I started with a generic POS offset from Lowes. The food was pretty good (Select steaks from the local grocery store) but I wanted more. I took a couple of classes offered by CBBQA and decided I didn't really want to compete because everything was concentrated into a bite or two from a judge. I wanted to make stuff my family and friends would like. That's when I came to this site. Since then, I've been able to learn about truly good food on the grill or smoker and arm myself with good equipment and recipes. This pic is probably the pinnacle... 
-
-
Comment
-
Panhead John That particular one in the photo is Char-broil. I don't recall the actual brand I had. There were many brands of those portable tabletop grills of similar design in the early '90s. -
jerrybell I had one of those grills when we moved into our first apartment in ‘96. I remember setting it up on the top cement step that lead into our front door to cook on.
-
I used to love my Hibachi back in the day, upgraded to cheap gas when I got married, been upgrading ever since.Comment
-
Have tossed meat over hot coals (braai-ing) ever since I had my first sip of beer. Might have been (to young to mention) years old.
This homebuilt, by me "gasmoker" was the first thing I ever did a low and slow cook in. Don't use it that often anymore because I found more fun using a kettle.
Pics from when it was still in build.
Comment
-
Circa 1977 kettle (not Weber) still in use, cooking flat iron steaks on it tonight.
Charbroil.
There have been many more since this one.Comment
-
We had this text in a post years ago. I’m fed up with this. This redundancy. This repetitiveness. This over & over again! Next Meathead will say something on twitter that he said before and then there will be a firestorm of repeat performances. Next there will be pics, old pics, historic pics, pics that we’ve seen before, pics from yesteryear. Oh dear Swami, where will it all end. And then there are the moderators, ah yes the mods, just sittin around, lurkin in the background, with there thumbs and stubby fingers, just ready to start typin, critisizin us, movin posts to differnt categories, callin strikes agin us but never callin any balls, just strikes.
OK, now that I got this of my chest, out of my mind, and I’ve laid all the cards on the table, callin the kettle black,
Just ferget everthing I said.Comment
-
I don't want to stoop to shooting anyone, but Panhead John should be whacked with a giant cartoon hammer.
-
Growing up my dad used some kind of thin cheap square charcoal grill with gallons of lighter fluid and briquettes.
My fist grill was a Weber gasser. My first charcoal grill was a Large BGE.Comment
-
I'm going to back up to my childhood and say that the first time I actually cooked was at under my Grandma Grace's care during the summer. I asked her if I could go to the creek (crick) and cook my own lunch. She was all over that and packed me hot dogs, chips, a dessert, a drink, and matches.
I went to a sand bar on Koot's Creek in Johnson County, Indiana, on my grandparents' farm, and I dug a hole, built a fire, and then cooked my hot dogs over the fire. Best meal I had ever eaten up that point in my life. Been fascinated with building fires and cooking meat ever since. I can send you a Google Map screen shot of where that happened...
BrianComment
-
Grilling wasn’t a thing at our house when I was growing up.
the first thing I can remember grilling on was one of those flimsy little round grills from the “seasonal section” of the grocery store. It was on the balcony of a hotel in Washington D.C. it was after a concert, and we were all pretty effed up, and had no clue what we were doing. Pretty sure it involved lighter fluid and some really poorly cooked steaks… we had no plates or utensils, so were just grabbing steaks off the grill and mauling them. We hadn’t really thought things out very well. Did I mention that there was beer and weed involved…lol.
My next attempt at grilling was on a not a whole lot better charcoal grill that I “rescued” from the neighbors trash. I cooked burgers for me and my folks a couple of times, but it was a hassle so out with our trash it went.
A few years later I got married, and we bought our house. That started a string of cheap gassers from Homies or Sears that got replaced every few years. Grilling mostly just burgers and dogs on occasion.
my first smoker was an el cheapo Brinkmann that I got as an anniversary gift at work. That was in the early 2000s
I actually made some pretty good pulled pork on that thing considering I had no idea what the hell I was doing. That was a labor of love though as I constantly had to keep an eye on temps and add fuel regularly (because I had no clue what I was supposed to be doing). I was also too lazy to take care of it so it rusted out after a couple of years.
Fast forward to 2020 and the most recent gasser was in need of replacement. I decided I really wanted to try a charcoal grill. So, I did some research and ended up getting a Weber Kettle. Again it was mostly burgers, dogs, chicken, the occasional steaks. I really had no intention of going beyond that as my memories of smoking from years before was that the juice wasn’t really worth the squeeze because it was so labor intensive. It was then that 2 things both happened right around the same time. I came across a book by Gary Wiviot that was all about smoking on Weber cookers, and I found out about this place. That’s when I found out that smoking meat didn’t have to be a hassle at all.
since then, both my grilling, and smoking, games have gone up several notches…Comment
-
First grill we bought was an old cheap gasser that didn’t have a true way to create 2 zone setup since there were only 2 burners and the grill wasn’t that big. At that time I didn’t have any idea what 2 zone cooking was anyway.
first smoker was a gasser Masterbuilt.Comment
-
First cooker (a "grill", really) was a bunch of concrete blocks set on the ground in a "U" with a heavy iron grill grate from a local metal shop. That was when I was about 12-13, I guess. Second, about 10 years later, was a hibachi ... similar to what Lodge has to offer these days. 10 years after that, an 18" Weber kettle. First "smoker", just a little later, was a Brinkman POS ...
... then things finally started to get better in the mid-90's ...Comment
-
The smallest Weber at that time. Not sure what it was named and I'm not sure it came with an ash pan catcher. This would be sometime in the later 70"s.Comment
-
My first was a POS gasser I bought right out of college. But it did have a side burner which I used more often than the grill because the kitchen in my first apartment had an electric stove!Comment
-
Cheap hibachi when I was first married. Could do a decent steak but pretty much burned every piece of chicken I tried. I knew nothing of fire control and yes, I used lighter fluid.Comment
-
May not have been the exact model but very close.Comment
Comment