Line your kettle with foil for a better sear?


 
Bob Correll

Bob Correll

R.I.P. 3/31/2022
Just throwing this out there for your thoughts.
ChefSteps says line the inside of your bowl, charcoal grate up, to reflect heat for a better sear/crust.
My thoughts are that it wouldn't make much of a difference.

"Line your grill with foil—shiny side facing the interior of the grill Here's why this works: Typically, the dark sides of your grill will pull heat away from the heat source and absorb it, but when you line your grill with foil, the heat bounces off of the shiny surface, and back towards your food, creating the high-temp conditions necessary for a stellar sear."
 
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How much more heat could it possibly be? It is possibly worth the trouble of doing that? Why does ChefSteps irrationally anger me so much.
 
Jim Lampe said:
you read this on the internet...?

because if you read this on the internet, it must work.
Click to expand...
maybe not as well as sun pickles, but...
could work better if you're solar cooking.

Dustin, guess I won't link you to them cooking stuff in a waffle iron, like mac & cheese, etc. :)
 
I used to line the bottom of my old CharmGlow portable gas grill (same shape as a GGA) with foil to catch all the drippings and make cleanup easier (it didn't have Weber's "flavorizer" cover over the burner tube)....

Probably why I couldn't cook worth a da*n on it....:D
 
LOL.

"Typically, the dark sides of your grill pull heat."

Dark surfaces don't absorb heat, they absorb light. Better put, the absorb more colors. Light surface reflect more colors. Regardless of the source, light is an energy. Whether electricity or good old Sol light creates heat.

If we want to assume that the amount of light generated by your glowing coals is affecting the sides of your grill...then...
 
Dustin Dorsey said:
Why does ChefSteps irrationally anger me so much.
Click to expand...

That had me laughing pretty hard Dustin!

I've tried a few of their recipes and they can be just over the top in a lot of work and prep... That said, the chicken roulade is just outstanding! Best I've ever had. Of course it necessitated me buying meat glue (Transglutaminase) and skinning a whole chicken just to use two breasts in that recipe. Still, excellent but it does "irrationally anger" me! LOL
 
T Waite said:
LOL.

"Typically, the dark sides of your grill pull heat."

Dark surfaces don't absorb heat, they absorb light. Better put, the absorb more colors. Light surface reflect more colors. Regardless of the source, light is an energy. Whether electricity or good old Sol light creates heat.
If we want to assume that the amount of light generated by your glowing coals is affecting the sides of your grill...then...
Click to expand...

i do know that if i wear a black t shirt out in the sun , i feel like an ant under a magnifying glass. :cool:
 
Here's more from another something found on the internet Jim.:p

"The foil trick unfortunately doesn't work well on kettle grills because their rounded shape tends to bounce the radiant heat back toward the center instead of out to the edges. But if you can find a piece of shiny sheet metal about 4 inches wide and 56 inches long, you can bend the metal into a reflective circular ring and build the coal bed inside of it. All food within the circumference of the ring should then cook pretty evenly."

thus the vortex was born. (my words)

and:
"Jury-rigging a grill in this way wouldn't be necessary if grills came shiny on the inside and we could keep them that way. But, presumably because nobody likes to clean the guts of a grill, the interiors of most grills are painted black, the worst possible color for a large sweet spot. A black metal surface doesn't reflect many infrared heat rays; instead it soaks them up, gets really hot, then re-emits the heat in random directions."

article from 2013

edit, not sure what's going on with the live links posted direct.
http://www.nhregister.com/general-news/20130604/improve-your-grills-sweet-spot-with-a-bit-of-foil
 
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None of you guys were ever a boy scout who camped out and cooked with a shiny reflector lined with tin foil next to a camp fire? Those worked pretty well.
 
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