Cookin' with the Big Green Egg

foxcrew6 said:

Steve where did you get that BIG GREEN EGG i have been searching and searching,and searching for what that might just be the TICKET,we have a inground pool and 5 kids and that seems to be a cause to feed everyone in MO.that gets hot in the summer,i have a large charcol grill now and charcol is the only way other than just wood,i have looked at pellet smokers but they want a arm and a couple of legs for them and they dont even come close to my current cooking serfice,anyhow those steaks looked awesome and as always excellent write up.

Click to expand...

John, I plugged in your zip code at the Big Green Egg Website http://www.biggreenegg.com

Here are a list of dealers that came up.

1 Heritage Tractor 10 miles
2606 E. Rock Haven Road
view map
Harrisonville MO US 64701
816-380-5021

2 Kurzweils Country Meats 13 miles
403 Southwest Ward Road
view map
Lees Summit MO US 64081
816.554.7675

3 The Waterhole 14 miles
1479 SW Market
view map
Lee's Summit MO US 64063
816.246.8846

4 Ranchers Gourmet 18 miles
13378 Metcalf Ave
view map
Overland Park KS US 66213
913.338.0606

5 Kurzweils Country Meats 19 miles
28612 S. State Rd T
view map
Garden City MO US 64747
816-773-6547

6 Midwest Fireplace 19 miles
529 N. Lindenwood
view map
Olathe KS US 66062
913.764.5575

7 The Kansas City BBQ Store 19 miles
11946 S. Strang Line Road
view map
Olathe KS US 66062
913-782-5171
www.thekansascitybbqstore.com

8 Kansas City Fireplace & Bar-B-Q 20 miles
10470 Metcalf
view map
Overland Park KS US 66212
913.383.2286


I used to use charcoal, but got tired of lighting it and dealing with the ashes. So I switched to a high end gas grill about 10 years ago. It was a giant grill that set me back about $1600. It worked great, but it needed to be rebuilt 3 different times with burners and such. Well, it needed to be rebuilt again this year, and was gonna cost $300 in parts. I decided to scrap it, and pulled out the Weber Kettle Grill again. It was my first charcoal cook in years. At that point I swore I would never own a Gas Grill again as the food was so much better.

Therefore I went back and looked at the Big Green Eggs again. By the time I bought the Egg, the stand and some accessories, I ended up spending about $1400-$1500. However, it has a lifetime warranty on the ceramic. So if it cracks, its replaced for free. No more burners to change. It is also the first time I have used Natural Hardwood Lump Charcoal. I started out using the Big Green Egg Brand, which works great, but costs about $20 for a 20 lb bag. After my first few bags of Big Green Egg Charcoal, I came across a site on the net for Charcoal Reviews. http://nakedwhiz.com I then found out that the Big Green Egg Charcoal is manufactured by Royal Oak Charcoal company. Walmart sold the Royal Oak brand for $6.50 for a 10 lb bag. I bought a pallet of it.

You do not use starter fluid to light the Natural Hardwood Lump Charcoal. You can either use an electric starter, or a Fatwood type starter Square, or my preferred method a Handheld torch with Mapp gas. I simply light the torch and hold it on the coals for about a minute. At that point, it is lit. Open the drafts, close the lid and it will be at cooking temp in about 10 minutes.

I have 6 kids, so there is 8 all together in the house. There is no problems cooking large quanties of food on the Egg. You can do two 20 lb turkeys side by side. I have cooked 8 Racks of St Louis Style Spare Ribs at a time. I have cooked 30+ pounds of Pork Butts with room for more. I have cooked a 15 lb brisket with 12 lbs of pork butts. It has lots of room.

The temp control is awesome. I routinely cook for 20+ hours on some low slow smokes on one load of wood. In addition, you can make Awesome Pizzas on the Egg too. You cook Pizzas at 600 to 650 degrees on a baking stone. It is like they are being cooked in a Brick Oven.

Other bonuses of the Big Green Egg is that there are no flareups. I use this grill in all types of Weather, Rain, Snow Sleet, and it performs very well.

Another bonus is it doesn't creat much ash. I can cook everyday for at least two weeks without having to empty the ashes on the Grill.

