I'm reposting the photos using photobucket instead of snapfish:
As far as the tabs go, I just bought some half inch stock aluminum at home deport, cut it to length, drilled some holes in it and bent them on a vise.
I haven't tried a low and slow cook since I raised the grate but suspect it...
Yes I use two criss-crossd grates in all my WSM's to keep the smaller pieces of lump charcoal from falling through instead of burning. Have also used a piece of expanded metal.
pictures of mod
here you go:
http://www2.snapfish.com/snapfish/slideshow/AlbumID=13420494009/PictureID=720815484009/a=26307856_26307856/otsc=SHR/otsi=SPIClink/COBRAND_NAME=snapfish/...
Tried an experiment
After comparing the charcoal grate location on my other WSM's and a baby weber kettle I concluded that the airflow to the fire might be the problem. In relation to the air vents the charcoal grate on the 14.5 is much lower. I added some L-shaped tabs to the existing...
I cooked competition chicken on the 18.5 with an empty water plan and lump charcoal. Had no problem hitting my desired temperature (325-350). Recently, I switched to the 14.5 and am having trouble getting it over 300 degrees with no water pan. Is anyone else having this problem?
thanks,
Dave
Well I bombed at Chilly Chili but tried again this weekend at a cook off in Irving and got third place chicken of 77 teams. Not too shabby. I cooked in a restaurant style aluminum pan except for 5 minutes of saucing directly on the grill. It gave me some pleasure to beat the teams who cooked...
Yeah, I have had some success with scraping skin fat but it is challenging in the Texas cook offs since we are required to turn in a full half chicken. Also, I sometimes puncture the fatty parts of the skin with toothpick so more fat will render during cooking. Fortunately, a lot of judges...
follow up chicken cooking results
I dropped a wired thermometer on the grate and saw that the temp was considerably hotter that the mounted thermometer that was 2 inches below the grate. Instead of trying to cook at a lower temperature I opted to cook my chicken in an aluminum pan to change...
I have a temp gauge mounted below the grate and am cooking the chicken to 165 - checked with a thermapen. Cook time is about one hour, the same as cooking time on the 18.5 wsm.
Thought about trying ceramic dish as a heat diffuser to see if that makes a difference. The chicken has good flavor...
I like the idea of using the mini for cooking competition chicken but the skin on my chicken keeps getting burned up (and off). The skin on the drumsticks literally falls off the rest of the skin becomes dark an unappealing. I add a charcoal ring and three wsm vents to the bottom section and...