New performer owner


 
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Jacques

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Just bought a new Performer at Crate & Barrel in that cool green color. I've always been a gasser and I love my Weber Q but I'm wanting to get into charcoal grilling because I like the taste better and the the Performer makes that a bit easier. Would love any advice or suggestions to a COMPLETE newcomer to Weber charcoal grilling.

I will post some pics tomorrow when I'm putting her together.

Cheers!
 
Follow this forum. Seriously, there is some great information on here and I've learned a lot within a number of these discussion areas. And take a look at the photo gallery area as well - one can learn a lot about how people manage their grill area, setup for indirect, when they considered something done (at least visually), etc. Have fun.

A few additional thoughts:
<LI> As others have mentioned here, get a chimney (preferably the Weber one). It is very useful even with the gas-assist and essential without
<LI> Experiment with varied charcoal setups: single level, two-level, etc.
<LI> Experiment with the various types of grilling and barbecuing you can do. High heat for skirt steak, indirect for beer can chicken, ribs.
 
Hi Jacques,

Welcome to the forum and congrats on your purchase. The performer is an awesome grill. I would suggest getting a weber chimney, extra propane tanks, and a couple firebricks. The chimney is great for starting coals quickly and the firebrick are great for indirect cooking. I found the weber charcoal baskets to be too small and the firebricks are cheap.

Also, as Daniel mentioned, check out the rest of the forum. There's all sorts of great info here.

Good luck,
 
Hi Jacques and welcome to TVWBB.

Doesn't that Performer come with a recipe book? I also recommend working through some of the recipes in there to get off to a good start. Weber has selected many of those to insure the success of someone getting started with a Weber cooker. Some of the stuff on this site is a little more advanced and may assume a little more skill to get right.
 
being in your boat myself, I can say after three days of cooking on the performer, a chimney is almost required.

I have yet to figure out how to get really high temps, best I have had so far at the dome was 450. that was with a full chimney and then dumped on the grate with the lid on for 15 minutes.

Maybe I should have added some more unlit overtop of the lit when I dumped it.

I tried the baskets once, I agree they dont seem to hold enough for longer cooks, but they did seem fine for some indirect grilling.
 
I am generally using a two zone fire and the dome temp is not as important as the heat in my individual zones. I use the hand over the area method to tell temp. If you can only hold your hand just above the grate for a count of one it is a HOT fire. A count of two is medium hot and three is medium.
Also remember that with the cover off the heat goes up due to the increased air flow. I always have to remember that cover up on the charcoal equals heat, and possibly flame ups while cover closed equals heat on my genesis.
Try different things and learn what works for you.
Good luck and welcome to the forum.

Mike
 
Thanks everyone! The grill did not come with a recipe booklet, as someone mentioned but I'm ordering a couple on Amazon.
 
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Jacques:
Thanks everyone! The grill did not come with a recipe booklet, as someone mentioned but I'm ordering a couple on Amazon. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>That's a disappointment. I did get a recipe book with my WSM though I haven't actually used it.

In that case, check out their recipes on line while you wait for your books to come in: http://www.weber.com/grillout/ They also have some recipe books that you can download. http://www.weber.com/weber/downloads
 
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