 Generally, you have a choice of gas or charcoal. Here's food writer Jess Larson. She's the founder of Plays Well with Butter. A gas grill will preheat really quickly. And the beauty of a gas grill is that the machine kind of takes care of a lot of the guesswork for you. You just set the dials to whatever your recipe calls for, and it manages the temperatures. And that's why I think that for many beginner grillers, gas is a great place to start.