archived nomad grill review

1 files changed, 52 insertions, 52 deletions

diff --git a/wired.txt b/wired.txt
index b1972c8..4640727 100644
--- a/wired.txt
+++ b/wired.txt
@@ -1,57 +1,5 @@
 # Scratch
 
-## Nomad Grill Review
-
-The Nomad portable grill is to grills what the Yeti is to coolers: better in every way, but expensive. That both come from Texas is coincidence. Probably.
-
-The Nomad is a new take on what a portable grill should be, or even can be. It's refreshingly low tech, compact, cooks phenomenally well, and unlike many "portable" grills, it can genuinely go anywhere. It's as close to a perfect portable grill as anything I've tested.
-
-### Wandering Grill
-I've [tested a lot of portable grills](https://www.wired.com/story/best-portable-grills/) over the years and the Nomad is hands down the best built portable grill I've ever used.
-
-From the perforated, anodized-aluminum shell to the cast-aluminum grill boxes inside, everything about the Nomad feels solid and well-made. The heavy duty handles and latches are strong, even the grilling surface is held solidly in place with high-temperature resistant magnets.
-
-The design of the Nomad is different than most grills. It's essentially a suitcase, which means you can carry it with one hand. The solid construction doesn't make it light—it's 28 pounds with one grill grate, 31 pounds if you opt to buy a second—but it's not awkward and unwieldy like our current top pick portable charcoal grill, Weber's Jumbo Joe.
-
-When collapsed in suitcase carrying position the Nomad looks like a cross between something Jason Bourne would use as a carry on, and some kind of live animal cage. I told one person who asked about it that my kids had a pet wolverine and this was it's cage. For a second I think they believed me.
-
-Once you get where you're going with your Nomad you can set it up on any flat surface. Thanks to the engineering behind the Nomad, it never gets hot enough to harm wood, metal, stone, or sand. I would not put it on a plastic table, but it should work fine everywhere from your truck tailgate to your local park's picnic table. While flat on the ground is the most awkward way to cook on the Nomad, it also works.
-
-The Nomad is also pleasingly low tech. There are no Bluetooth temp sensors, apps, or anything else. This is grilling of the old school, relying on your skills and experience. The Nomad does have a built-in thermometer on left side of the "top", but there is no digital anything here. Thankfully. 
-
-If you buy a Nomad and are in search of some grilling guidance, we love [American's Test Kitchen cookbooks](https://shop.americastestkitchen.com/america-s-test-kitchen-master-of-the-grill.html), and we have a guide to our [favorite summer cookbooks](https://www.wired.com/gallery/best-cookbooks-summer-2022/). 
-
-## Cooking on the Nomad
-
-For typical high-temp grilling the Nomad folds in half giving you two sides to grill on. The catch is that the grill for the second side is sold separately and will set you back another $130. If you get the extra grill grate you'll have total of 425 square inches of cooking surface. Nomad claims this is enough for 30 burgers. I did not test the second grill grate, but cooking singled sided there was enough room for 12 burgers of the size I like them.
-
-The other things to note is that this is a cambered grill, which means if you get both grills you'll need to flip on over before closing it up. Nomad also points out that you can cook with it flipped over, making it something like a veggie basket.
-
-There are two features about the Nomad worth mentioning when it comes to cooking. The first is the twin air vents. In single sided mode you end up with one air vent at the bottom, one at the top. If you have both sides open they're both at the bottom. They're much smaller vents than what you'll find on typical grills, but they work well because of a second feature: the longitudinal raised slats. These ribs running the length of the grill pan hold Nomad's special charcoal cylinders off the bottom of the grill, making the air flow around the better and allowing you to maintain higher temperatures even with the lid closed.
-
-The bad news is that if you use regular charcoal briquets the airflow isn't as good and you won't be able to get temps as high. I cooked my way through the sample box of Nomad Charcoal in about four cooks and then switched to the regular Kingsford briquets you can buy almost anywhere and was never able to get the Nomad back up above 400 with the lid closed.
-
-That said, I can't think of many situations in which you'd want to get temps that high, aside from perhaps baking a pizza. If that's your use case, you can always buy more charcoal from Nomad. It's $36 for a 10 pound box.
-
-While I do not like bespoke charcoal (I can't even believe I had to typed the phrase "bespoke charcoal") because of the price, Nomad's charcoal is better than what you get at the big box stores. It's denser, burns hotter and longer, and gives off less smoke. My kids even discovered it's good enough to double as art charcoal. If you've got the money to burn (literally), Nomad charcoal is worth it.
-
-Since the Nomad can be closed up, suitcase-style, it can be used to smoke as well as grill. Smoking with the Nomad is a little trickier than with Weber's Jumbo Joe, at least at first. It took some careful tweaking of the vents to get the air flow to the point that it was maintaining the temperature I wanted, but once I had it dialed in, the temp held well, better than the Weber in fact.
-
-The only thing I found annoying about smoking in the Nomad was needing to lift off the entire grill grate to feed in some fresh fuel. A hinged grill grate would be a nice option (especially since the magnets would hold it securely in place the rest of the time).
-
-It's also worth noting that as a smoker you have slightly less room than the Jumbo Joe. A single side of the Nomad is 212 square inches, while the Jumbo Joe manages 240 square inches. In practice this isn't a huge difference. I managed to smoke nine chicken breasts, and another time I fit two racks of ribs. In fact, even without the second grill grate I never felt cramped cooking for five (two adults, three ravenous children) on the Nomad.
-
-### Nomad tk
-When I pulled the Nomad out of the box and looked inside my first thought was what a nightmare to clean. This turned out to be only partly true. Cleaning the Nomad on site is a bit of a pain. Flipping over a 28 pound suitcase to dump out the ash is awkward. The good news is that if you're just out for the day, you can close up the Nomad and head home without doing a thing. You don't even really need to wait for it to cool since the outside never gets more than warm.
-
-Once you're at home a hose will make quick work of cleaning up the Nomad, a pressure washer will work even better, but I've been getting by just fine with a hose.
-
-The grill grate takes a bit more effort to clean. I do not recommend using any thing but bristle-free scrapers, I've been cleaning mine periodically with a green scrubber and occasionally throwing some wood in at the end of a cook to burn off the grate. Follow that up with a fresh seasoning and your grate should be clean and ready to go for your next cook.
-
-The Nomad is the best portable grill I've used. That said, the Weber Jumbo Joe remains a very good grill at the faction of the price of the Nomad. Still, if you've got the budget for the Nomad you will not find a better grill and it will not disappoint.
-
-
-
 ## Best Linux Laptops
 
