Diffuser plate on kettle?


 
S

steveD

TVWBB Fan
I do all of my smoking on my OTS kettle at this point due to lack of a better option. This weekend I smoke 2 pork butts and cooked a pan of baked beans for a picnic, all at the same time. As you can imagine, real estate was scarce on the grill and I had to keep rotating the grates to keep the butts from cooking over direct heat as the snake burned around. So I got to thinking about making a diffuser plate to hang from the cooking grate, use the minion method, and open up the entire grate surface for cooking. Has anyone done this? Is there enough space between the coals and grate to get heat distribution?
 
steveD said:
I do all of my smoking on my OTS kettle at this point due to lack of a better option. This weekend I smoke 2 pork butts and cooked a pan of baked beans for a picnic, all at the same time. As you can imagine, real estate was scarce on the grill and I had to keep rotating the grates to keep the butts from cooking over direct heat as the snake burned around. So I got to thinking about making a diffuser plate to hang from the cooking grate, use the minion method, and open up the entire grate surface for cooking. Has anyone done this? Is there enough space between the coals and grate to get heat distribution?
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I smoke on my OTP also. What I did was buy 2 firebrick from our local supplier, about $4. I ran then end to end about the halfway across the fire grate. On one side, pile up your charcoal, and on the other, layer a sheet of aluminum foil. This assures the air coming into the kettle flows through the charcoal and the fire brick prevents direct cooking. Place your cooking grill in and place what you want to smoke over the aluminum side. You should be able to maintain temperature for at least three hours.

Your cooking grate has a fold up section. Leave it up so it's convenient to add more charcoal, if you need into your cook.

This is a trick I picked up right here. You might want to go through some of the older posts for good idea. There sure are some.
 
I think the point is that he somehow wants to use the entire cooking surface or at least most of it. I've never heard of it being done, but maybe its possible.
 
I have used a diverter plate/pan in the middle with both a ring/snake and a basket of coals and have gotten some long cooks out of both a 18 and 22 kettle. The foil pan looks good. You can use it to mimic a WSM. You just need to practice with both lit coals and air control. You can start with a rack of ribs and cook one every week until you get a good feel for controlling temps. I wouldn't fight the temps much. As long as you eventually get into the 250-300 range you should be fine.

http://tvwbb.com/showthread.php?46277-17-lbs-of-pork-and-11-hrs-on-the-Performer

http://tvwbb.com/showthread.php?47149-18-5-Kettle-9-lb-pork-shoulder-10-hrs

http://tvwbb.com/showthread.php?52632-Brisket-on-Kettle-WSM-(aka-Big-Joe)
 
I had surprising consistency using the "Maverick Tip-Top" controller, I want to give it a little more practice before a big feast but, at first attempt it worked pretty well. Sadly, that does not improve real estate! I understand that one very well.
I kind of like the suspended diffuser concept, I have a pizza stone "holder" that might attach on the bottom of the grill grate and put a large pie pan or small steel pizza pan with a foil wrapped firebrick (or not) to keep it stable.
One more hare brained scheme to chase down!
 
For more space, you can add another rack on top of the existing. I think Chris has some examples on another part of the site. Also you can use a CB Stacker or just use a Weber Rotisserie ring go get more space between racks.
 
Another thought that would work with a snake/fuse: put the beans on the charcoal grate. If they're in a foil pan, you might want to elevate them on a brick or two, but keeping them in the middle of the charcoal grate frees up space on the cooking grate and also lets them soak up the drippings from the butts (or ribs, or whatever).
 
I had that thought too. I put the butts on tight to one side opposite the lit end of the snake to provide as much separation as possible to avoid direct cooking over the lit coals. Then, after several hours, I added the beans and there was just enough room to put them next to the butts. The beans cooked over direct heat, but I wasn't too worried about that - I should've added some ketchup or BBQ sauce or something since they got a little dried out, but they still got eaten. Even with having the butts tight together, I had to keep rotating the grate to keep from cooking them over direct heat.

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I use a Cajun Bandit, it comes with a charcoal ring and diffuser combo-http://cajunbandit.com/i/stacker-small.jpg
 
I had them on for between 2 and 3 hours I think and pulled them because they were starting to get a bit dry. I intended to add some ketchup/bbq sauce to them and reheat them when it was time to eat. Shortly after the beans came off the butts were done, and about 15 minutes after I got everything wrapped in the coolers people started asking when we were going to eat so I started pulling. From that point on, we ended up just pulling the pork and serving the beans as-is (warm but not piping hot, and a bit more dry than I would've preferred).
 
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