Outdoor Sinks. Weber Grills and Accessories. Firing Up Your Weber Bullet Page 2 - The Virtual Weber Bullet. In this topic: The Minion Method Pros Designed for cooking sessions lasting 6-18 hours. Perfect for overnight cooking. Start cooking in just 15-30 minutes. No need to add fuel during the cooking process.
The concept behind the "Minion Method" is simple: Place a small number of hot coals on top of a full charcoal chamber of unlit briquettes. One of the advantages this method has over the Standard Method is that there's less of a chance that the cooker will run hotter than you want. If there's a controversial aspect of the Minion Method, it's that it contradicts the conventional wisdom that says all charcoal briquettes must be fully lit and covered with gray ash before cooking begins.
There are some individuals with sensitive palates who claim they taste an off-flavor in food cooked using the Minion Method. I use the Minion Method whenever cooking at 225-250°F, regardless of the length of cooking time. Fill The Charcoal Chamber Light A Few Briquettes Spread The Lit Coals Assemble The Cooker. I call it the 20/20 Charcoal basket... Incase you missed my reply to CWalk, I thought I'd make this it's own thread. I call it the 20/20 Charcoal basket... $20 and 20min of assembly is all it takes. First you go to HomeDepot and buy one of these: Then you get a tape measure and a black marker, lay the mesh down so the diamonds are running left to right: Then with a straight edge and the marker draw a line right down the center of the 'intersection' that is 6" in from each side: From the bottom up and the top down, using a good pair of 'snips', CUT threw 6 intersections following the line you made.
Lay something Heavy or clamp something across the piece from left to right 6" up and now BEND all 3 pieces up. Now take a pair of pliers and bend the ends of the flaps IN so that when you form the basket these 2 bends will go into the side piece. It is hard to explain but BEND up the end piece and INSERT the lower bent flap into the bottom diamond hole pushing it down all the way also insert the TOP bent flap into the hole at the top.
Home-Made Weber Kettle Charcoal Basket(s) I use my Weber 22.5 Kettle quite a bit, and I use hot burning natural charcoal briquets, plus I add lump charcoal and mesquite/hickory wood chunks. I have always heeded Weber's warnings and kept my coals off of the enameled sides of the kettle, to avoid premature burn-through, which limits how much charcoal can be used. At times I have wanted to get a longer burn than I could just using the stock charcoal grate (while keeping the coals off the enameled Kettle). Eventually, I decided to build a charcoal basket out of Expanded Metal to allow using a larger amount of charcoal while keeping the coals off of the sides. I considered the options of a plain basket, a basket with a zig-zag labyrinth, and in the end decided to incorporate a central water bowl to get a circular track around the perimeter, with a steel stop/start barrier.
It turned out that Lowe's sells the Weber Replacement Charcoal Grates for my 22.5 Weber for $11 (Weber # 7441), so that became my starting point. High-Que charcoal grate for XL Big Green Egg. You don't need it! The other day I was fooling around with my grills and discovered that my cast iron grate in my XL Big Green Egg is exactly the same size as an old charcoal grate I had in my Weber kettle. I've never really had air flow issues (I thought) with my XL but I've always wanted one of the popular stainless High-Que grates simply because I knew it could not hurt air flow and also because cleaning out ash in my XL is a HUGE drag.
It takes forever to get the built up ash though the little holes. Unfortunately, High-Que does not make a grate to fit the XL Big Green Egg...at least not yet. Perhaps my little discovery of the sizes of the Weber grate is one of the reasons. So basically, after I discovered the similarity in sizes. I ran to Home Depot and bought 2 new Weber charcoal grates and the hardware to hold them together cross ways (so that larger chunks would not fall through.
Before: After: I admit I was not expecting much. Extra Charcoal Grate - make charcoal last longer - BBQ Insanity | BBQ Insanity. By BBQ Insanity Here’s a neat trick I picked up from Gary Wiviott’s excellent barbecue book “Low & Slow” to make your charcoal last longer! One of the biggest pain points when using lumpwood charcoal is that unlike a briquette it is irregularly shaped. Depending on the quality of charcoal you purchase and how badly bashed up the bag got in the shop, the size of each charcoal lump can vary considerably. You may find some pieces that are too large, but more commonly, you’ll find about a quarter of the bag full of really small pieces. What then happens is that you see lots of pieces of charcoal fall between the grate without getting a chance to contribute to whatever you are cooking. And, as charcoal burns, it gets even smaller.
So you have the problem that lit pieces of charcoal will fall between the charcoal grate, into the bottom of the barbecue with the rest of the ash. A really simple remedy to this is to invest in an extra charcoal grate.