 Linux will work on just about any PC. There plenty of Linux distros that still happily support 32-bit processors. Remember the Pentium 4? It's still supported by Debian Linux and others. That said, Linux runs better on some laptops than others, and some PC makers offer official support for Linux on their machines, meaning you have somewhere to turn if things should go awry.
@@ -1465,6 +1413,58 @@ contain microfibers: http://guppyfriend.com/en/
 
 # Reviews 
 
+## Nomad Grill Review
+
+The Nomad portable grill is to grills what the Yeti is to coolers: better in every way, but expensive. That both come from Texas is coincidence. Probably.
+
+The Nomad is a new take on what a portable grill should be, or even can be. It's refreshingly low tech, compact, cooks phenomenally well, and unlike many "portable" grills, it can genuinely go anywhere. It's as close to a perfect portable grill as anything I've tested.
+
+### Wandering Grill
+I've [tested a lot of portable grills](https://www.wired.com/story/best-portable-grills/) over the years and the Nomad is hands down the best built portable grill I've ever used.
+
+From the perforated, anodized-aluminum shell to the cast-aluminum grill boxes inside, everything about the Nomad feels solid and well-made. The heavy duty handles and latches are strong, even the grilling surface is held solidly in place with high-temperature resistant magnets.
+
+The design of the Nomad is different than most grills. It's essentially a suitcase, which means you can carry it with one hand. The solid construction doesn't make it light—it's 28 pounds with one grill grate, 31 pounds if you opt to buy a second—but it's not awkward and unwieldy like our current top pick portable charcoal grill, Weber's Jumbo Joe.
+
+When collapsed in suitcase carrying position the Nomad looks like a cross between something Jason Bourne would use as a carry on, and some kind of live animal cage. I told one person who asked about it that my kids had a pet wolverine and this was it's cage. For a second I think they believed me.
+
+Once you get where you're going with your Nomad you can set it up on any flat surface. Thanks to the engineering behind the Nomad, it never gets hot enough to harm wood, metal, stone, or sand. I would not put it on a plastic table, but it should work fine everywhere from your truck tailgate to your local park's picnic table. While flat on the ground is the most awkward way to cook on the Nomad, it also works.
+
+The Nomad is also pleasingly low tech. There are no Bluetooth temp sensors, apps, or anything else. This is grilling of the old school, relying on your skills and experience. The Nomad does have a built-in thermometer on left side of the "top", but there is no digital anything here. Thankfully. 
+
+If you buy a Nomad and are in search of some grilling guidance, we love [American's Test Kitchen cookbooks](https://shop.americastestkitchen.com/america-s-test-kitchen-master-of-the-grill.html), and we have a guide to our [favorite summer cookbooks](https://www.wired.com/gallery/best-cookbooks-summer-2022/). 
+
+### Cooking on the Nomad
+
+For typical high-temp grilling the Nomad folds in half giving you two sides to grill on. The catch is that the grill for the second side is sold separately and will set you back another $130. If you get the extra grill grate you'll have total of 425 square inches of cooking surface. Nomad claims this is enough for 30 burgers. I did not test the second grill grate, but cooking singled sided there was enough room for 12 burgers of the size I like them.
+
+The other things to note is that this is a cambered grill, which means if you get both grills you'll need to flip on over before closing it up. Nomad also points out that you can cook with it flipped over, making it something like a veggie basket.
+
