of veggies and a rack of pork ribs.
You light the 18” is as you would any
charcoal BBQ – which the bottom
section doubles as. I find it best
to use a charcoal lighter, a
metallic jug with air vents to
get coals started faster and
more thoroughly. Once
developing a nice white
powdery outer, in they
went with a thick layer
of dry wood chunks. With
the first centre on, in goes
the water bath, topped up to
near full. Above goes the final
middle section with racks internally.
We added all racks with ribs at the bottom
and truss tomatoes, red peppers and an onion
above. The lid is heavy, which tells me it should
have good thermal properties and includes
a thermometer and hanging points for
meat hooks.
With all vents open fully and
only five minutes later the dial
was comfortable at 100C.
The water bath lowers and
maintain the temp for a nice
slow smoke session. After a
few more minutes we played
with the top and bottom vents
to see if we could manipulate
the temp. We couldn’t, a good sign
for the effectiveness of the bath, so
we set the top vents to fully closed and
lower to one-third open.
After two hours we popped the top – allFrom $369
Where
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RatingALL THE GEARlooked good so we removed the bath, cranked
the heat and got the birds ready for lunch.
Without the bath the temp flew up and in no
time we were ready to eat.
Easily some of the best duck I’ve had and
probably the best I’ve made. The tomatoes and
peppers were a winner too being blended into a
killer bolognese sauce. Clean-up was easy. With
the centre sections removed, we closed all vents
and left the remaining coals to choke out.
It is too big and heavy to use as a travel
smoker but, as it doubles as a decent sized BBQ
and can take two racks and hung meats for
smoking, it can cater for a dozen people making
it a pretty decent buy.