Ditch the smoke and take the cook-off indoors with these best smokeless grills.
Smokeless grills are a great alternative to smoke-billowing charcoal or propane cookers if you want to get that iconic sear and char in your indoor space.
Using electricity as their heat source, these grills produce much less smoke than their outdoor counterparts. Armed with an array of drip trays, lids, and funnels, these grills greatly reduce the buildup of grease and fat that we see lead to flare-ups and excess smoke.
Purists might sniff, but these indoor grills are still capable of producing the types of grill marks and char that you’d want from a grill. Sure, they don’t match the real thing, but these are one heck of an alternative for apartments and small living spaces.
We’ve tested five of the best to see how they perform in terms of temperature control, smoke reduction, and even their ability to leave a good sear on meat. If you need something for your indoor space, you’ve come to the right place.
At a Glance: Our Top 3 Smokeless Grills
- Best Smokeless Grill: Philips Smokeless Indoor HD6370/91
1600 watts of cooking power sit behind this elite indoor electric grill. Made with die-cast aluminum and a non-stick surface, the HD6370 is built to last for years. - Runner-Up: Gotham Steel Electric GSISGM
Infrared technology and an efficient grease system make this grill entirely smokeless without compromising on cooking performance. - Best Budget Option: Hamilton Beach Electric Indoor
Able to reach 450°F for meat searing and with a large grate area, there is plenty to enjoy here. Impressive durability and a robust build make the Hamilton Beach superb value for money.
Philips Smokeless Indoor HD6370/91
The Philips HD6370 boasts impressive features for indoor grilling. Its 1600 watts delivers high heat (up to 450°F) for searing and even cooking, with a quick heat-up time (it only took 5-10 minutes in our tests).
The key to this excellent heat performance is its infrared cooking technology. Similar to what we see in infrared grills, Philips has managed to harness this cooking power for a more modest indoor unit. This means higher quality grilling, less splattering, and ultimately less mess.
The grill’s heat performance does come at a cost, however, with the grill costing more than most of its competitors. However, if you have room to splash out a bit, then you can’t go wrong with this grill.
What We Liked
- Temperature Performance: Powerful and quick heating for searing and fast cooking.
- Infrared Tech: Infrared beams help reduce splatter and mess.
- Easy Cleaning: Non-stick surface minimizes oil usage and is easy to clean.
- Keep-Warm Function: Helps to hold the meat at a safe temperature until you’re ready to serve.
What We Didn’t Like
- Price Range: Potentially on the pricier side compared to other smokeless grills.
- Size: Measuring about 21 inches in length, this might cause some storage issues if you have limited space.
Key Information
- Power: 1600 W
- Maximum Temperature: 450°F (230°C)
- Cooking Area: 307 square inches
- Features: Drip tray, removable parts, non-stick surface
Gotham Steel Electric GSISGM
Gotham Steel’s Electric grill comes in at a close second, and it’s easy to see why it’s so highly regarded. With a large cooking space of 240 square inches and non-stick ceramic surface, it’s big and versatile enough to satisfy anyone after a good smokeless cooker.
It features smokeless technology to help reduce flare-ups and waste. Its heated grilling grates allow you to cook oil-free while generating heated grates that are up to the job.
Its grates are ceramic coated, which helps the Gotham Steel to deliver an evenly heated cooking surface. This same non-stick surface makes this portable grill easy to clean up after, as well as its drip pan for catching greasy run-off. This helps to funnel dirty oil away from the food to reduce smoke and unhealthy build-up on your food.
George Foreman Indoor/Outdoor
The George Foreman brand is familiar to millions, and their Indoor/Outdoor grill is one of the best examples why. It’s a versatile unit that performs superbly on a range of meats, fish, and vegetables.
It’s one of the biggest smokeless grills on this list, boasting a huge 1500 square inches of cooking space. This makes it the best suited to outdoor use of all the grills on this list.
The Indoor/Outdoor‘s cooking performance is equally impressive. It features angled plates to help aid in funneling fat and grease away from food, and into its integrated drip trays. The heat retention and distribution on the George Foreman is just as remarkable. We didn’t note any significant hot spots during use, and the chicken breasts we tested on it were evenly seared and cooked through.
