***** Official 2014 BBQ Thread - Sun is out, time to grill!! *****

FrenchTart said:
That's an interesting approach - I have been thinking recently that it would be worthwhile to use lumpwood on the bottom (or lumpwood entirely) of the chimney and then to empty out the quickly-lighting lumpwood on to the unlit charcoal in the grill/smoker (I tend to use the minion method for smoking where possible). I guess having lumpwood at the top of the chimney means that everything in it lights a little more evenly?
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Yeah, I find that it kinda gives me a bit more of an even burn. I will only use this method if the lumpwood is in large chunks, otherwise I just use a full chimney starter of briquettes. Most of my grilling last year was started using a half-half chimney of briquettes and lumpwood. For longer cooks I use the minion method but I've found that for this briquettes are far better as they light much easier than the lumpwood I was using.
 
CHokKA said:
Yeah, I find that it kinda gives me a bit more of an even burn. I will only use this method if the lumpwood is in large chunks, otherwise I just use a full chimney starter of briquettes. Most of my grilling last year was started using a half-half chimney of briquettes and lumpwood. For longer cooks I use the minion method but I've found that for this briquettes are far better as they light much easier than the lumpwood I was using.
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Interesting. I'll have to try it out once I get back from France and place a big order for coal/lumpwood :)

On that note, I'm pretty tempted to get the ProQ Frontier rather than the Excel. Mostly for the £100 cost saving really. I don't think I'm likely to need the size of the Excel that often and from what I have read the Frontier doesn't really have many downsides aside from that. Are you aware of any?

I have another friend with the Frontier rather than the Excel and from what I've seen it's just as awesome, albeit smaller.
 
Tbh I probably would have gone for the Frontier but the inner voice in me said to go for the larger one just in case I needed the room :) The Frontier is a really good smoker as well so I think you'll be fine if you're smoking less meat :) I don't know of any downsides to be honest.
 
Cross-posted in the Show off Your Dish thread but today was my first attempt at 321 ribs. Turned out pretty damn tasty though I think next time I would cook them longer (mostly due to my crappy kettle BBQ being quite hard to regulate the temperature of).

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Looks like some good ribs, I've always found the 3-2-1 method far too long for ordinary uk spare ribs, more suited to the much meatier american spares. I tend to follow the 2-1-1 method at 135 degrees on my wsm which seems more than ample, I'd love to able to get hold of some proper american cut ribs.
 
ganesh said:
Looks like some good ribs, I've always found the 3-2-1 method far too long for ordinary uk spare ribs, more suited to the much meatier american spares. I tend to follow the 2-1-1 method at 135 degrees on my wsm which seems more than ample, I'd love to able to get hold of some proper american cut ribs.
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If I had a decent bullet smoker I imagine I could get a good result a lot quicker, yeah. Hopefully something I'll be purchasing in the next month or so... :)
 
FrenchTart said:
If I had a decent bullet smoker I imagine I could get a good result a lot quicker, yeah. Hopefully something I'll be purchasing in the next month or so... :)
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You won't regret it, I think I've used my wsm almost every weekend come rain or shine since I bought it last July. I've become a massive bbq addict, there is no going back for me now.
 
ganesh said:
You won't regret it, I think I've used my wsm almost every weekend come rain or shine since I bought it last July. I've become a massive bbq addict, there is no going back for me now.
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Yup... I've not used a WSM but the ProQ Excel and Frontiers I've used have been awesome. I don't think I can justify the extra expense of the WSM or Excel but the Frontier is on my purchase list :)
 
Does anyone here have a Green Egg BBQ? I am looking at buying either the large egg or possibly going slightly different route and getting the JL Dome 60.

Any personal experiences of either would be great. Thanks ~ Si
 
Decided to have a bash at smoking on the BBQ yesterday. Never done it before so I was a little apprehensive. I found a method on YouTube called the "snake method" that looked interesting so I thought I'd give it a bash.

This was the snake set up:
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Added half a dozen hot briquettes to the end of the snake:

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I left it for half an hour or so for the briquettes to catch and then added the ribs which had been marinating in jerk sauce for a couple of hours. These were some small ribs I had in the freezer - would have preferred a complete rack:

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Left them to smoke for 4 hours. Needed a bit of fiddling but I managed to keep the temperature at about 275F for most of the 4 hours and finished up with this:

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A complete success. The snake worked perfectly and was nowhere near finished after the 4 hours. I reckon there was another 3-4 hours left in it. I think I could easily get 10-12 hours out of a longer snake; meaning I could smoke a whole brisket without ever having to add more coal.

Anyway, on to the money shot:

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They were delicious. The combination of the smoke and the heat of the jerk sauce worked beautifully.

For the future. I think 275F might have been a bit high? What temperature do others normally smoke ribs at?
 
Stan_Lite said:
I was thinking 250F (which is about 120C) so our thinking is similar. I think I'll aim for that next time.
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Sounds like a plan :)

Your ribs look awesome btw.

I tried something similar to the snake method myself over the weekend but it didn't work for me. I think my BBQ is just pap though rather than the method being bad.
 
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