BGE arrives today!

Let’s do this! They recommended the first few cooks at a lower temprature - 350 so. Don’t really want to smoke things right away - any ideas for good things to do at this temp? Maybe I can get some good salmon.

First thing I cooked on my BGE was a couple of Cornish game hens. Did them indirect and with little mini cans “beer can chicken”

Nice! if you’re assembling yourself, follow the directions carefully. Getting the lid on right, and securely, is important. And it helps to have two people to lift.

I suggest just doing a test run or two, smoking at low temp to get your feet wet. It might take a few times to hone in on starting a fire, keeping it at the temp you want without it running away or dying out. My method is to put in all the charcoal I want (I have always used the BGE brand charcoal, never tried anything else), use a starter like this

http://www.amazon.com/Seymour-98013-Fire-Starter-Count/dp/B002716PDG/ref=pd_sim_201_1/177-3375740-1873117?ie=UTF8&dpID=5127dPGpCvL&dpSrc=sims&preST=_AC_UL320_SR202%2C320_&refRID=0KXT629V2Q6YH468AJWD

open the vents, close the lid, let the starter burn down completely until any sign of gray smoke is gone, and it’s just heat waves coming out the top. Open lid (slowly), put in the plate setter if you’re using it, grill rack, close lid and adjust vents to control temp, leave for 10-20 minutes, come back and adjust as necessary, put food on.

On my clone I did one complete burn to burn off any manufacturing residue and seasoned the grates. I use the Walmart brand canola oil in the spray can. Cheap and effective. I use my cajun cigarette lighter to start the fire.
IMG_0621.jpg

Awesome, enjoy, best purchase I’ve made in a long time.

Definitely don’t crank the Egg before the gaskets are broken in. A friend fried his and they turned very hard.
Good things to start with, at least for me, are salmon and chicken (sitting and spatchcock).
As mentioned by Alan earlier, make sure the charcoal is well lit before cooking. Otherwise you will get a LOT of smoke when cooking and the food will turn out too smoky.

Enjoy the BGE!!

Tom

The purpose of the BGE is to retain heat. My advice is to bring it to the temperature that you are going to use over time. Heating the BGE too fast will blow the gaskets and give you false readings on the thermometer. I think it performs best under 500 degrees. Any higher a different design is warranted.

I made pizzas this weekend and had the thing up to 650-700 per the dial thermometer. The pizzas baked fast and were awesome. I think we made 8 or 9 14 inch pizzas. When they were on, the crust was killer. After a couple I think the stone got a little hot.

I’m eyeing the baking steel pizza steel referenced in the grill pan thread. But $90 for what is essentially a stainless steel pizza stone, man, I don’t know.

I think the benefit of the egg is long slow cooks at low temps and high temps for pizza. I’ve cooked stuff at 400-450 and it’s probably better than I get on my regular grill but not light years ahead.

But who knows, maybe I’m doing it wrong :slight_smile:

Scott

Thanks everyone. Store also recommended taking it easy for the first few cooks. They also said you should fill the charcoal to the top of the inner ring - this seems excessive and will make everything blazing hot. How long does it typically take for the fire to settle down? First time I lit it (using the BGE brand compressed starters) it burned for 30 min and was still very smokey. I’ll confess I’m a bit of an amateur when it comes to cooking with charcoal - my primary grills/smokers are gas/electric, and only experience with coal is basically briquettes in a weber kettle.

Doing pork shoulder smoke this weekend. Will report back.

I had the exact same experience with the smokiness first time out. I now use one of those bge starters and plop in in the middle of the coal and leave the lid open. In about 15 min the middle of the coals is glowing orange then I close the lid. If the smoke coming out is thin and sort of blue-ish rather than billowing and white smokey then it’s ready to cook. When I once put my food on too early it tasted like smoke in a bad way.

Packing the thing to the top doesn’t make it cook hotter because you control the rate of burn with the screen at the base and the wheel thing at the top. Filling it high just means you have to refill less often :slight_smile:

When you’re done cooking just close the bottom and top vent and voila the fire goes out.

Scott

Congrats, you’ll love it! First thing i cooked on my Egg was Jerk Chicken. A couple weeks later I did a packer brisket on an overnighter.

As an aside, when you put it together be sure to save the plastic blocks that hold the hinge springs for the lid. If you ever have to move the Egg from it’s nest to a fixed location, for example, you will need to remove the lid to drop the weight and make it easier to lift. Realigning the bands on the Egg and lid without the springs secured is a PITA.

It depends on how you start the charcoal, and what you do with after that. If you use one of the little starter sticks I recommended, you’ll only get a “fire” going in the small area around where the stick is - the rest of the charcoal won’t be burning. That’s the kind of fire you need for long smoking, because only the initial lit area is burning, and it slowly moves out and down from there (otherwise you wouldn’t be able to get a 16 hour slow smoke, for example). If you want high heat for grilling, then you want to pile the coals up, start the fire more broadly, and stir things around to light them all, so there is high, uniform heat across the entire grilling surface.

