Everdure By Heston Blumenthal 4K
Specifications
- 430 square inches of total cooking space
- Electric heat element ignition system
- Bare cast iron cooking grates
- Cast aluminum construction
- Stainless steel hardware
- Hinge mounted lid
- Built-in digital temperature monitor with WiFi connectivity
- Side firebox access
- Removable ash catcher
- Total weight of 151 pounds
- Made in China by EVERDURE by Heston Blumenthal
Full Review – Everdure By Heston Blumenthal 4K
PROS
- Excellent temperature control
- Electric charcoal starter
- Direct firebox access
- Bluetooth Enabled
CONS
- Expensive
- Cooking a lot of food is difficult
- Must be plugged in
What do you do when you are a famous celebrity chef? Merchandise! When you are known to do a bit of grilling, well, someone is going to want to make a line of grills with you. Enter Everdure and Heston Blumenthal and the 4K charcoal grill. This is a kamado grill. They don’t seem to push that idea much in the marketing, but that is what it is. Made of cast aluminum, this grill sells for well over $2,500USD and has a number of interesting features.
There are actually several products in this line, though they all follow the same aesthetic. The 4K is, however, the most interesting of these products. It has an attractive, if not slightly deceptive design. ย The body of this grill is square, but the interior of the cooking chamber is round. Round is good for kamados, but this grill looks a lot larger than it actually is.
Features
And this brings up another point. Kamado grills are best when they are simple. This is an ancient design. It doesn’t need improvement. Everdure has however added some features. Most notably, the 4K has an electric heating element built inside to light charcoal for you. Convenient, but problematic. You don’t need to use this system to light charcoal of course. And that might be what you do, should this fail. I’m not saying that it will, but getting repair work done on a Kamado grill seems a little odd.
Another feature, one that I actually like, is the side access door that lets you add charcoal or access the fire without lifting off all the food. This is a smart move. Hard to pull off with a ceramic grill, but this one is metal, so the door works easily and doesn’t reduce the efficiency of the grill.
Lastly, about the size. I said that this grill is deceptively small. The cooking area, that is. Cooking is done can be done on two levels, each smaller than the space of the standard Big Green Egg Large. In fact, considerably smaller. The main cooking grate, that you would use for grilling up those steaks, is small and set down inside the grill. Access is a little awkward.
This whole grill is monitored and the charcoal start-up process is run by an electronic system that can connect to a smart device via Bluetooth. There is electronics inside this Kamado. Convenient? Maybe. Complicated? Definitely.
The Bottom Line
Everdure By Heston Blumenthal 4K isn’t a revolution is Kamado style grills. It is pretty to look at and well built. There are some features on it. Some are great. Others, well, I am suspicious about the long term survival of them. Complicated isn’t what a Kamado should be and with the extreme cooking temperatures and outdoor nature of this grill, I wonder how long they will last.
I am not wholeheartedly recommending this grill, nor am I saying to avoid it. It is a good grill. It also costs well over two thousand dollars. At that price, you can get better. Maybe not with Bluetooth, but do you really need that?