My only regret is that I did not buy this 8 to 10 years ago when I first looked at them. However, my thoughts at that time were "Who the Heck would pay that much for a Charcoal Grill"....I could have and this cool veratile tool years ago.

I know I am gonna be building a custom grill table this summer and I will be adding a 2nd XL Big Green Egg. In addition, there are a couple of companies that make a temperature control device. It is basically a little computer that controls a fan mounted in the draft door. You dial in the temp your looking to cook at and the controller turns the fan on and off to maintain that temperature. This would be a very nice feature for the long cooks. Though it is not necessary.

Oh Well, I could go on and on. If you have any specific questions, send me a PM.

Thanks

ElecTech said:

Steve,

I have always cooked with gas and to turn it down, you just twist a knob. How do you go down from 700 to sear to the lower temp to finish cooking and does it take long? They have these at an outdoor type store here but I think they must jack the price up about 100 percent!!! I did notice that Sam's Club had something that looked like the Egg but don't know who made it.

Click to expand...

The temperature control is all done be adjusting the upper and lower draft openings. There is a lowe draft door that slides open and closed and there is a Cast Iron Cap for the top of the Egg, it has a center disk that slides open and closed as well. In addition, there is a daisy Wheel on the center disk with additional small holes in it. This essentially allows for fine tuning the temp control.

It took me a week or two to really get the draft adjustment figured out, but now it is really pretty easy. It takes about 20 minutes for the Grill to cool from 700 degrees to 400 degrees. However, it seems like it takes a couple of hours to cool the egg from 400 down to 150 or so.

I actually find this much easier to control the temp that my gas grill. Once the temp is stabilized and set, it pretty much stays there for many hours. For instance, my last long smoke/cook a couple of weeks ago, I started the Egg at 9:00PM on Saturday Evening. The temp was stabilized at 250 degrees. I put a 14 lb brisket on and 3, 5-6 lb pork butts (I now end up feeding neighbors, and relatives when do the slow bbq). I stayed up until 1:30AM, the temps were still running solid at 250, despite it being 5 below zero out. I went to bed, woke up about 8:30 and the temp had dropped to 200 overnight. I opened the draft up just a little and once again the temp was stabilized back at 250.

All and all, I cooked for 21.5 hours and probably tweaked the drafts 3 or 4 times to maintain the temp. This was in weather ranging from sub zero, ,to a high of the teens. It does a great job maintaining its temp and is easy to control.

ElecTech said:

Wow!!! That is stable cooking indeed! I notice it is lump charcoal, do you have to load more during a long cook? If so, how do you do that? Or, do you put a bunch in at one time and then try to control that? Does it have to start at 300 or 400 and then come down? I know, lots of questions!! It sure seems like a very nice unit. Is it cool to the touch on the outside when cooking? One other thing, I did see flames in the pictures, do these go out when you shut the lid? I have nearly ruined a steak or two because of flareups and I have a really nice grill with the plates that supposedly prevent that. But, we I run it up to 700 to sear, the plates are so hot that it still can do the flare up thing.

Click to expand...

Bruce,

If I am gonna do a long 20+ hour cook, I usually start with a clean grill, no ashes in the firebox. I also make sure the vent holes in the firebox are clear. This takes about 10 minutes to clean the grill, which isn't a real big deal. There is alot of talk on the Big Green Egg Forums about loading the lump charcoal into the Egg. The proper way to do it is to load the bigger chunks at the bottom and layer up to the top with the smaller chunks. THe theory is that the smaller chunks won't burn up and plug the air vent holes. I tried this for the first several slow cooks and it works great.

However, then I just started dumping the charcoal out of the bag into the egg firebox. I have found from my experience that this works just as well too. So now I don't take the time to arrange the lump charcoal.

The firebox on my XL Big Green Egg will hold 10 lbs of lump charcoal, plus the chunks of flavored smoker wood that I will add to the cook. These range from Hickory, Mesquite, Apple, Alder, Cherry, Oak, Maple,etc, depending on what I am cooking.

When I start a long cook I am careful to monitor my grill temp as I am bringing the egg up to cooking temperature. I don't like to overshoot my target temp by more than 50 degrees. If you do, it is not a big deal, it just seems like it takes along time to bring the internal temp back down to the low range of 225 to 250 that I smoke at.