Its non-stick plates can be taken out (making it one of our picks for best grills with removable plates) and are non-stick, so post-cooking cleanup isn’t a chore. Just as important, its built to be corrosion and rust resistant, so this unit will last you for years.
Power XL Smokeless Electric Indoor
The Power XL has space in abundance, while still being portable and lightweight enough to cater for use on the road. It packs in awesome cooking power. The GR 200-5 iteration of the range has 1500 watts of cooking power, allowing it to ramp up to a maximum searing temperature of 450°F.
Just like all good smokeless appliance, it has a non-stick griddle hot plate and a drip tray for grease run-off. The ribbed design features hold to help keep your food free of oil build up.
Easy to clean, powerful, and large. What’s not to love?
Hamilton Beach Electric Indoor
With the Hamilton Breach, you can now grill quality and healthy food for the whole family. It features a large grate area to cook food for eight people. It measures about 43cm by 30 cm. Besides this, the compact appliance also has a high power output rated at 1200W and the temperature can reach up to 240-degrees. This makes it ideal for cooking different dishes depending on the recommended temperature. Some of the dishes that you can cook on the grill include vegetables, steaks, and sausages among others.
It includes eight grill spatulas that are ideal for the non-stick surfaces. Moreover, it has up to eight color-coded mini raclette pans. With this, you can easily tell pans that contains their sauce or sides.
The durable build of the Hamilton Beach makes it great for long-term use. It is very strong and corrosion resistant grill. The cleaning is easy thanks to the non-stick cooking area plus removable parts. You can easily clean the grates since the food won’t stick on the surfaces. It has an adjustable temperature control for cooking a wide range of dishes. You just need to dial the required cooking temperature to cook delicious foods. The smokeless grill also cooks very healthy foods since it can separate the fat from foods. It also features the fat and grease dripping tray that collects all the fat from the food.
Hot Shot Indoor Electric
The Hot Shot is an indoor smokeless grill with a sleek appearance that’s bound to win over an army of new fans. While it’s cooking surface is a bit smaller than some of the others on this list (14 by 8 inches), it comes with two interchangeable surfaces that can be removed and swapped for one another. One surface is non-stick grates to replicate good BBQ grilling, while the other is a griddle surface to help you match the cooking from flat top grills.
It has a drip tray included so you won’t get any nasty, fatty run-off. This will help prevent smoke, while also making your clean-up operation a lot simpler after you’re done.
Simple Living Advanced Indoor
It’s not hard to see why the Simple Living grill is so popular.
It’s built upon infrared burners, which are fantastic for distributing heat efficiently and evenly. It also has built-in reflectors, allowing it to squeeze everything it can out of its 1600-watt power capacity.
These reflectors work by directing infrared heat towards the grill surface, saving energy waste. They also double up by reducing oil run-off and the nasty smoke that can lead to.
It has an easy-to-use, non-stick surface that covers about 110 square inches, which is enough to serve about 4-6 people.
Any negatives? My gripe would be that it doesn’t have a temperature dial control, meaning that it can only really cook at 446°F. Perfectly fine if you’re directly grilling, but it doesn’t leave room for much else.
It’s a small, easy-to-use appliance that does high temperature searing efficiently. The use of infrared burners and reflector plates should be applauded. It’s just a little bit disappointing that it doesn’t offer much flexibility beyond this.
Techwood Smokeless Grill
Further to the reflector plate technology that is so crucial to the design of smokeless grills, this model from Techwood has an airflow and fan system that aids the distribution of heat to even greater level. This helps make the most of its 1500-watt cooking power.
At 135 square inches, its cooking surface area is on the small side, although is still enough for a group of 4 people.
It has a temperature range of 220°F to 450°F, allowing you to cook and sear food over direct heat well.
It also has a built-in overload protection system, which automatically switches the grill off once its internal temperature threshold has been hit.
ChefWave Smokeless Indoor
ChefWave’s indoor grill has managed to reduce smoke by up to 80%, which is impressive considering the unit’s impressive cooking area size. The stainless steel grates sit over infrared burners, which helps ensure solid heat distribution.
