The drawbacks of a kamado BBQ

For a fair comparison it helps to look at The benefits of a kamado BBQ first, or to start at What is a kamado BBQ?.

The price

The most commonly named drawback is the price, and rightly so: a ceramic kamado costs more than a steel kettle BBQ. If you want to barbecue for a hundred euros, a kamado is not where you land. There is no point talking that away.

What matters is what you get back for it and over how many years you spread it. Ceramic does not rust and does not wear out from heat, so the replacement cycle that steel appliances hit after about five years does not exist here. On the ceramic we give up to 20 years of warranty. Add the lower charcoal consumption and the fact that one appliance fills the role of grill, smoker and oven.

Within the range it also varies considerably. A Classic is the entry point, the Pro III is fully equipped. The ceramic is identical across all versions, you pay for sealing, glaze and equipment. What that means exactly is in Classic, Pro II or Pro III, and the full range is at Kamado BBQ.

The four drawbacks, worked out

A list of four words helps nobody. This is what each drawback means in practice and how heavily it weighs.

1. You cannot start on a whim. Heating up takes ten to fifteen minutes with soft charcoal and twenty-five to thirty with hard, and another ten minutes on top before the ceramic is heated through. Come home at six wanting to eat at quarter past, and that is a barrier every single time. This is the drawback people underestimate most often and end up weighing most heavily.

2. It stays where you put it. Ceramic weighs tens of kilos. Moving it takes two people, taking it to the beach is out, and a wobbly base is not an option. Decide before you buy where it will stand, because that is for years.

3. Steering down takes longer than up. Overshoot your target temperature and a few minutes of waiting will not fix it. The charged ceramic sheds its heat slowly, and that can take half an hour. Prevention beats correction here: start closing the sliders about 25 degrees before your target. More on that in How do you control the temperature in a kamado?.

4. Thermal shock is a real but avoidable risk. Ceramic can crack if it goes from cold to hot too quickly, especially when moisture has soaked into the wall. In normal use this is rare, but it is the only damage that genuinely puts your appliance out of action. New kamados therefore have to be broken in first, see Breaking in a kamado BBQ.

What weather and frost do to a kamado

This point is missing from most honest lists, while in northern European weather it is the most common cause of damage. The ceramic itself is frost-proof and does not mind rain, frost or sun. That is why a kamado can stay outside all year round.

The nuance is about moisture that does not belong there. Leave the kamado open and rain falls on the coals and into the fire bowl. If it then freezes, that water expands inside a wall that was not built for it, and the first time you light up you run a raised risk of thermal shock. That is not a material fault but a usage error, and it costs nothing to avoid: close the lid and the top vent when you are done.

What does genuinely suffer from weather are the parts that are not ceramic. The metal frame, the hinges, the band gasket and the wood of the side tables stand outdoors all year. Without a cover you will see rust patches and weathered wood after three or four seasons, while the ceramic still looks new. A cover is therefore not a luxury accessory but the difference between those two outcomes.

Beyond that the appliance deserves a service a few times a year: remove ash, degrease the grates and check the gasket. That is worked out in Kamado maintenance.

How to avoid these drawbacks

Three of the four drawbacks are characteristics you plan around. Only thermal shock is actual damage, and that is the easiest one to avoid.

• Always heat up gently. No lighter fluid, no burner that drives the ceramic to temperature in two minutes. If the kamado has stood outside for a long time, let the moisture evaporate at low temperature first.
• Put it on a sturdy base. Tens of kilos on unstable ground is the only other scenario in which ceramic breaks.
• Plan your heat-up time. If you know you are using hard charcoal, light it half an hour before you want to cook. That is not a solution, but it takes the frustration out.
• Steer in small steps. Start closing the sliders 25 degrees before your target and wait five to ten minutes before intervening again. That way you never end up waiting half an hour for it to cool.
• Use a cover. Not for the ceramic, but for the metal and the wood.

Keep to these five habits and in practice only the heat-up time and the weight remain as real drawbacks. The rest can be designed around. The full list of beginner mistakes is in My biggest kamado mistakes.

Where to read on

Put this next to Advantages of a kamado BBQ to weigh whether the trade-off works for you. If you want to understand why the appliance behaves this way, How does a kamado BBQ work? explains the slowness and the heat buffer, with the depth in What makes ceramic cooking different?.

Still unsure about buying, then the complete trade-off is in the buying guide. And if you have just got one, start at Breaking in a kamado BBQ: that is the single most important step to stay ahead of thermal shock.