Upgrade your barbecue game with these handy grilling gadgets

Are these grilling gadgets useful or useless? You decide! Okay, we decided. But you are of course free to form your own opinion.

SLOTDOG Hot dog slicer

Because scoring hot dogs with a knife is no way for a person to live, dammit. This slicer has stainless-steel blades to cut a criss-cross pattern into your dog, allowing condiments to penetrate deeper. Your hot dog will taste more like ketchup and less like whatever is actually inside a hot dog. You don’t want to think about that. Useful-O-Meter: 5/10

Buy it: homehardware.ca, $29

Digital cooking thermometer with pager

Tell this gadget what protein you’re grilling and the desired doneness, and the thermometer will page you when the food is ready. Or when you’re needed in the ER. Useful-O-Meter: 8/10

Buy it: leevalley.com, $67

Lil’ Pig Pellet Grill

Does anyone’s next pellet grill need to be hot pink and shaped like a pig? Um, it does if they want to repurpose it as an obnoxious rural mailbox sometime in the future. Useful-O-Meter: 7/10

Buy it: traeger.com, $1,600

Small briefcase barbecue

Lawyers would be way happier if their briefcases were not filled with briefs and instead were filled with miniature charcoal grills. “You know what this pre-trial motion needs? A burger.” Useful-O-Meter: 4/10

Buy it: Kikkerland Portable BBQ Suitcase; amazon.ca, $40

BBQ branding iron for personalized grilling

With the entire alphabet at your disposal, you can brand your meat with all kinds of messages: “Happy Birthday” on a ribeye; “Where’s the beef?” on a pork chop; “Sorry that I overcooked this” on anything that you touch. Useful-O-Meter: 3/10

Buy it: amazon.ca, $2