indirect cooking warning

[George Curtis]

so i have been cooking indirect with coals banked on one side for years. i've just been cleaning my kettle and had a hard time with an area with what i thought was a baked on crud area. just took a close look and found that its the porcelien coating crystalizing and it's in the area where i put the coals. i think actually that the super hot burning rancher and k comp briquettes that helped. its both on the inside and outside. so watch out.

 

[George Curtis]

i think i'm going to rig up something so that the coals will not touch the kettle in that area.

 

[elmo]

I thought that the paint on the inside is made to come in direct contact with charcoal.

It is hard to use the charcoal baskets sometimes so today i directly put hot charcoal on one side of grill without baskets. It helped with making more space and i hope this will not ruin the inside paint and finish of the grill.

elmo

 

[Pat Smith]

George - how about the charcoal rails like the ones that used to come with the Performers? Not the charcoal baskets made from sheet metal, but the ones made from heavy gauge wire?

I don't bank the coals up against the inside of the bowl, but rather spread them out over about 1/3 to 1/2 of the charcoal grate - would that give you enough area without direct heat?

Pat

 

[George Curtis]

i like banking it but its rather level fron the side to near the middle. i let the coals rage into an inferno similar to a blast furnace several times with rancher and k comp. that stuff burns super hot and i think this really contributed. i plan on making a barrier that sits off an inch or so from a used grill grate. i like using royal oak cuz it gets hot but doesn't rage on. but then it could just be the nature of the beast.

 

[Tony C.]

i have got in the habit of changing the side i put the coals on for indirect every month or 2. i haven't had the problem mentioned in this post, but the build up of grease and crud on one side of the kettle is what got me to start doing this. i find it helps to burn the crud off.

 

[George Curtis]

tony, thats ecactly what i will be doing also. great idea.

 

[Bill Comerford]

Are you sure that it's not the starch in the charcoal used as a binder?

 

[George Curtis]

yep, i took a week of cleaning to get a hint that something was wronf. took a real close look. then i looked at the outside and saw a smaller patch of the same thing. a small roughness like crystalization. has no effect on cooking and it will still outlast me.

 

[Tim C]

thanks for the heads up. i havent seen anything crystalized on mine, but i'll try and use my baskets as much as possible. if i forget to use a pan or some shaped foil under the food after the foods off i dump out the baskets on the greasy food side of the bowl and let the coals burn off some of it. my wife has some thin hard plastic scrapers about 3" square to use with dishes. i took one out to scrape the crusty stuff off the bowl and tried to hand it back to her dirty. now i have my own for use outside. works great.