+There are two features about the Nomad worth mentioning when it comes to cooking. The first is the twin air vents. In single sided mode you end up with one air vent at the bottom, one at the top. If you have both sides open they're both at the bottom. They're much smaller vents than what you'll find on typical grills, but they work well because of a second feature: the longitudinal raised slats. These ribs running the length of the grill pan hold Nomad's special charcoal cylinders off the bottom of the grill, making the air flow around the better and allowing you to maintain higher temperatures even with the lid closed.
+
+The bad news is that if you use regular charcoal briquets the airflow isn't as good and you won't be able to get temps as high. I cooked my way through the sample box of Nomad Charcoal in about four cooks and then switched to the regular Kingsford briquets you can buy almost anywhere and was never able to get the Nomad back up above 400 with the lid closed.
+
+That said, I can't think of many situations in which you'd want to get temps that high, aside from perhaps baking a pizza. If that's your use case, you can always buy more charcoal from Nomad. It's $36 for a 10 pound box.
+
+While I do not like bespoke charcoal (I can't even believe I had to typed the phrase "bespoke charcoal") because of the price, Nomad's charcoal is better than what you get at the big box stores. It's denser, burns hotter and longer, and gives off less smoke. My kids even discovered it's good enough to double as art charcoal. If you've got the money to burn (literally), Nomad charcoal is worth it.
+
+Since the Nomad can be closed up, suitcase-style, it can be used to smoke as well as grill. Smoking with the Nomad is a little trickier than with Weber's Jumbo Joe, at least at first. It took some careful tweaking of the vents to get the air flow to the point that it was maintaining the temperature I wanted, but once I had it dialed in, the temp held well, better than the Weber in fact.
+
+The only thing I found annoying about smoking in the Nomad was needing to lift off the entire grill grate to feed in some fresh fuel. A hinged grill grate would be a nice option (especially since the magnets would hold it securely in place the rest of the time).
+
+It's also worth noting that as a smoker you have slightly less room than the Jumbo Joe. A single side of the Nomad is 212 square inches, while the Jumbo Joe manages 240 square inches. In practice this isn't a huge difference. I managed to smoke nine chicken breasts, and another time I fit two racks of ribs. In fact, even without the second grill grate I never felt cramped cooking for five (two adults, three ravenous children) on the Nomad.
+
+### Nomad tk
+When I pulled the Nomad out of the box and looked inside my first thought was what a nightmare to clean. This turned out to be only partly true. Cleaning the Nomad on site is a bit of a pain. Flipping over a 28 pound suitcase to dump out the ash is awkward. The good news is that if you're just out for the day, you can close up the Nomad and head home without doing a thing. You don't even really need to wait for it to cool since the outside never gets more than warm.
+
+Once you're at home a hose will make quick work of cleaning up the Nomad, a pressure washer will work even better, but I've been getting by just fine with a hose.
+
+The grill grate takes a bit more effort to clean. I do not recommend using any thing but bristle-free scrapers, I've been cleaning mine periodically with a green scrubber and occasionally throwing some wood in at the end of a cook to burn off the grate. Follow that up with a fresh seasoning and your grate should be clean and ready to go for your next cook.
+
+The Nomad is the best portable grill I've used. That said, the Weber Jumbo Joe remains a very good grill at the faction of the price of the Nomad. Still, if you've got the budget for the Nomad you will not find a better grill and it will not disappoint.
+
+
+
 ## System76 Pangolin Review
 
 Linux may not have evolved (yet!) into the mainstream desktop operating system its advocates had hoped, but fans of free software have never had it so good. Dell, Lenovo, HP, Purism, and System76 all sell excellent Linux-based hardware. Time travel back to 2012 to shout the good news and you'll have trouble convincing even the Linux faithful that the future is even brighter than they're dreaming.