Spider Grills Huntsman review: The only grill you’ll ever need
Spider Grills Huntsman: Specs
Price: $899
Weight: 155 pounds
Fuel source: Charcoal
Cooking area: 380 square inches
Temperature range: -20F to 700F+
Auto temp control range: 150F to 700F
App controllable: Yes
Materials: Carbon steel
If you’ve graduated from propane grills in the backyard and you’re looking for something more flavorful for your meats, you’re probably researching three main types of grills: wood-fired, pellet-fed, or charcoal. The Huntsman from Spider Grills falls into the last category, and it promises smoky flavors, consistent and even heat, and low-maintenance cooking.
It’s also a Kamado-style grill, which means it’s egg-shaped, and it’s intended to control temperature well and retain your meat’s moisture as it cooks. Although it’s worth noting that Kamado grills are usually made of ceramic, and the Huntsman is made from carbon steel. Those benefits should lend themselves well to ‘low and slow’ smoking.
In practice, it achieves those goals and then some. It’s beautifully built, with heavy-duty materials, and the Venom unit maintains cooking temperatures impressively well. The app is generally easy to use, too, and stoking and feeding the coals is simple thanks to a well-designed fire port that allows you to tend the fire without lifting the main lid.
I love the Huntsman for grilling meats and getting a good sear. Everything I cooked ended up with a rich, smoky flavor, too. It’s one of the best grills I’ve tested for straight-up grilling.
As a smoker, it proves equally adept. This is a truly versatile grill that surprised me with its ability to both grill and smoke without compromising one or the other.
Spider Grills Huntsman review: Price and availability
The Huntsman costs $899 and is available for purchase now through Spider Grills’ website.
A 3-year limited warranty is included with purchase.
Spider Grills Huntsman review: Design
I tend to be sensitive to unnecessary and environmentally harmful packaging, and the Huntsman came ensconced in just that. That said, the packages it came in did get well roughed up during shipping, but there was not a scratch on the unit itself. Still, much of that packaging could have easily been swapped out for recyclable materials.
Once I unboxed, unbagged, and sorted all the parts, it took about an hour to assemble the Huntsman. The instructions are very clear and easy to follow. Spider Grills even includes some nice tools to help the build process along quickly.
On top of that, Spider Grills also includes a seasoning kit that includes a wax and oil-based seasoning, an application sponge, and a cleaning brush. That’s a nice touch I haven’t seen with any other grills.
Once assembled, the Huntsman feels very obviously stout and stable. It’s built from 5 mm-thick carbon steel, so it’s quite heavy and burly. It’s made to withstand years of regular use, not to mention high heat from cooking.
Unlike traditional Kamado-style grills, the Huntsman is not made from ceramic. That 5mm thick carbon steel is what makes the grill so burly, and Spider Grills says that it’s efficient at holding heat and creating an ideal cooking environment for low and slow barbecuing. It’s weather-resistant too, thanks to an exterior coating.
The Venom temperature control unit sits beneath the main body. This temperature controller manages the heat of your charcoal once it’s lit. This is also where you’ll plug in both the kettle heat probe and any meat probes you plug into the two available slots.
The bright and easy-to-read screen gives you the set temperature, current temperature, meat temps from the probes, timers, and any other relevant info you’ll need during cooking. Behind the screen, you’ll find both a vent handle and the ash pan handle. The ash pan releases easily to help you clean up quickly once you’re done cooking.
My test unit came with two different cooking grates. One is similar to the typical steel grates you find in most grills. I positioned this low in the kettle, just over the charcoal. And there’s also a stouter, flat steel grate with cutouts that’s ideal at the top of the kettle. You can use this for searing, and I used it for smoking as well.
There are two ways to open the kettle: The traditional hinged lid, and a front access door. This gives you two different ways to tend to your fire as well as the food you’re cooking. The lid secures closed with a latch, and the front door secures closed with a door-handle-style lever.
A small storage shelf beneath the Venom unit gives you a bit of space to store some cooking supplies, but it’s not a lot of real estate. And the whole works rolls on three stout, lockable casters. Finally, Spider Grills includes a tool that allows you to move charcoal around within the kettle. It hangs off the side of the Kettle when not in use.
Spider Grills Huntsman review: Grilling performance
Before using the Huntsman for the first time, it’s necessary to season the grill to burn off any oils, debris, or chemicals left over from manufacturing or shipping. This is the case with pretty much any grill you’re going to buy, but the Huntsman has a nice perk: it includes a seasoning kit that includes a wax and oil seasoning, a pad applicator, and cleaning brush.
Seasoning took about an hour; just spread the seasoning mix on the interior of the grill, get a good bed of coals going, and maintain a high temperature — around 400 degrees should do it — for 45 minutes to an hour.
Then you’re ready to cook. You should season your grill periodically; timing changes depending on how frequently you use your grill.
For my first cooking session with the Huntsman grill, I prepped a NY Strip steak for dinner. The grill doesn’t have any automatic starting system, which is fine by me as those tend to be finicky anyway. So I loaded a chimney with charcoal and let it burn to get a good bed of coals going.
