wsm

[Nodding scooby]

did my 1st smoke today, went ok ish. didnt get pulled pork but shoulder was cooked. Learnt a few lessons which is good, a few questions. What is difference between big k restaurant grade lumpwood and big k restaurant grade briquettes? both look the same on photos. Also does anybody use there wsm as an open barbie aswell?

[JEC]

Glad it tasted good, what temperature did it get to? Lump should be chunks of burnt wood and look natural, briquettes are made from charcoal and other binders and pressed in to uniform sized pieces, where are you seeing these pictures?

Using the WSM as a grill can be done but a kettle would do a better job and make it a more useable height, places are starting to put them on sale so worth looking out for.

[Nodding scooby]

Hi Jec, struggled to get it to stay over 200f. Was looking on various sites and the pictures look like lumpwood but on the boxes in pictures it said briquettes, didnt know which was best. I know it is down to personal prefrence. Will have a look at grills, due to limited space on garden was wondering if it can double up as a grill.

[JamsCowbell]

I don't think it would work well as a grill, you just won't get the temperature and you won't have any direct heat for searing. I do things like chicken thighs on there and then blast them on the kettle when they hit the right internal temperature so that you get lovely juicy chicken with the charred outside.

It's strange that you couldn't get it up to temperature, 200f (93c) is very low. Was that with the top and bottom vents open wide? I tend to find I can get to 150c with the bottom vents pretty much shut due to air leakage. How much fuel did you put in?

If I was cooking a pork shoulder on an unmodified WSM I would stack the ring with lumpwood charcoal and then light a half chimney of lumpwood, when the chimney is ready I would dump the contents onto the unlit charcoal (this is the minion method) and then build up the WSM with the vents all open, I would then fill the water bowl and wait for it to reach about 100c before closing down the bottom vents to half to try and achieve a steady 120c.

Did you have a grill level thermometer in there or were you just using the one in the lid? On the WSM you really need to be monitoring the internal temperature of the food to know when it is done as well as the grill temperature. When a pork shoulder hits 89c internal it's time to take it out, wrap it in foil and a towel and leave it in a picnic cooler for a couple of hours before pulling

[BRUN]

How windy was it when you used it ?

I too have sometimes struggled to keep temps up, but only when ambient temps were low and their was some wind, even what seems like a small breeze can really suck heat out of it, try to protect it as best you can, I have used a large outdoor umbrella put onto its side quite a few times

Its a shame we only get a few weeks of good weather as when the sun is out and no breeze its easy to get the temps up

[Nodding scooby]

Hi Jams, gave it a clean out today and noticed had a fair bit of unburnt briquettes left. Maybe put on too much and dumped chinmey starter too early. Was using the thermometer in lid for oven temp but have know order a maverick et.
Gonna give lumpwood a go.

Brun, did move it too a more secluded spot out of breeze and it did make a slight difference

[Scantily]

Hi Jams, gave it a clean out today and noticed had a fair bit of unburnt briquettes left. Maybe put on too much and dumped chinmey starter too early. Was using the thermometer in lid for oven temp but have know order a maverick et.
Gonna give lumpwood a go.

Brun, did move it too a more secluded spot out of breeze and it did make a slight difference

The lid thermometer in a wsm generally reads a fair bit lower than the temperature at the grate, mine is around 30-50f off. I refer to mine occasionally, just to make sure my maverick isn't lying to me.
Some guys take the low tech approach and don't use any gadgets or gizmos and rely solely on the lid therm, but to do this I'd recommend you get to learn your pit and it's foibles quite well first.

[JamsCowbell]

Yeah the lid thermometer is generally a fair bit off, it really is worth having a grill probe and then a probe in the food - especially for pulled pork. If you do it by time you're risking taking it out when it's still in 'the stall' (dun dun dun!) and it won't pull that well. I'm guessing you were probably getting about 120c at grill level though if you were using the lid thermometer and it was showing different.

I started with a maverick, then added another, then found the heatermeter controller and built one of those for fun. Now I use that with a copper pipe based air injection system to keep everything spot on overnight while I get some sleep, whenever I'm running at 120c on the grill the lid thermometer shows I'm below the 'smoke' zone so I just tend to ignore it now. I don't think it gets up to that zone unless I hit something like 150c.