Gas Grill Struggle

[Pat]

Bird, I'm really looking forward to using the rotisserie and your comments just add fuel to the fire. I have leveled my weight out at my personal goal of 200 lbs (from 250-260) and is bouncing around between 197 and 205 (mostly 200-203. I can experiment with a little more freedom in portion size and contents.

I have never personally cooked anything on a rotisserie before and would invite any suggestions. I think chicken, or fowl of any kind, would be a natural but will be looking into beef possibilities.

Pat

[Pat]

Price of grills is outrageous in my opinion. Wife cut out pictures of grills in HER magazines and when I researched them on the web nearly fainted at the $3-6 thousand dollar prices. I guess she set me up. Got me over the sticker shock of paying $800 for a grill. Left to my own devices I would have paid significantly less. We got a nice one but I doubt I will get significantly better results than I cold get with a $100-200 unit.

Pat

[jimbrown]

Pat I pulled one of your tricks this weekend. Put the steaks on the grill. Hmm need a glass of wine. Into house for wine. Distracted by jokes, women ect. LOOk out on grill instant fire.

So we had blackened steak. It was still great.

[GaryM]

I've got a Weber Genesis propane grill that I've been using for 5 years. Works fine, but I find that it doesn't quite get hot enough to put a good sear on a steak. Works fine for ribs, brisket, and pork steaks though. A by product of burning propane, or NG for that matter is water. I think I'd prefer my steaks grilled, not steamed! It's really not that bad though. [img]/forums/images/icons/ooo.gif[/img]

I also have one of the propane smokers from Wally World. Great Smokey Mountain? I'm not happy with that because if I turn down the flame to keep the temp around 220-230, I don't get much smoke. If I crank up the burner to get more smoke, the temp gets too high.

I had some award points at work and ordered a Brinkman charcoal unit from the catalog. I'm going to give that a try using lump charcoal, not briquettes. Briquettes have too much other stuff in them. The Brinkman can also do grilling over the charcoal, so maybe I can do my steaks as well.

If I don't like it, I'm not out anything but time.

Kind of wanted to try the Big Green Egg, but free won out. [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

[Robertbrown]

I have a Weber Genesis as well. I've had mine a little longer than you have had yours. I have had problems with the temperature but solved that early on. I found out that the regulator that came with the grill would freeze and limit gas flow. I replaced the regulator and always remember to turm on the tank first before I open the burner valve and the flow is much better. I can get the grill over 500 degrees when preheating if I don't keep an eye on it.
I 've had lots of cheap gas grills and would buy another Weber if anything ever happened to the one I have but at this rate I won't ever need another grill. This one still has the original burner after 6-7 years and I grill a lot living in Florida.
I have cooked everthing you would ever want to grill on this unit and I have sucessfully baked bread and even a cake.
I haven't looked at Weber grills lately but like everything else
the qualty has probably changed and the price has gone up. I can say that without a doubt the grill I have is by far the best i've ever used.

[Robertbrown]

I've looked at your profile and I recomend you design and build your own smoker, with those credentials you should be able to produce a mack-daddy smoker for a lot less than you spent on the computer operated grill and about as much time and effort.
Don't forget to post the plans and the pics.

[Pat]

I'm sorry, where in my profile do I claim to know anything about smokers?

It is just that I have so many open projects and projects in the wings... lists of projects... I thought if I got some good advice I might be able to throw some money at the problem and make it go away good enough.

Just today I plasma cut two pairs of holes (1 3/16) in 3 inch square tube (horizontal across bottom of my FEL mounted hay spike using a template made of oak. I inserted a couple round bars 1 3/16 in diameter and welded all four holes where the rod went through using 7018 rod. This to replace the broken stabilizer spears (about a foot long) on my hay spike.

I loaded about 100 round bales(over 1000 lbs each), 19 into a pile to fill/refill a friends trailer four bales per trip and the rest into my hay barn 3 rows high.

And then after lunch I crashed through thick underbrush and thorny greenbriar to look along a creek to try to find the newborn calf my friend spooked so that it ran over a quarter mile and disappeared after going through a few barbed wire fences. Haven't seen it.

If by some miracle it has found its mom then all will be OK. Otherwise the coyotes will eat a $500 supper tonight. It is hot and the little feller needs his mommy to get his liquid. Not old enough to be on its own overnight (24-48 hours old.)

Then at about 4PM I drove about 40 miles (one way) to pick up a truck from the shop.

It just goes on like this as mostly every day is pretty busy.

Got to get ready for the 4th-5th of July visit to an aunt and a cousin near Lawton and then prep slide in camper for a trip to visit my wife's cousin in northern Colorado, Rocky Mountain National park, USAF Academy, Pikes Peak, Grand Gorge, various dinosaur parks/museums, aerospace, museum, entomology museum, visit a brand new great grand niece and my sister , and on and on.

So in my spare time I would build prototype smokers? I will search for a good working design and mostly copy it.

Pat

[Robertbrown]

"So in my spare time I would build prototype smokers? I will search for a good working design and mostly copy it".
That's what I would do, it's just a smoker, no sense reinventing the mouse trap.
Perhaps if you paid someone to install an electric fence you would have more time to solve this smoker dilema.
It's more a question of size, decor and available space that would determine the proper design. It's an opourtunity to express your creative abilitys.
Where I live it's common to see old rusty refrigerators used to smoke large quanitys of fish (mullet). You might not want an old rusty refrigerator on your porch/patio.

[Pat]

Right, I don't think a rusty old refrigerator should be on the porch or patio. Mine is out back of my metal working shop.

I once had a product idea some of your neighbors may be interested in...

Inflatable ersatz appliances and junk cars. Upwardly mobile rednecks who have towable trailers or some sort of camper can take these inflatable props with them to a campground and inflate them to give the place a more homey look.

Pat [img]/forums/images/icons/wink.gif[/img] [img]/forums/images/icons/wink.gif[/img]