Going to do some comparison cooking this Thanksgiving

I've done a comparison of all of these. As well as traditional baked and smoked a turkey on my green egg
My char broil oil less fryer produced the best turkey in my opinion

I like my roasted turkey in my oven best and I can't quite get it where I like it on my egg. I do have the electric char broil which I bought because we normally travel for Thanksgiving and I would bring it along, set on the porch and let it go. It works well but it does cook fast. I've done a dozen in it and each time I always get it done too early.

Didn't want to wag a bunch of propane so I stuck with electric. I also got tired of the mess of frying so I only eat them if someone does it for me.

Okay, sorry but totally forgot to take pictures.

We assembled them last Sunday afternoon. The Butterball was much easier to put together and had very few screws and nuts involved. We did a test run that day with two chickens. Then on T-day we did a turkey in each and also fried one with oil.

The Butterball has to preheat whereas the propane gets started after the meat is in. It probably took 20 to 30 minutes for the BB to heat up to cooking temperature. The birds in the BB would rise in temperature faster where the CB would lag behind but the CB finished first both days with a strong push towards the end of the race. The chickens - between 5 and 6 pounds - took 1 hour 28 minutes in the CB to get to 168 degrees and the BB took 1 hour 33 minutes.

Both had very good end results. The BB cooks with the glass lid on the whole time so the outside of the chicken and turkey were not browned quite as much as I would have liked. We did rub olive oil on the turkey so it browned a little better. The meat was very tender and moist for both the chicken and turkey.

The Char-Broil propane cooker browns just like as if you had fried in oil. I never put the wire mesh lid on because the chicken and turkey both browned like crazy and it is my understanding that the lid is only to brown the meat towards the end of cooking. The meat was also moist, tender, and tasty. Not quite as moist or tender as the BB but I preferred the way way it looked better.

In my opinion if I could only have one it would probably be the Char-Broil. One of the reasons would be the portability. As long as you have propane you can take it anywhere. The other is just because it browns better.

The ultimate would be if the cooking baskets were interchangeable in these two devices. You could could get the moist and tender of the electric BB and the browning of the propane CB if you could easily just switch the basket and contents between the two units while cooking.

There was one thing that was noticed entirely by accident. This may have to do the the "Tru Infrared" claim on the Char-Broil. In the process of assembling the unit we unboxed and set the pieces on a table. After putting on the four legs there were a quite a few screws and nuts remaining(unlike the Butterball). While reaching for the instruction booklet to investigate the abundance of leftover hardware my friend exclaimed "OW, WTF !!!". I asked what the problem was and he said the cooking chamber had burned him. I didn't know what to think but I reached out and touched it and that damn thing was very hot on both sides from sitting in the sun for only about 10 minutes.

During the summer in Louisiana or Texas on a sunny day you may be able to get the thing up to cooking temperature without the propane. Just put the cooking chamber and food in the direct sunlight.