Tom Fisher
New member
I own a 22" Original Kettle Premium (in green!) and a Slow 'n Sear 1.0. That SnS does a lot of duty in my kettle, but I haven't tried anything low-n-slow since the Super Bowl. I made some spare ribs and trimmed off the rib tip meat, and smoked them all at once. The meat turned out great, but I spent the whole day, from church until after kickoff, outside staring at the digital thermo and fiddling with the vents. It was a cloudy, windy, and miserable time.
I'm wondering, just how "hands-off" can one get with the kettle/SnS combo? The less attention necessary the better, without sacrificing food quality.
My procedure was to light about 10 briqs of Kingsford original in my Weber chimney using a starter cube. Once they were lit, I put them to one side of the SnS, filled the rest of it up with more Kingsford, and added 1 qt of boiling water to the reservoir. Once it got to 200 degrees, I constricted the intake to the "smoke" setting and the top vent to about 1/2. Once it settled around 230 (or so, I'm going from memory here) I put my cast iron Drip 'n Griddle on the fuel grate with some beans in a pan, added the meat to the food grate, and the wood for smoke. I clamped the lid tight with three binder clips. The rest of the day was spent watching the temp on my digital thermometer and adjusting the vents - open a little, close a little, open, close . . . and so on, trying to keep it around 225.
This is supposed to be fun. Am I not approaching this right? My cooks always take too long so I might benefit from letting it settle at 250 instead, but I'd be happy if I can just walk away and trust it will stay between 225 and 275.
Thoughts?
I'm wondering, just how "hands-off" can one get with the kettle/SnS combo? The less attention necessary the better, without sacrificing food quality.
My procedure was to light about 10 briqs of Kingsford original in my Weber chimney using a starter cube. Once they were lit, I put them to one side of the SnS, filled the rest of it up with more Kingsford, and added 1 qt of boiling water to the reservoir. Once it got to 200 degrees, I constricted the intake to the "smoke" setting and the top vent to about 1/2. Once it settled around 230 (or so, I'm going from memory here) I put my cast iron Drip 'n Griddle on the fuel grate with some beans in a pan, added the meat to the food grate, and the wood for smoke. I clamped the lid tight with three binder clips. The rest of the day was spent watching the temp on my digital thermometer and adjusting the vents - open a little, close a little, open, close . . . and so on, trying to keep it around 225.
This is supposed to be fun. Am I not approaching this right? My cooks always take too long so I might benefit from letting it settle at 250 instead, but I'd be happy if I can just walk away and trust it will stay between 225 and 275.
Thoughts?