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It seems like everyone has their own family grilling secret. Maybe it’s as simple as throwing a special spice in with your salt rub, maybe it’s a local meat or vegetable provider that you’re torn between bragging about at cookouts and bragging about how you’ll never tell anyone who attends your cookouts, or maybe it’s a five-figure outdoor cooking apparatus with a built-in TV next to the pool at your Hamptons getaway. To each his own.
My family secret is relatively fresh, having been passed down from my own father to myself, and it’s attainable for Weber charcoal purists and millionaire backyard barbecue hosts alike: a $25 skillet from Home Depot.
I’m talking about the Revelry Cooking Skillet from Nexgrill, which is curiously only available at the home improvement store (my dad picked one up in person a couple summers ago). It’s an odd little bugger, and not really a skillet, but actually a 12-inch stainless steel basket with a detachable handle, which, as we’ll see, is as crucial as the perforation. Yes, this sucker is chock-full of holes, too.
If you’ve never seen one before in all your years of grilling, why do you need one now? For all the food you’re worried about falling through the grates — from carrots and Brussels sprouts to fish and shrimp — you may have previously grabbed your trusty cast-iron skillet or done the old aluminum-foil smoker-packet trick. The Revelry Skillet acts as a better alternative to both of those, because it’s much lighter than the cast iron at 1.76 pounds (and that’s including the handle) and you don’t have to toss it after one use like the foil. But thanks to the handle which can be detached and reattached easily, you can both toss your oily, seasoned, grilled goodies around while the grill is open or remove the handle and leave the basket underneath the hood to acquire all the smoky goodness.
That basket is the real star of the show here. Thanks to the dozens of holes punched in the stainless steel, your food is open to the flames instead of insulated from it, so whatever you’ve plopped inside gets the same char as your burgers, cobs of corn and other on-grate provisions. You think that roasted cauliflower recipe of yours is good in the oven? Try it on the grill in this pan and get back to me.
The one issue here is that the Nexgrill option (a brand without much name recognition) seems a little odd, and buying it from Home Depot seems even odder. But what’s really odd to me is that no one else seems to have a pan that can match this one. Made In has a slick carbon steel grill pan, but the handle isn’t detachable so you can’t leave it in the closed grill (unless you have a truly massive grill and some industrial-strength oven mitts) and the holes don’t extend up the sides. BK Grilling has a model that fixes the problem with the holes, but keeps the annoying permanent handle. Over on Amazon you can pick up an even more affordable $15 grill skillet from Outset, which includes a detachable handle, but the connection point is a little more finicky as you have to hook the holes on the basket whereas the Nexgrill model is a simple, sturdy slot-and-go affair.
So trust me (well, my dad) and get the Nexgrill Revelry Skillet. Up to you on whether you tell your buddies where you got it.
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