charrederhead
Babbling Farker
(and the spit, too).
Debuted the rotis. the other day w/ a 4# chicken- came out nice. Cooked it ~340-275 for ~2 hrs. (Pay no attention to the evidence of my lousy truss job!)
Then yesterday a.m. I got the urge (and had time) to use the rotis. again and scrounged up some potatoes. I had wings and sweet Italian sausage in the fridge. Just had some chicken so I grabbed the sausage (ha), and some peppers/onions and found some baked beans and it turned into one of those kind of cooks.
I had skipped breakfast and was starving. In my cooking-on-the-fly haste I forgot to oil/salt the taters. You can see I'm set up w/ indirect charcoal baskets. What you can't see in that pic is the drip pan from the earlier chicken cook nestled between the baskets. I later added a smaller pan filled w/ baked beans next to the sausage pan.
In the meantime, I had a bunch of small lump pieces/flakes/dust/leftover that I wanted to utilize, so I poured that into the WSM, to heat up some leftover ribs.
The rotis. kettle settled at 290 and the WSM was plenty smoky- I figure due to the lack of airspace w/ the flaky, dusty fuel I'm using. I took the top off to aid combustion. This was more a research event than anything, so I wasn't particularly concerned.
Back in the kettle I lost temp. faster than I expected so opened up the bottom vents more. The temp came back up and all was well. The WSM was still smoking too much.
Cut to later, when I realized I needed more fuel for the kettle. I decided to steal from the WSM, so I moved some fuel from it to the kettle, one chunk at a time. This worked for a while, but it was a losing battle. Meanwhile, the WSM fire had cleared up and the temp. was ~250, so I made the Command Decision to move the 2 pans from the kettle to the WSM.
And the fun begins...instead of pulling the rotis. to give myself all sorts of room, I idiotically tried to finagle the big pan out from under the potatoes. Naturally, I dripped liquid onto the pan below and the chicken grease caught fire.
Classic keystone cops followed- as I removed the sausage pan (I always wear welding gloves) from the flare-up, I knocked over a charcoal basket into that chicken grease. :bow: :tsk:
Got a nice little flame going now!... I put the lid on/closed the vents and snuffed it out. Qk, mini-fiasco handled.
I dumped the bean pan into the sausage/veggie pan in the WSM, which had hit 270, and closed the vents to a crack. The kettle (potatoes) settled to ~250. I reverse-seared the sausage on top of the charcoal baskets and went in to eat. It was all real good. No pics though.
After eating, I checked the WSM temp and it was still going strong at 270- amazing. The charcoal ring hadn't even been filled halfway, and I had stolen some of the fuel to put in the kettle, yet it was still cranking good. I know it's been said a million times here but these things are amazingly efficient cookers.
About an hour later I pulled the taters and they were excellent. Crispy skin ( I did spray-oil them and salt them on the spit) w/ soft insides.
Sooo, I did some stupid chit and learned a lesson.
And here are a few gratuitous pics of a picnic cook from last week-
Debuted the rotis. the other day w/ a 4# chicken- came out nice. Cooked it ~340-275 for ~2 hrs. (Pay no attention to the evidence of my lousy truss job!)
Then yesterday a.m. I got the urge (and had time) to use the rotis. again and scrounged up some potatoes. I had wings and sweet Italian sausage in the fridge. Just had some chicken so I grabbed the sausage (ha), and some peppers/onions and found some baked beans and it turned into one of those kind of cooks.
I had skipped breakfast and was starving. In my cooking-on-the-fly haste I forgot to oil/salt the taters. You can see I'm set up w/ indirect charcoal baskets. What you can't see in that pic is the drip pan from the earlier chicken cook nestled between the baskets. I later added a smaller pan filled w/ baked beans next to the sausage pan.
In the meantime, I had a bunch of small lump pieces/flakes/dust/leftover that I wanted to utilize, so I poured that into the WSM, to heat up some leftover ribs.
The rotis. kettle settled at 290 and the WSM was plenty smoky- I figure due to the lack of airspace w/ the flaky, dusty fuel I'm using. I took the top off to aid combustion. This was more a research event than anything, so I wasn't particularly concerned.
Back in the kettle I lost temp. faster than I expected so opened up the bottom vents more. The temp came back up and all was well. The WSM was still smoking too much.
Cut to later, when I realized I needed more fuel for the kettle. I decided to steal from the WSM, so I moved some fuel from it to the kettle, one chunk at a time. This worked for a while, but it was a losing battle. Meanwhile, the WSM fire had cleared up and the temp. was ~250, so I made the Command Decision to move the 2 pans from the kettle to the WSM.
And the fun begins...instead of pulling the rotis. to give myself all sorts of room, I idiotically tried to finagle the big pan out from under the potatoes. Naturally, I dripped liquid onto the pan below and the chicken grease caught fire.
Classic keystone cops followed- as I removed the sausage pan (I always wear welding gloves) from the flare-up, I knocked over a charcoal basket into that chicken grease. :bow: :tsk:
Got a nice little flame going now!... I put the lid on/closed the vents and snuffed it out. Qk, mini-fiasco handled.
I dumped the bean pan into the sausage/veggie pan in the WSM, which had hit 270, and closed the vents to a crack. The kettle (potatoes) settled to ~250. I reverse-seared the sausage on top of the charcoal baskets and went in to eat. It was all real good. No pics though.
After eating, I checked the WSM temp and it was still going strong at 270- amazing. The charcoal ring hadn't even been filled halfway, and I had stolen some of the fuel to put in the kettle, yet it was still cranking good. I know it's been said a million times here but these things are amazingly efficient cookers.
About an hour later I pulled the taters and they were excellent. Crispy skin ( I did spray-oil them and salt them on the spit) w/ soft insides.
Sooo, I did some stupid chit and learned a lesson.
And here are a few gratuitous pics of a picnic cook from last week-
