I have a church picnic on Sunday and I need all the grill space I can get. We're cooking chickens and I don't have enough kettle grills for everything. Does anyone know how hot I can get the WSM running it dry with a couple of chimney starters worth of briquettes?

Thanks,
Oak

You might check here for more information, if you haven't already seen it. Chris has some good info on this there.

Perfect-thank you Chris.

Pretty darn hot! This past weekend I made some cornell chicken and I wanted to try to stay true to the recipe by cooking on an open pit. So I dumped one chimeys worth of lit into the wsm and cooked 4 half chickens on the lower grate with no water pan and no lid. It got plenty hot with just one chimney. Singed some hair off of my hand while flipping the birds. I think next time I will put the lid on. Just to speed up cooking.

Don't know max heat, but I do know the 18" will get into the mid-300ºs without much trouble with all vents open. And this was with a sand-filled water pan.

quote:

Originally posted by Chris W.:
You might check here for more information ...

I use LAScott's method. But for chicken, I don't add a second charcoal grate on top of the ring. Just mount the charcoal grate and ring at the lower mid-section position. This provides more than enough heat for chicken on the top grate.

If you need the extra room, do as GerryD did, but use both grates and lid. Make sure you have long tongs and gloves.

I found the best method to convert the WSM for grilling is to follow weber's instructions that comes with the smoker. All you need to do is remove the bottom cooking rack and replace with the coal grate. Put your hot coals on and then cook using the top grate.