Vent and chimney questions about Vortex

[Panhead John]

Ok guys, not to hijack Michael’s post, looks like his question was answered, but...I’m doing wings on my kettle tonight also. The accessories I have are the SnS, grill grates, the Weber charcoal baskets that came with it, and a rotisserie. My wings have always turned out pretty damn good, but not as crispy as I’d like. I don’t have the vortex....yet. Any suggestions how to get more crispy wings with what I got? Should I just spread the coals out evenly across the grate and grill above the coals? I should also mention most of the time I’ve marinated them before the cook. I know this adds to a less crispy skin, but I’m not marinating them tonight, just a rub.

[Jfrosty27]

I use the SnS with a load of thighs or lots of wings. Fill that sucker to the brim and get the coals screaming hot. Vents wide open. Put on the kettle lid. Meat on the indirect side. Very similar to the Vortex. Just not quite the same.

[Panhead John]

Thanks! That’s kinda the way I was leaning to. Fixing to light it now.

[Michael_in_TX]

Well, this did not go quite as I had planned.

So I foiled the lower grate, cut a hole for the vortex, and loaded an entire chimney of ashed-over coals into the vortex. (I didn't spill a single one!) I placed the cooking grate on top, arranged the chicken, and put some chunks of pecan right on top of the vortex. Both vents were wide open and the timer was set for 15 minutes.

Here's what we looked like right before the lid went on:



During the first fifteen minutes, the Kettle is putting out a decent amount of smoke. At the fifteen minute mark, I rotate the chicken pieces (getting some small flare-ups as I do so). Chicken is 120ish.

I set the timer for another fifteen minutes. After about ten minutes, I notice the Kettle is really putting out a lot of smoke. A LOT OF SMOKE. I take the lid off and I am nearly engulfed in a grease fire. There is so much fat that collected on the foil that it ignited and the flames are now 2-3 feet in the air! The entire surface of the foil is on fire!

I've never encountered this before, so I didn't exactly know what to do. What I did do is use some long-handled tongs to get the chicken off. Temping it, it was about 170, so I called this thing done. I put the lid back on and closed the top vent.

(Chicken turned out quite good, even though I generally like to cook it a bit more. Skin was mostly crispy. I've never had skin this good. Vortex does live up to the hype!)

Once the kettle cooled down, here is a photo of what remained. All the black is the charred remnants of that grease. Except for the bit of foil closest to the camera, it extends the entire way around the Vortex.



99% of the time I am doing boneless skinless chicken thighs as I can't get the skin crisp. What did I do wrong here? What could I have done to reduce the chances of such as fire? (I can't imagine these thighs were overly fatty or anything.) And what should I have done once I realized that I was facing such a fire?

[Red Man]

Putting the lid on probably would’ve put out the fire 🤷🏻‍♂️

[Michael_in_TX]

Didn't seem to. Based on the amount of smoke I was getting in the second fifteen minutes, the grease was on fire at that point, with the lid closed. When I opened the lid, the flames were very much going.

[Michael_in_TX]

In my mind, what appears to have happened is a combination of things. First, I had ten decently large chicken thighs on the kettle. Prior to using the vortex, I've never had my kettle's dome thermometer peg out at 600 before. It was crazy hot in there so all that fat from all this chicken rendered out quickly.

It was so much that when it pooled on the foil, some of it flowed along the foil underneath the vortex and onto the coals and ignited. I'm not sure what to do about that -- other than cook less chicken -- as the only alternative is to have all that fat collect on the bottom on the kettle bowl, which doesn't seem like much fun to clean out. Maybe I should have an "air moat" between the foil and the base of the vortex so that if fat does pool up to this extent, some of it can drain to the bottom the kettle and not ignite.

Next time, perhaps I should not rotate the chicken. I used tongs (as it was way to hot in there for gloves) and in doing so, necessarily squeezed the chicken, rendering out more fat. The grease fire did not occur until the second fifteen minutes, after I had rotated the chicken.

In any case, people cook chicken thighs with the vortex all the time on a kettle and do not have this problem. So I am definitely going to give this another go with the foil. I think I will try wings next, which are smaller and don't have as much fat.

[RichieB]

I don't think I've done thighs. Did breast but only 6 at a time. Wings a dozen plus. I think the vortex is really designed for wings. Maybe breasts. The breast cook turned out OK. Not a real difference maker. Now with wings, it has separated from any other method I've ever used to cook them. IMHO

[Red Man]

I’ve used it for thighs and legs many times. It works just as well as it does for wings.

[Red Man]

Hmm...I’ve cooked a lot of chicken parts on my kettle with the vortex. I’ve had some minor grease fires, but they went out as soon as the lid was put on.

[Michael_in_TX]

Something was indeed anomalous about this cook. I'm going to do less thighs next time (not sure why I did the entire package!) and perhaps fold up the lip of the foil so that the grease can't flow back towards the vortex.

[Rod]

I've done wings, thighs, legs and quarters and have never had an issue with grease fires. I do however trim the chunks of fat from the thighs and cut off excess skin. Maybe that reduces the amount of rendering enough to help prevent a grease fire?

[Michael_in_TX]

That may have contributed to it. I did some trimming, but these thighs had a lot of skin, wrapping over itself on a few.

[Michael_in_TX]

A curious and somewhat hilarious postscript to all of this. I do a lot of marinated chicken on the kettle and often forget to cover the bottom of the indirect side of the charcoal grate with foil. As such, over time, the easy-clean system has gotten really gunked up, so much that it was taking significant force to use it.

I did scrape down the sides of the kettle prior to using the vortex as (ironically) I didn't want any of that caked on grease to catch on fire.

Well, this afternoon I cleaned out the kettle. It does clearly look like the grease pooled up significantly and flowed back towards the coals. There was so much grease that some of it was still pooled up in a viscous sludge on the foil!

Here's the thing: when I went to use the easy-clean system, it moved effortlessly! Like it was brand new! The Vortex apparently got so hot that it incinerated all that gunk that was clogging the blades. I'll take it.

[TripleB]

I have a Vortex and love it. But I do things a bit different than what was posted previously.

1) Not big on skin when I grill because it is hard to render all the fat and not overcook the chicken. What I do if I want crispy skin is scrap off the fat and reattach the skin with tooth picks. Or I use breast skin - Less fat.
2) I don't use a full chimney of coals, nor keep my vents completely open. Just 1/2 chimney or less and 1/2 open or less on the vents. Still gets up to 400 degrees plus.

[klflowers]

I usually wrap the ends if the foil down around the edge of the charcoal grate. It looks like you had the foil kind of cupped up around the sides of the kettle making kind of a bowl. That would make kind of a bowl for the grease to pool in. I think if you wrap the foil around the edges of the grate the problem will go away.

[Michael_in_TX]

That is indeed the way how I had it set up. I'll wrap the foil around the edge of the lower grate next time.