Blackstone Bronco Open-Flame Grill Review: Bring Santa Maria-Style Grilling to the Backyard 

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The Blackstone Bronco open-flame grill is a unique offering on the charcoal grill landscape, and it’s quickly become one of my favorite ways to cook meat outdoors. This open-flame wood grill takes its design from traditional Santa Maria-style grills that originated in Southern California in the mid-19th century. Local vaqueros would host huge feasts to cap off a cattle roundup, cooking massive cuts of beef like tri-tip and thick-cut bone-in ribeyes on these open-flame grills.  

Best Open-Flame

Blackstone Bronco Open-Flame Grill

Rating: 4.5/5

Buy at Walmart

Photo: Walmart

What We Like

• Can raise and lower grate to control temperature
• Large cookbox
• Casters make it easy to move

What We Don’t Like

• Takes a long time to set up

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Product Specs

• 
  Cooking area:

  
  374 square inches

• 
  Fuel Type:

  
  Firewood, charcoal

• 
  Dimensions:

  
  56.4 inches long x 46 inches deep x 25.4 inches high

Setup and Fire-Building

While I couldn’t find any tri-tip cuts in North Carolina (you’ll typically only find this cut on the West Coast), I did manage to wrangle a 2-inch-thick ribeye for my first cook on the Bronco.  After assembling this grill, which took about 2 hours, I set about building a fire. You can use charcoal in the Bronco, but its large cookbox is really designed for burning full-size split logs. The entire front panel of the Bronco folds down to allow access to the cookbox for loading large logs. You can also burn the logs in Bronco’s brasero, which is a metal basket located on the side of the cookbox. As the wood burns, it creates embers that fall through the basket into the cookbox, which you then scrape under the cooking grate using the included coal rake. 

Either way, the process takes some time and requires more effort and patience to set up than standard charcoal grills. It took me upwards of an hour to burn four medium-size logs down to the coals and embers needed to grill meat. 

While the process was time-consuming, the cooking performance was impressive once I was able to start loading meat onto the grate. What makes this style of grill different from other charcoal or wood-burning grills is the ability to control temperature. The grate is suspended over a large cookbox by two wires that attach to a shaft and crank wheel. Turning the wheel raises and lowers the grate over the coals, which allows for precise temperature control. 

The Adjustable Grate System in Action

Anyone who grills as much as I do knows that the key to the perfect steak is achieving a hard crust that locks the juices into the meat. The Bronco’s adjustable grate makes it ideally designed for this task. Thanks to the adjustable grate system, I was able to position my steak within inches of embers and coals reaching over 1,200 degrees Fahrenheit. These are grilling temperatures typically reserved for high-end steakhouses. With that intense heat, I was able to achieve a beautiful dark crust on my ribeye. I then raised the grate, moving the steak away from the heat and into more moderate temperatures to finish it to a perfect medium-rare internal temperature. The result was a perfect, crisp crust and a juicy, warm pink center.

While the Bronco truly shines with steak, it was just as effective with foods that like lower temperatures, such as chicken thighs. For this cook, I kept the grate high, letting the chicken slowly render the fat while soaking up all that smoky flavor from the smoldering hardwood below. I then lowered the grates during the final minutes to crisp up the skin. With this ability to control temperature, I soon forgot about the long and tedious setup time. 

That said, if you’re looking for a grill that offers speed and convenience, the Blackstone Bronco open-flame grill isn’t it. But if you don’t mind the long setup time, the Bronco rewards you with a unique ability to control temperature that you simply won’t find with a traditional charcoal grill. 

Where to Buy

Buy at Walmart

Photo: Walmart

The post Blackstone Bronco Open-Flame Grill Review: Bring Santa Maria-Style Grilling to the Backyard  appeared first on Bob Vila.

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