Review: Cuisinart Propel+ 3-in-1 Grill, Griddle, Pizza Oven

I'm at the pizza oven. I'm at the burger grill. I'm at the combination pizza oven and burger grill.

Oh, and did I mention I'm also at the griddle? And at the, uh, gas burner? The new, hulking Cuisinart Propel+ 3-in-1 on my back patio is one of those unholy Franken-cookers that always seem like wonderful and terrible ideas at the same time. They fill you with both envy and suspicion.

The Propel+ is on the one hand a honking big but basically standard four-burner grill with two side tables. But flip up the lid on one of those side tables and you'll find a fifth burner beneath a cast-iron griddle big enough for a sextet of burgers or pancakes. Beneath the griddle, the gas burner is also set up so it could heat a pot of sauce if you need it.

But the coup de grâce, and the bête noire—and probably some Italian words, too—is the pizza oven. Instead of the usual grill-top, the lid on this four-burner grill is instead shaped into the somewhat squat segmental arch of a stainless steel pizza oven, complete with a smoked-glass oven door. Also included is a 15-inch cordierite pizza stone, complete with a wrought-iron mounting bracket that'll affix it to the top of the grill.

Damn, that's a good idea—one that seems like it should already exist. But very few comparable devices do. Cue covetousness, and suspicion.

An Argument for Grill Pizza

I had to dial back my ambitions and follow Cuisinart's own directions, which advise pizza chefs to keep the stone below 700, as measured by an infrared thermometer. When all else fails, read the manual, I guess. This is a limitation that appalled my editor, who was the first-line editor and tester for a quite lovely pizza book.

“Then what's the point of having a pizza oven like that?” she responded.

But these middle temperatures—higher than a home oven, but lower than some southern Italians would respect—are the terrain of a lot of American pizzerias. The Propel+ can make some quite lovely pies in this range. These temps are also a lot more forgiving for home pizza chefs prone to hesitation about “how done is done.”

I'll get the suspense out of the way. You absolutely can make a pizza you'll be proud of with this Cuisinart Propel+.

It took a few failed attempts, however, in part because I was lured away by false temptation. This Cuisinart is a monster: a 44,000-BTU grill that can heat to 600 degrees Fahrenheit in 10 minutes with the lid down, and crest 700 in 10 or 15 more. With everything on high, this thing draws enough juice to drain a 20-pound propane tank in less than 10 hours. The side griddle adds 11,000 more BTUs.

With burners at max, you can also heat up the cordierite pizza stone north of 800 degrees. At that point, we're near Neapolitan pizza territory. Or so I hoped. But alas, it was not to be. The middle burners under the pizza stone will indeed superheat the stone. But ambient oven temp won't get quite high enough, topping out below 750 degrees. Unless you turn the middle burners down to medium, you'll scorch the pizza's bottom before cooking the top.

I had to dial back my ambitions and follow Cuisinart's own directions, which advise pizza chefs to keep the stone below 700, as measured by an infrared thermometer. When all else fails, read the manual, I guess. This is a limitation that appalled my editor, who was the first-line editor and tester for a quite lovely pizza book.

“Then what's the point of having a pizza oven like that?” she responded.

But these middle temperatures—higher than a home oven, but lower than some southern Italians would respect—are the terrain of a lot of American pizzerias. The Propel+ can make some quite lovely pies in this range. These temps are also a lot more forgiving for home pizza chefs prone to hesitation about “how done is done.”

With the middle burners on medium and the stone and oven around 675 degrees Fahrenheit, I got nice results on my crust after a four-minute cook: browned and airy and crisp, less leopard-spotted than char-scuffed. I added some local spring onions and asparagus I cooked on the side griddle, and declared my entire Wednesday a success.

My next pizza, which stuck a bit to my pizza peel while launching and cooked in the shape of a sailor's knot, was also delicious. Bless an oven with a little forgiveness.

The Side Heat

But a word on that griddle. It's cast iron, with a high-powered propane burner very close underneath it.

Cast iron has all sorts of lovely qualities in cooking, but fast and even heat distribution isn't really one of them. Which is to say, even while you're seasoning this griddle, you'll notice that the circle of metal over the burner is a lot hotter than other spots on the iron surface. And hot means hot: more than 600 degrees, with the gas on high.

This unevenness poses a challenge while seasoning—it's easy to completely smoke off all the oil over the burner before it even has a chance to set, while the sides haven't even reached their smoke point. Be gentle, and keep the heat below high at first, even though Cuisinart recommends you season at full blast. When all else fails, ignore the manual.

You'll nonetheless be grateful for that hot, hot heat while reverse-searing a steak you'd cooked at lower temps on the grill, or when making smashburgers according to the recipe from J. Kenji Lopez-Alt: This involves bricking down little 2-ounce pucks into a browned blanket of meat, at high heats difficult to attain indoors. But otherwise, you'll probably do a lot of cooking on medium.

The Bits and Bobs

Now, on to the trouble spots. First among them, some parts on the Propel+ are sturdy and some parts are flimsy. You notice this during assembly, which takes a couple hours if you're solo. (Cuisinart recommends two people, and an organized pair might be able to clear this out in an hour.) But all in all, it's pretty intuitive, with solid video instructions to supplement the manual.

But a couple hours is enough time to count the trouble spots, like a thin grease pan that's gonna get all warped, I just know it. The flame shields above the burners aren't affixed and so can clatter around when you move the grill. Also, the knobs are bad. While it doesn't happen often, the knobs can slip a quarter-rotation on their pegs when you turn them against resistance. This means you might turn your knob to what you think is the off position, only to discover the burner's not off. Bad news. You'll have to pull off the knob, squint at the peg, then reaffix the knob in the proper position.

This Cuisinart also takes about three cooks before you end up with little scorches on the stainless steel—around the glass of the pizza lid, at the edge of the griddle, on the heat shields—that may never leave you. If you're a clean-machine person, this may drive you batty.

One more thing: The propane system's a little tetchy. As a safety feature common to Cuisinarts, the Propel+ 3-in-1 squelches the gas output if you turn your propane knob too fast while opening it up, leaving you wondering if you're low on gas. You're not. To fix this, turn everything off and close up the gas, then start again, but turn the valve slowly. No eagerness around the Cuisinart, please.

Knobs aside, these are mostly quirks. But they do add up, little this-and-thats that end up affecting how much you love your machine. The Propel's unexpected versatility will make this trade-off more than acceptable for most—and if its price isn't low, it also isn't high.

The ability to both griddle and grill at the same time is convenient. Not having to buy a separate griddle-top is convenient. Cooking toppings next to your pizza oven is convenient, and so is having a built-in workspace—something most home pizza ovens lack. Neither the pizza oven, nor the griddle, nor the grill is the best of their kind. But taken all together, this pizza grill is the rare combination cooker that's more than the sum of its parts. While I might wish for a better-built version, for now it does not seem to exist.