Nov 012016
 

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a friend recently bought a weber smokey mountain cooker and i offered to describe the mods I had made to mine over the 9 years i have owned it. a couple of other friends chimed in with questions so i decided a blog post was warranted! so gilfer, here are the mods.

firstly i fitted castors to the feet so i could wheel it around, a simple and practical mod.

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the next thing i found was that too much charcoal fell thru the grate. i harvest my own charcoal in the bush and its probably a bit smaller in chunks than what the store bought stuff was. i got hold of some 10mm square stainless steel mesh and used stainless tie wire to fix it to the bottom of the fire box.

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i also made a divider which creates a hot area a bit over half of the firebox, and a cool zone a bit less than half. i also find this lets me run a lower temp when smoking, which particularly with fish is better. its just a drop in piece so i can remove it if i want the firebox full. grilling meat its better with the cool zone, i can move stuff on and off the full heat as required.

I also wanted to raise the fire box higher so that I could char grill steak and vegies etc properly on a cast iron grill, i just used some chunks of paver bricks and have never done anything more sophisticated!

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the firebox sits on top of them and then i put the cast iron grill on top,

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this one i got from the US, but they no longer ship to australia, as you can see its nearly at the end of its life! i found a replacement one at bbq’s galore,

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here is the packaging, its to suit an 18″ kamado joe.

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i also made a stainless steel wire mesh which i use for smoking fish and grilling smaller items like prawns,

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recently I also replaced the thermometer, the standard ones are not very accurate, for smoking in particular this is critical, these tel-tru ones from the US are the bomb, you can order them here, http://radarhillsmokers.com.au

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finally, a couple of people have asked me what i smoke with, i now exclusively use paperbark, we have a large tree in the backyard and the flavour is amazing, i soak ‘balls’ of scrunched up bark in a bucket of water and put them on the coals, if the temp starts to run away from me i lay sheets over the top of the firebox to control it.

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happy roasting peeps, i hope the smokey mountain cooker gives you as much joy as mine has over the 9 years – and a constant stream of amazing food. we are about to tuck into roo topside steaks and field mushrooms i have just grilled on ours!

Jan 042012
 

 

inspired by simon bryant from the cook & the chef with maggie beer, i decided to do my own take on tandoori chook, i liked simon’s take on the rice pilaf and the raita so i basically followed his direction with those 2 and grabbed an organic chook from the butchers. it must have been raised on organic gold because it cost over $30!

anyway i gave it a good marinate in tandoori paste and yoghurt and then chucked it on the mighty weber smokey mountain cooker to get the tandoor effect, it came out not too bad if i say so myself!

the pilaf recipe is HERE and the raita HERE

you can see some more pics on our gallery HERE