Bill Sennett
New member
I have owned my 22.5 WSM for two months now and have had 7-8 prior cooks.
I made a batch of Harry Soo rub yesterday and noted two fundamental differences between Harry's Rub and Paul Kirk's
A. Paul Kirk says don't use kosher salt because of granular thickness whereas kosher salt is basic for Harry
B Cumin powder is a basic for Harry whereas it is a small quantity possible addition for Paul
So the cook today was chicken legs which Harry says take off at 175 degrees 60-90 minutes into the cook when your cooking temp range is about 275.
Two problems for me:
1. In the last few days I read a forum posting that said wrapping the bottom of your water pan might be unnecessary so for the first time I did not wrap it today. And when the pit came up to temperature, I smelled something quite different and unfriendly coming out of it. Without having yet checked, I presume that the paint was burning off the bottom of the water pan.
2 I have used only the factory supplied thermometer up to this point in time and decided today that I would use a polder equivalent today with the line running through the open top vent. Knowing that you don't just lay the metal tip on the grates, I remembered that a wine cork might work to keep it elevated. I had one wine cork, inserted the metal end into it, and was dismayed to find out 60 minutes later that my cork was plastic and it had melted.
So two screw ups on my part. There is a clearly a remaining top grate temperature issue for me. Because when I tested one chicken leg exactly 60 minutes after placing it in the pit, it read 190 when it should have come off at 175 as much as 30 minutes later. Clearly I was running hotter than what the Weber factory guage was indicating and this will be a recurrent problem if I do not solve it.
I made a batch of Harry Soo rub yesterday and noted two fundamental differences between Harry's Rub and Paul Kirk's
A. Paul Kirk says don't use kosher salt because of granular thickness whereas kosher salt is basic for Harry
B Cumin powder is a basic for Harry whereas it is a small quantity possible addition for Paul
So the cook today was chicken legs which Harry says take off at 175 degrees 60-90 minutes into the cook when your cooking temp range is about 275.
Two problems for me:
1. In the last few days I read a forum posting that said wrapping the bottom of your water pan might be unnecessary so for the first time I did not wrap it today. And when the pit came up to temperature, I smelled something quite different and unfriendly coming out of it. Without having yet checked, I presume that the paint was burning off the bottom of the water pan.
2 I have used only the factory supplied thermometer up to this point in time and decided today that I would use a polder equivalent today with the line running through the open top vent. Knowing that you don't just lay the metal tip on the grates, I remembered that a wine cork might work to keep it elevated. I had one wine cork, inserted the metal end into it, and was dismayed to find out 60 minutes later that my cork was plastic and it had melted.
So two screw ups on my part. There is a clearly a remaining top grate temperature issue for me. Because when I tested one chicken leg exactly 60 minutes after placing it in the pit, it read 190 when it should have come off at 175 as much as 30 minutes later. Clearly I was running hotter than what the Weber factory guage was indicating and this will be a recurrent problem if I do not solve it.
