I am now more than ever convinced that the briquettes available in SA are not something I want to use as a fuel when smoking meat or grilling.
There are a lot of folk these parts that agree with me but their reference is live fire grilling and it doesn’t taint the meat as much as when smoking. Frozen Smoke suggested I use a burn barrel for wood coals to use in the kettle.
I gave it a bash with a rack of spare ribs and these are my observations.
I got the kettle to run at around 270F that was okay by me and after re-loads spiked to around 300F and come back down to 270F.
I guess if I fiddled with the vents and coal load could have run lower but was happy with 270.
I added more coals when the temp dipped to 250F and was dropping kind of steadily, maybe if I had left it might have settled somewhere at the 225 to 240 range for a while?
I was impressed with the stretch in- between re-loads around 1 hour and after the third load of coals the kettle dialled into 250F.
The timing of adding logs to the burn barrel so you have coals ready when needed, is a challenge and you can end up burning a lot more wood than actually needed.
The type of wood I used today burnt down to coals fairly quickly aided by being in an open pit.
Better usage of wood was achieved as the cook progressed but made sure there was if needed.
Irrespective of the above, the amount of wood that I burnt in-between re-loads is burning more wood than you would in a stick burner. That’s telling me something.
Like I mentioned I didn’t want to run short of coals so I ended up burning about 10 pounds in total.
I had expected to add a lot more than the 5 times.
It was time consuming making sure there were coals available when needed.
Wasn’t necessary to fiddle with the vents something I envisaged I’d have to do.
I took advantage of the flames from the fire to clean some of my grids.
Overall I will use the burn barrel way whenever possible.
And I got to use my Santa Claws
My gasser gives clean a good clean smokiness but Wood Smoked meat just tastes so much better.
There are a lot of folk these parts that agree with me but their reference is live fire grilling and it doesn’t taint the meat as much as when smoking. Frozen Smoke suggested I use a burn barrel for wood coals to use in the kettle.
I gave it a bash with a rack of spare ribs and these are my observations.
I got the kettle to run at around 270F that was okay by me and after re-loads spiked to around 300F and come back down to 270F.
I guess if I fiddled with the vents and coal load could have run lower but was happy with 270.
I added more coals when the temp dipped to 250F and was dropping kind of steadily, maybe if I had left it might have settled somewhere at the 225 to 240 range for a while?
I was impressed with the stretch in- between re-loads around 1 hour and after the third load of coals the kettle dialled into 250F.
The timing of adding logs to the burn barrel so you have coals ready when needed, is a challenge and you can end up burning a lot more wood than actually needed.
The type of wood I used today burnt down to coals fairly quickly aided by being in an open pit.
Better usage of wood was achieved as the cook progressed but made sure there was if needed.
Irrespective of the above, the amount of wood that I burnt in-between re-loads is burning more wood than you would in a stick burner. That’s telling me something.
Like I mentioned I didn’t want to run short of coals so I ended up burning about 10 pounds in total.
I had expected to add a lot more than the 5 times.
It was time consuming making sure there were coals available when needed.
Wasn’t necessary to fiddle with the vents something I envisaged I’d have to do.
I took advantage of the flames from the fire to clean some of my grids.
Overall I will use the burn barrel way whenever possible.
And I got to use my Santa Claws
My gasser gives clean a good clean smokiness but Wood Smoked meat just tastes so much better.
Comment