htrisna
Take a breath!
My firebox is underneath the cooking chamber. It has many advantages as it is more efficient by capturing radiant heat into the chamber instead of losing it to the top and sides of a typical offset design. It also cooks evenly left to right of chamber thus eliminating the need for tuning plates.
However, there are a couple of disadvantages, one, I can't lay logs on top of it to preheat, two, no grate on top of firebox for grilling.
Granted, I do have charcoal grate boxes inside the cooking chamber for grilling, but it does change the mode of cooking to grilling. Well, if I have a brisket that needs to keep going, and chicken or steaks to sear in the meantime, it's hard.
So I decided, I can do something about that second problem. So I hired a welder to come and added a grate shelf inside the firebox above the wood grate.
So tonight, I'm giving it a test run. I took a bone in ribeye straight out of the freezer, lightly coat it with Worchesteshire and Maggi sauce and sliced garlic on top. Put it in cooking chamber with grate temp at 250. Stick the Stoker probe on it and watch it slowly climb from the thirties (frozen).
Once it hit 80F, I put my cast iron on the new grate in firebox and let it heat up.
I then prepared some butter, Montreal, and basil mix in a small saucer. By the time I did all that, meat reached 100F.
I took it out, pour the saucer content on top of it, and let it sear on the CI pan about a minute and a half on each side.
The result is the most beautiful steak I've ever cooked. Perfect searing, and tastes unbelievable. Great smoke flavor and even pink, not bloody.
Now I have an almost perfect cooker for me. If only I can fix that first issue with not being able to stack wood to preheat. Right now I put the logs to be used right underneath the firebox to preheat. Seems to work ok.
However, there are a couple of disadvantages, one, I can't lay logs on top of it to preheat, two, no grate on top of firebox for grilling.
Granted, I do have charcoal grate boxes inside the cooking chamber for grilling, but it does change the mode of cooking to grilling. Well, if I have a brisket that needs to keep going, and chicken or steaks to sear in the meantime, it's hard.
So I decided, I can do something about that second problem. So I hired a welder to come and added a grate shelf inside the firebox above the wood grate.
So tonight, I'm giving it a test run. I took a bone in ribeye straight out of the freezer, lightly coat it with Worchesteshire and Maggi sauce and sliced garlic on top. Put it in cooking chamber with grate temp at 250. Stick the Stoker probe on it and watch it slowly climb from the thirties (frozen).
Once it hit 80F, I put my cast iron on the new grate in firebox and let it heat up.
I then prepared some butter, Montreal, and basil mix in a small saucer. By the time I did all that, meat reached 100F.
I took it out, pour the saucer content on top of it, and let it sear on the CI pan about a minute and a half on each side.
The result is the most beautiful steak I've ever cooked. Perfect searing, and tastes unbelievable. Great smoke flavor and even pink, not bloody.
Now I have an almost perfect cooker for me. If only I can fix that first issue with not being able to stack wood to preheat. Right now I put the logs to be used right underneath the firebox to preheat. Seems to work ok.