I can keep the egg running for an excess of 30 hours on one load of lump charcoal. There were a couple of times that I started a slow smoke around 2 in the afternoon, finished up the slow smoke at noon the next day. I kept the egg running and at 5pm, I opened the drafts up to increase internal temp to 375-400 and cooked some more food. All and all, it ran for over 30 hours. The amazing thing is that there was still some lump charcoal left.

The ceramic on the egg does keep relatively cool to the touch. You can still get burned, but I can put my hand on the dome breifly without getting burned.

Finally, the flames you see are basically there becuase the lid is open. Once the lid is shut, the flames die down. The grill basically does not flare up. In addition, the food cooked inside retains an unremarkable amount of moisture. Stuff just doesnt dry out, well easily anyways.

I will say that you have a very nice Gas Grill setup. I used to have one very similar, though not quite as big. I thought it was the greatest thing when I got it. I did alot of real good cooks on it, but never did any low and slow smoking. However, my gas grill was able to generate 600 + degree temps and did that well.

I basically just got tired of replacing parts every few years. Therefore I decided to try this out and am glad I did....Geez I caught hell from my wife for buying my gas grill years ago (buying it for her as a mothers day present did not help) and caught heck for buying the egg. However, Now She loves everything that is cooked out there.

Gary Lenon said:

Steve,

I am thinking seriously about one of these grills. I know what you have into yours with the accessories, but how much to just get set up with the basics? What accessories are a Must?

Click to expand...

Gary,

There are several different sizes of Green Eggs ranging from mini to the XL that I have. However, the Large is the most popular size. My two buddies both have the Large and it works out just fine for a normal size family with occasional friends.

The accessories that are a must have are as follows:

Grill Gripper - Tool for removing the grate off of the Grill. Kind of like a funky pair of Pliers

Big Green Egg Grid Cleaner - Looks like a long forked screwdriver

Big Green Egg Nest - Stand for the Big Green Egg (Not Necessary if your gonna build a table to put the Egg in...Plans available on Big Green Egg Website)

Big Green Egg Table Mates - These are side shelves that mount on the Egg. You would use these if you used the BGE Nest. They come in as handy shelves

Big Green Egg Cover - It is nice to have a cover for the Egg. However, if you build a custom table a standard egg cover won't work unless it is the same dimensions as the plans on the BGE Website.

Remote Read Thermometer - It is nice to have a probe you can stick in your meat and have a remote read reciever to tell what the internal temp of the meat is. You can buy a cheap one at Meijer or Walmart. Mine works great and was $14.00

Plate Setter - This is a key accessory for the Big Green Egg. It provides for Indirect cooking and is used for all slow cooks.

Baking Stone - If you think you want to try doing Pizzas on the egg, this is a must have. Pizzas turn out awesome, though it takes a little practice to get them on the egg, especially if you don't have a Pizza/Pastry Peel.

You can ususally find Big Green Egg Kits that include the Egg, Nest, and Table Mates. These will cost in the proximity of $900 for a large. The Grill Griper, Ash Tool, and Grid Cleaner will cost around $60, overpriced but necessary. The Plate Setter will cost around $70 and is the only "Must Have" cooking accessory for the Egg.

I would also consider replacing the factory Gasket on each half of the Egg with a High Temp Gasket. BGE sells these, they should come that way from the factory, but they don't. It would be much easier to put a gasket on when the Grill is new, as the old (unused) gasket will be easy to remove.

It took me better than 3 hours to replace the gasket on my egg (lots of scraping).

My other buddies have not had any issues with there gaskets, but I melted mine :evil:

The other accessories are cool, but can be added later on. I am guessing you would have around $1100 by the time you left the BGE store with Charcoal, etc.

I left my BGE Store with the store with my XL egg, Nest, Table Mates, Grill Gripper, Ash Tool, grill cover, and Bag of Charcoal for about $1300. I ordered the plate setter a week later. A couple of weeks after that I bought the baking stone. I bought all of my rib racks and other grilling accessories from Lowes. They were similar quality, and a whole lot cheaper.

Good Luck