Outdoor cooking - Barbecues, Barbecue, BBQs, BBQ, Smokers, Grills. And Ribs.

I'm planning on chicken today - has anyone successfully done roast potatoes in a Weber before? Cook alongside the meat, or afterwards with the heat cranked up?

Ive tried roasties twice but failed to get them to crisp up both times, this was doing them alongside meat

Par boil them, crank up the heat and then place them in a frying pan (ideally one which lid fits over) - you end up semi frying/roasting but heat is much higher than on a stove.

Anyone have a boretti barilo?

Turned out ok. Jerseys, so were never going to be the best roasties.

Huge fan of grilling tenderstem broccoli of late too.

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Oh yeah big time - leeks and pumpkin are my other two faves alongside broc

Smoked a pork shoulder in the kamado on Saturday. My thermometer search lead me to buy the thermoworks signals and bellows fan. I was amazed at how good the fan was at regulating the temp, stayed pretty much bang on 225°f the whole cook. Meat came out perfect, if my next couple of cooks are as consistent then overnighters with me just going to bed are next!

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^^

Strong work

might need to close the vents! Got some new charcoal and its toasty!

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Is that not just today's outside temperature?

Short ribs slow cooked at 110 for 4 hours today

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Nice, did you wrap? and what sort of temp did you go for? I did short ribs last week, cooked for about 4 hours wrapped for some of the time, and although cooked they were a little too chewy for my liking.

No wrap, just put in the bbq with lid down for four hours at 110 C. I would have left them an extra hour but I was too hungry :)

Weekend pork belly

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goddam that looks tasty

Just thrown a pork shoulder on, wasn't expecting it to be pissing it down this morning so had to improvise a little hat.

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14 hours later...

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So now I have a garden it's time to start barbecuing. Went what seems to be the standard route and got a Weber kettle and had a trial run at the weekend. Set it up with charcoal at either side and a gap in the middle for indirect cooking. Stuck a load of stuff in the middle to start with and then finished off over the coals.

Cooking over the coals seemed a bit slow. Is it just a matter of more coals or something else I should be looking at? Also, is it worth getting a chimney starter? There seems to be lots of talk about them being useful, do they make that big a difference?

I'd like to try some slower cooking so I could do with some type of thermometer with a couple of probes I guess. Is it worth considering one that can use a fan to maintain the temperature or is that overkill?

Fan controlled temp is awesome and not overkill imho but I have only used one on the Weber smokey mountain.

Chimney starter is really useful.

Yep, will agree that fan controlled temp is great. I have a masterbuilt 560 which is a fully offset fan controlled charcoal BBQ, have used it to do everything from standard grilling, low and slow (longest cook at nearly 18 hours!), and also high temp (700f) pizza cooking.

Once you get the hang of indirect heat, the options are endless.

I bought the thermoworks signals thermometer and bellows fan and I can't recommend it enough, temperature is always bang on. Takes all the hassle out of low and slow.
https://thermapen.co.uk/bbq-barbecue-thermometers/139-signals-wifi-bluetooth-thermometer.html

Any recommendations for a basic spit roast/ rotisserie? Seen a few on Etsy but not quite sure

Cheers all. The thermoworks and billows is what I was thinking about.

They seem good for smokers but I've seen less mention of them for kettle barbecues.

Not sure. I use mine on a kamado bbq. What ever you use it on needs to have inlet vents that you can block and fill with the fan so it's now regulating your air intake and out let vents that you can adjust. What type of vents does your kettle have?

It has vents but they're not easy to attach something to. From a bit more reading up it's awkward to use with a weber kettle and the recommended method of installation is to drill a hole in it.