This unit is all about the add-ons though. It comes with a fish basket, kebab set, and rotisserie set to give you the choice of a whole range of cooking approaches. Despite being quite small in size, the rotisserie can hold enough weight to cook a 6-pound chicken.
The grate sits above a drip tray to catch any excess run-off from your grilled meat, while the infrared burns help to reduce smoke. The grates are removable to help easy clean-up, so that its pristine enough to reduce any unnecessary smoke.
All of this sits over a powerful 1780-watt grill for quick heat-up, so you’re ready to go in no time. It has adjustable controls so you can tweak cooking temperatures in line with what you need.
The rotisserie motor is a little on the loud side, but beyond that this is a pretty flawless smokeless grill that offers plenty of flexibility and features.
Tenergy Redigrill Infrared
The Tenergy Redigrill is an excellent indoor cooker that ensures excellent heat distribution for perfectly cooked meat.
It can reach a maximum cooking temperature of 446°F, and it can typically do this within 5-6 minutes of turning it on.
Its burners are powered by infrared burners, which helps the grill to make the most of energy efficiency as well as reducing smoke by up to 80%. These heat the food directly, and not the air around it. It also means that food is cooked more evenly, significantly reducing the likelihood of hot spots across the cooking surface.
The Tenergy’s real weakness is its ability to sear. That means it’s more limited when cooking chicken breasts or steak, and even weaker if you want to use more advanced techniques like reverse searing. That aside, it’s a perfectly great grill for vegetables and other meats.
It has removable plates to make cleaning easier for the griddle top and grease trap, as well as giving you flexibility to use other grill inserts.
GoWISE USA GW88000 2-in-1
GoWise have been better known for their air fryer appliances, but this first foray into home grilling is a solid effort.
It can reach a maximum cooking temperature of 482°F, which compares well to its peers. It doesn’t have infrared burners, so sometimes cooking consistency can be a little unreliable. However, for something fuss-free that’s easy to use and clean, there aren’t many better than the GoWise.
Armed with non-stick removable grill and griddle surfaces, this thing is built with the clean-up operation in mind. All the removable parts are dishwasher safe, and should only need one go-through. Its compact design means that it’s easy to store away without dominating your kitchen cupboard space.
Benefits of Using Smokeless Grills
Smokeless cooking is one of the best ways to grill safely and healthily. Here are some of the main advantages of investing in a smokeless appliance.
Healthy Cooking
Drip tray inserts found in smokeless are designed to divert grease and liquid fat away from your food as it cooks. This separation helps to reduce flare-ups across the appliance surface, and stop your meat from cooking in its own grease run-off.
The non-stick cooking surfaces also mean that you don’t need to use cooking oil, allowing the food to cook cleanly and healthily.
Ideal for Indoor and Outdoor Use
Unlike traditional propane or charcoal models, smokeless grills are powered by simple electricity. This means that they are safe to use indoors, and also easy to take on the road for easy campfire or tailgate grilling.
Easy to Clean
Non-stick surfaces make these units easy to clean, as well as the drip trays that collect grease and fat while you use them. Many of them also have removable plates, allowing you to run them through the dishwasher. All the smokeless grills have non-stick surfaces, which makes them easier to clean.
How to Clean a Smokeless Grill
You will need to clean your smokeless grill regularly to preserve its non-stick ceramic or aluminum grates and maintain good performance. Luckily, many electric grills have plates built upon on incline to help direct grease into a drip pan. This makes cleaning a lot easier.
If your grill has removable plates, wait for your appliance to cool down before trying to take them off. Submerge the plates in hot soapy water for a few minutes to help dislodge any stuck-on debris or leftover food. Use a non-abrasive sponge to clean away any remaining cooked-on food or grease. Set the plates to one side on a rack and leave them to dry. Once dry, put them back on the grill.
If your grill has non-removable plates, this can be a little bit difficult but there is a simple hack we can use to get around it. After you have finished using the grill and before it has cooled down, take a sheet of aluminum foil and place it face-down on the grates. Unplug the grill and allow it to cool with the foil on it. Once it has cooled, remove the foil. This should help remove some (if not most) of the leftover food or grease. After this, use a non-abrasive sponge and soapy water to remove any other excess dirt.