So for a long, low temperature smoke, you do want to fill the inner ring to the top. It won’t all be burning at once.

Eagerly following this thread as I go shopping today for a BGE…I gather extra large seems to be the consensus size to get?

No need to load that much charcoal into the egg unless it is a really long cook. I usually start mine with a fire starter and then close the top but keep the bottom vent and top vent wide open. Keeps it from getting too hot…unless I am doing steaks or something on high heat. I’ve noticed over the years that some bags of charcoal burn cleaner or dirtier than others but it should burn off.

For a pork shoulder, if it is in the 7-8 pound range, plan for it to take at least 2 hours per pound. Also, try to keep the temp from climbing too much when you start the egg as it can be tough to cool down. And probably goes without saying, but be sure to use the plate setter for indirect heat. Good luck!

Not necessarily, I think it depends on how you are going to use the BGE. If you have a family, kids, or throw big parties, then XL might be the way to go. Its just my wife and I so we went with a large and are perfectly happy. It is still large enough for parties. I also have a medium BGE, too. And that is a 2-4 person grill and is pretty small. If you are set on an XL, I can’t see a down side to getting one that is larger for your needs (if that is even the case) other than a small amount of time in getting it to temp and a bit more charcoal.

Enjoy, they are a lot of fun!

JD

I like to start my BGE with paper towels soaked in bacon fat. After I cook bacon I drop a couple squares of paper towel in the pan to soak up the fat. I save them
In a ziploc bag in the fridge and bring out one or two to start the fire.

What accessories do people have?

I am eyeing one of the rigs at the ceramic grill store (which seem to have the advantage of adding extra levels, making a large a better option).

Large round kiln shelves (used as pizza stones )
http://www.axner.com/cordieriteshelf-16roundx58.aspx

Plate setter

I know this is always perceived as a dig, but check out the other threads here on the BGE for good information. My advice would be to have realistic expectations; i.e. don’t expect everything you cook to come out amazing right away. There is nothing magical about the BGE in and of itself. It is an insulated direct heated cooker with the option of indirect heat using the platesetter. I liken every cooker/smoker to a camera. You have to get to know it by using it over and over again to get a good feel for how to get great results with it. Like most cookers/smokers (by that term I am not just referring to Kamodo style grills but smokers too-stick burners, insulated cabinets, drums, water smokers, you name it), the adjustable aspects are few and basic-just a couple of vents, but this is deceiving. There is lot more to it than that. With the BGE, the learning curve applies to fire management first and vent operation second. Fire management starts with how the lump is placed. There is a good tutorial on this on nakedwhiz.com. The nakedwhiz website is not the most intuitive to navigate but you will find the tutorial on how to " properly “lay a fire” in there with some hunting. His method (nakedwhiz) is not mandatory, but it sure helps with a slow cook.
I also recommend resisting the urge to spend $300 on a DigiQ right away. I made that mistake myself. It is cool and useful, but jumping right to the DigiQ makes it easier to skip over the necessary learning curve of fire management and vent operation which will then come back to haunt you because your cooks will still not come as good as they could if you knew these aspects. All of this just my take after three years with my XL BGE.

Using the search function, look for my prior posts on the BGE. I have written a bunch of things and posted a lot of pictures. Search for me as author (spaces between letters) and things like BGE and jigsaw puzzle and brisket.

A few comments.

Set up two fires for at least 30 minutes each before you actually put food on the grill. I do not know why this matters, but the first few did not taste good at all.

I use a chimney to start the fire. You can get one at Home Depot. Works well either for smoking or grilling. Put lots of coals in the chimney for grilling, less for smoking.

I agree on not jumping into the Digi-Q. I jumped. Mostly a waste of money. Once you get the hang of the various dampers, you can nail the temperature just fine without it. I rarely use it.

Do not drop the green cap that closes the top. I have broken two of them.

Lump charcoal!! And chopped real wood. Briquettes are for civilians.

Mesquite imparts a bitter flavor that some people do not like. It’s OK with a whole pork shoulder but not with a thinner brisket.

If you want to go totally overboard (I use to say “full retard” but someone thought that was offensive despite the reference to Tropic Thunder), get some hickory chunks, put them in the container that comes with your vacuum sealer (you have one, right?), cover with red wine, hook up the vacuum and suck out the air. Watch as the bubbles come out of the wood and the air pockets are replaced with wine. Then wait a day and use the chunks for smoking.

Make home made pastrami - smoked corned beef with a pepper, paprika, salt and coriander seed rub.

Speaking of full retard . . . smoked tongue pastrami after home picking a large cow’s tongue. If you make it, you will be only the second person in the universe to have attempted it and, trust me, it’s worth it.