AmazingRibs.com is supported by our Pitmaster Club. Also, when you buy with links on our site we may earn a finder’s fee. Click to see how we test and review products.

Portable Kitchen Grill aka PK Grill Review

Share on:
PK Grill

The Portable Kitchen Grill is an elegant throwback resurrected from 1952. This rustproof, cast aluminum charcoal grill has a flat bottom making it easy to push the coals to one side for smoking and indirect cooking. There are adjustable dampers in the lid and under the fire. The 306 square inch cookinggrate is hinged for adding coals, and the oven can be lifted off the cart for cleaning, camping, or tailgating. It has a bottom shelf and side shelf.

The thick cast aluminum cook box has two sliding dampers on top and two on the bottom. Many people cook direct and indirect simultaneously with the PK. This versatility may be attributed to the rectangular shape, thick aluminum construction that retains and radiates heat, the tight fitting hinged lid and the twin dampers in both the top and bottom.

Today most grills are made with thin coated steel or stainless steel, but when Portable kitchen began in the 50s, aluminum grills were common. PK will not rust; even the cart is aluminum with stainless steel fasteners. There are very few moving parts and no electronics, so many of these old grills are still in service today.

In fact, a lot of PK owners inherited their grills, or bought them used for $20 at a garage sale. We even found one guy who discovered a PK buried under a tangle of over grown brush at the home of an elderly relative. He cut it out, cleaned it up, bought new grates and started grilling! Most PK Grillers love their cookers with a cultish fervor.

We find ourselves using our PK more than our Weber Kettle lately primarily because it is so easy to set up in two or even three zones. Just push the coals to one side. This makes it both a BBQ grill and a smoker. The optional “Littlemore” grate that sits above the rear half adds significant cooking space. Our only nitpicking complaint is that ash and embers sometimes drop through the bottom vents, but we simply put a disposable aluminum pan underneath and problem solved.

The folks at PK Grills put together an exclusive offer for AmazingRibs.com Readers that bundles the Grill, Littlemore Grate, PK Cover and Free Shipping for $399! Click here for The AmazingRibs.com PK Bundle.

The standard nickel plated steel grate rots out and will need replacement periodically. PK now offers a stainless steel grate upgrade and it may be ordered separately. Click here to purchase on Amazon.

Here’s PK Grills in the news on Good Morning Arkansas.

Haven't found what you want?
Click the buttons below to search our complete database of reviews:

Product Information:

Related reviews

Published On: 2/18/2013 Last Modified: 3/26/2024

  • Max Good, Full time grill tester - Max Good, AmazingRibs.com's Vice President of Product Reviews & Keeper of the Flame, is the man in charge of finding the best products for the AmazingRibs.com Equipment Reviews section. Max bottles his own barbecue sauce recipes and now sells them around the country.

 

High quality websites are expensive to run. If you help us, we’ll pay you back bigtime with an ad-free experience and a lot of freebies!

Millions come to AmazingRibs.com every month for high quality tested recipes, tips on technique, science, mythbusting, product reviews, and inspiration. But it is expensive to run a website with more than 2,000 pages and we don’t have a big corporate partner to subsidize us.

Our most important source of sustenance is people who join our Pitmaster Club. But please don’t think of it as a donation. Members get MANY great benefits. We block all third-party ads, we give members free ebooks, magazines, interviews, webinars, more recipes, a monthly sweepstakes with prizes worth up to $2,000, discounts on products, and best of all a community of like-minded cooks free of flame wars. Click below to see all the benefits, take a free 30 day trial, and help keep this site alive.


Post comments and questions below

grouchy?

1) Please try the search box at the top of every page before you ask for help.

2) Try to post your question to the appropriate page.

3) Tell us everything we need to know to help such as the type of cooker and thermometer. Dial thermometers are often off by as much as 50°F so if you are not using a good digital thermometer we probably can’t help you with time and temp questions. Please read this article about thermometers.

4) If you are a member of the Pitmaster Club, your comments login is probably different.

5) Posts with links in them may not appear immediately.

Moderators

  Max

Click to comment or ask a question...

Spotlight

These are not paid ads, they are a curated selection of products we love.

All of the products below have been tested and are highly recommended. Click here to read more about our review process.

Use Our Links To Help Keep Us Alive

Many merchants pay us a small referral fee when you click our “buy now” links. This has zero impact on the price you pay but helps support the site.