Once the coals are in the Huntsman, the Venom unit takes over. It regulates the temperature within the grill by engaging and disengaging a fan. While I wouldn’t say the temperature stayed as consistent as it does with a pellet grill, which uses a constant fuel source, the Huntsman stayed within a reasonable range. I had to throw a few more pieces of lump charcoal on top of the bed of coals before throwing the steak on, but otherwise it’s a pretty low-maintenance affair.
Once I had the coals going, I put the cooking grates in. The lower grate is a good choice if you want your food very close to the heat source. The upper grate is better for low and slow cooking. The upper grate sits within a metal frame with handles, so you can pull it out of the way if you need to (using fire gloves, of course).
I cooked my steak at around 500 degrees on the upper grate. The Venom unit kept the temperature mostly consistent, within 5 to 10 degrees of variation. Best of all, I didn’t have to keep checking the fire to ensure it was still going, or otherwise dying out. The Venom does all the work.
My steak came out wonderfully, and I seared it for a few seconds on either side on the lower grate. I overcooked it just slightly (I usually prefer medium rare, but this came out more medium), but that has more to do with my gut: I left the steak on even after the probe within the meat reached my desired temperature.
My one complaint during my first use is the handle latch. It’s difficult to raise the lid with one hand, because you have to simultaneously push downward on the handle and release the latch. It’s a secure way to keep the lid closed, but I found it cumbersome.
Spider Grills Huntsman review: Smoking performance
Most of my meat smoking up until recently was done in an offset smoker. That means the firebox is offset from the cooking box, so the meats do not get any direct heat. The Huntsman’s heat source is directly below the meat, so I was worried about the meat drying out as it cooked.
But that fear turned out to be unfounded. I set the Venom’s temperature right around 200 degrees and smoked a NY Strip for about an hour. I popped in a probe and waited for the meat’s internal temperature to reach 165 degrees.
But it never reached 165 degrees, even after an hour of smoking. So I let it stay on an extra ten minutes. I wish I hadn’t; those last ten minutes or so overcooked the steak slightly. I don’t know if the probe was giving me an incorrect reading (165 degrees internally should usually get you a medium rare finish), or if perhaps I just made a false assumption that the desired temperature would give me a medium rare steak. Either way, the steak came out medium, headed toward well done.
It was still quite delicious, though. And I gave it a quick sear on the lower grate for a little bit of crust. Had I pulled it off ten or fifteen minutes earlier, I would have had myself a perfect steak. All that is to say that there’s a learning curve here, just as there is with any new grill.
Next time, I’ll set the temperature a bit lower and perhaps smoke for a little less time. But I’m very pleased with the smoky flavor and the ease with which I was able to smoke the meat with so little effort.
Traeger Woodridge Pro review: App
During all of my cooking sessions with the Huntsman, I used the Spider Grills app to control the Venom unit. The app is easy to use and pretty intuitive. It gives you all the information to make the best decisions while cooking, and it’s also easy to make adjustments on the fly. Importantly, Spider Grills includes a pause function, which you should definitely engage before you lift the lid of the Huntsman. Otherwise, you might find yourself in a tornado of ash.
The only complaint I have about the app is its intermittency. If you minimize the app on your phone or don’t look at it for several minutes, the app needs to re-connect to the Venom. Sometimes that happens instantly; sometimes it goes on for as long as 20 seconds. And sometimes, you need to close the app entirely and reconnect again. It’s not a huge deal, but if you have to do it over and over again during your cooking session — if you’re smoking meats, that can take hours — it becomes pretty tiresome to sit through the reconnection process.
How does it compare?
Kamado Joe’s Kettle Joe offers about the same amount of cooking space as the Huntsman, and it’s also made of steel — though the Kettle Joe is ceramic-coated. It costs $500, which is far less expensive than the Huntsman. But the Kettle Joe does not feature an auto thermostat like the Huntsman’s Venom, so you’ll have to manually tend to your fire.
Other Kamado style competitors include the very well-known Big Green Egg. This ceramic cooker is well regarded as one of the best Kamados out there, but it’s also very expensive at $1,149. It doesn’t come with any accessories, so you’ll have to buy those extra. You can control the temperature using air flow systems, but these are manual, unlike the automatic Venom.
Spider Grills Huntsman review: Verdict
The Huntsman is an impressive Kamado-style grill and smoker. The Venom unit really makes it easy to smoke and grill meats without having to babysit a fire. And the 5mm thick carbon steel construction is burly, making it ideal for years of use. I found the temperature stability to be quite good, though not as precise as something like a pellet smoker. But it was within a reasonable temperature range that I felt comfortable leaving it be to do the cooking.
It’s spacious inside, with plenty of real estate to cook for big crowds on the multi-level grates. And the front access door is a nice touch to make it easy to tend to food on both levels, or to simply attend to the charcoal.
Overall, the Huntsman is an excellent grill and smoker. Once you get the coals going, the process is as close to set-it-and-forget-it as you can get. While the app is a little finicky, it serves its function well for most grilling, though you may find it annoying if you’re smoking meats all day. Otherwise, there’s not much to dislike about the Huntsman.
