Charcoal grilling is probably the oldest method of cooking on earth, old enough that its use predates recorded history. This is worth bearing in mind when a company says it's innovating on charcoal grilling. Are you really sure no one has tried this at some point in the last 20,000 years?
That's not exactly what Spark claims, but it's close. The company's goal with its Spark One grill is to bring together the flavor of charcoal with the ease of propane grills.
Like any propane grill you've ever used, the Spark One can be started by turning a knob. Like any charcoal grill you've ever used, it cooks your food with charcoal. On paper, the Spark One delivers a solution to the exact problem it set out to solve. But was it a problem in the first place?
Food cooked over charcoal has a distinctive taste. This is the Spark One's appeal: that great charcoal flavor but with the convenience of a gas grill.
Before I dive into how the Spark delivers on this claim, it's important to understand that exactly how food acquires that distinctive charcoal flavor is influenced by everything from smoke (the specific aromas given off by burning wood that end up in the food) to how, when, and where any Maillard reaction occurs. There are many variables at play when grilling over wood or charcoal: the kind of wood, the smoke, the heat, and more.
Combining these variables is as much art as science and is a part of the fun of cooking over burning wood or charcoal. At least to some of us. Plenty of other people—understandably—just want to get a tasty grilled dinner on the table. If you fall into the latter category, the Spark is for you.
This is a no-fuss, flip-a-switch-and-go charcoal grill that imparts, in my testing anyway, about 80 percent of the flavor you'd get from a traditional charcoal grill. If you love the Pareto principle, the Spark is worth considering, because it really does give you 80 percent of the results with 20 percent of the effort. Really, probably less than 20 percent of the effort.
The midcentury-modern-inspired design looks great. The clean lines and rounded corners make other grills look bulky and awkward. The bamboo cutting board and working area provide ample food-prepping space, more than most grills I've tested.
It plugs into an ordinary three-prong socket and uses electricity to automatically light your Briq, as Spark calls its proprietary charcoal, and to operate fans that control the temperature of the grill. It's an ingenious system, and it worked almost flawlessly in my testing.
If you can turn on an oven, you can grill with the Spark. Turn it on, wait for it to heat up to your desired temperature, and cook. It doesn't get much simpler than that. The Spark One also has an app that connects via Bluetooth. You can use it to adjust and monitor the temperature through your iOS or Android device.