It's not grilling BB's on a Performer, but if we're down at my parent's house in Mississippi, I'll occasionally bbq spares indirectly on my dad's OTS.
Well, it had been a while, but we were just down there over the weekend, and my bro-in-law and niece requested some ribs. After some arm twistin' on my brother-in-law's part,
I told him we'd cook three full slabs of spares in a rack like I use to do before I got my drum (and now my wsm).
With a pile of K blue on one side held back with one of the Weber "rails" I did the MM like I've done so many times before. Also, I always have foil layed over the grate wherever there's no charcoal. No bricks, no water pan, and no adding wood or charcoal was needed for the entire cook and temps didn't exceed 250 until saucing at the end of cook. I mixed a fair amount of cherry chips in with the briquettes, and for the lit, poured on top how ever many briquettes fit inside the bottom of a Weber chimney. All we had for a therm was a cheap oven therm that I sat on the grate, but with just a few adjustments to the vent (mostly just barely cracked) the cook took a little over six hours so I guess the little oven therm was accurate enough for bbq. (Why I ever tried a "Smokinator" is still a mystery to me.) This cook was like so many other kettle rib cooks I've done over the years, and as long as your kettle lid fits right, you can cook low-n-slow under 250 just fine! Add some bricks or a heat shield like Jim Lampe made and you can probably add more cooking area, but as long as you rotate them a couple of times, you can get great results with the rib rack and this set-up. Anyway, I think I sufficiently schooled my bro-in-law so that for his future cooks he'll be more patient and shoot for tender ribs, not just ribs that "look" right.
