Emergency help from BBQ gurus!
- Thread starter Nole Lou
- Start date
Good lord that's a lot of ash that you shoveled out.
LOL at the crappy "heavy duty foil" from the dollar store. My wife bought that crap once. I found it useful for one thing, and one thing only. If you don't have a grill brush, you can tear off a big strip & wad it up into a ball, hold the ball in your tongs, and use it to clean the grill.
But with the mess on that grill rack you had, you'd be scrubbing & scraping for days.
LOL at the crappy "heavy duty foil" from the dollar store. My wife bought that crap once. I found it useful for one thing, and one thing only. If you don't have a grill brush, you can tear off a big strip & wad it up into a ball, hold the ball in your tongs, and use it to clean the grill.
But with the mess on that grill rack you had, you'd be scrubbing & scraping for days.
Yeah...so dumb. When I saw it labelled heavy duty, I figured at worst it would be like standard foil. LOL no.
It's easy to get suckered into a false sense of security, as so many things at the dollar store are just objects where there's little room for quality issues to show their head. For the most part, a $1 spatula is just about the same as a $4 spatula from kroger. A manila folder is a manila folder.
But man, when you get burned, you really get burned.
Thanks all for the kind words. I know my ceiling as far as making great barbecue is nowhere near the true artists or very serious hobbyists. It just isn't.
But what this kind of confirmed for me, is what I've always kind of suspected...my floor is higher than most people that just fool around on the grill or smoker from time to time. I think I "get" what I'm doing, I just don't really have the precision and focus (and sometimes equipment) to really nail it down to top out that last 10-15% that separates real excellence.
But what this kind of confirmed for me, is what I've always kind of suspected...my floor is higher than most people that just fool around on the grill or smoker from time to time. I think I "get" what I'm doing, I just don't really have the precision and focus (and sometimes equipment) to really nail it down to top out that last 10-15% that separates real excellence.
You did great. If it had been me, a good chance a Sonny's truck would have pulled up. Have they already signed you up for the next trip?
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Better! haha
Good gracious that's horrible working conditions. Kudos for working with what you were given.
Thanks to all the moral support you folks gave me, I have to do this again this weekend. At least I know what I'm up against this time.
Oh, and for 70 people instead of 45...so there's that. Word got around....
Oh, and for 70 people instead of 45...so there's that. Word got around....
Lou, it looks good to me. As for the age group of boys you're dealing with, They'll likely eat anything, so I'm sure it was a hit.
So what you going to do different this time? You hope to get out more ash so you can maybe put a water pan on the middle grate and have the charcoal and wood at the bottom?
Damn nice job Lou. If you ever move to DeFuniak, DFS might be out of a job!
On the bright side, this time you'll only have a year's worth of soot & ash to shovel out, and a year's worth of gunk to scrape off the grill rack. Should be a piece of cake.
The main thing is I'm going to try keep everything on indirect with the coal and wood on one side and the meat on the other, and try to foil off the grates above the fire to direct heat and smoke to the other side. Since the ribs covered the entire pit, and so had to be direct, I've got rib racks to stand them on their side.
I don't know what to expect of the ash...I'm hoping that last year was 10 years worth, and there won't be as much to remove this year, but I cleaned out as far as it could go last year until it hit compacted ash that was like concrete, and I don't have much hope than anyone got in there and broke it up, but it would be awesome if I could do what you described.
If the ash isn't so bad I have to spend a couple hours shoveling it out this year, maybe I'll try to break up the compacted ash...water pans between the fire and grate would be perfect.
So...this year the pit was clean when I got there, and also repaired...the rails that hold the grates were properly secured. I was indeed able to run fire on the bottom, water pans on the second grate, meat on top. All in all, it went much, much smoother and nothing got burned. Did run into issues with a miscalculation on the chicken, which needs to be grilled, not slow smoked. I should have removed the water pans, because I couldn't get it going hot enough to properly brown and crisp the skin, so that took some improvisation, but all in all it was pretty slick this year.
