out you would still have the functional core. It could last forever but I could imagine it would crack if you dropped it. ****** Update May 2022****** I did love this BBQ, I wanted to try to be authentic to yakatori BBQ by buying this BBQ and bichotan charcoal and it was delicious. But his BBQ has a serious flaw. It says this made out of clay but when you think of clay as mud that has been kiln fired. This is more like mud and fine wood particles or some such material. The reason I know this is because I accidentally left this BBQ out in the rain overnight and it fell apart, the water seeped in and it broke up and crumbled, it literally fell apart in my hands when I picked it up. I had used it for a couple of years and it is definitely heat proof but unfortunately its not fully waterproof. There are other yakatori grills made from more durable material like cast iron.

Auf dem Artikel sind mehrere Warhinweise, dass darin Krebserregende Stoffe enthalten sind. Das verunsichert doch erheblich! Das Tonmaterial ist im Boden und an den Wänden nach einmaligen Gebrauch gerissen.

Really compact and cool !!

I received a damaged product. When I’m paying such a high price for a product I expect it to reach me in perfect condition.

Es un asador pequeño pero con el carbón en briquetas puedes cocinar durante horas conserva bien el calor. si se usa adecuadamente el calor es uniforme y no es tan complicado de limpiar y almacenar. Solo que definitivamente se requiere un espacio muy abierto ya que hace humo como cualquier asador de carbón recomiendo leer el instructivo.