I have a hot smoker and a gas BBQ but am keen to try some slow cooked meats etc.
I am looking at either a Webber or perhaps something like this
http://www.cabelas.com/cabelas/en/te...120&hasJS=true
What are the locally available options or do I go Webber or bring in the Cabelas model
Cheers
Neil
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"The Rebel Alliance"
Neil
Noelm has put up a couple of posts/receipes on this and they work a treat. I bought an old weber off ebay for $5. Use a few hot beads and very dry/old bush hard wood to provide the smoke and it does wonders on chicken, beef, sausages, fish, etc.
Steve
This is Noelm's thread http://www.ausfish.com.au/vforum/sho...d.php?t=161583
I cannot comment on the Cabelas option but I have recently resurrected my Weber and much prefer it to my gas barbecue.
The gas barbecue is far more convenient to use than a Weber. Cleaning a Weber after use can be a bit tedious insofar as ashes need to be disposed of and the grill needs to be cleaned off, albeit the latter is no so bad if you place your meat/fish on Alfoil or a disposable aluminium tray. Also, of course, Webers take a fair amount of time to fire up as the charcoal needs to be burnt until each briquette has ash all over it
However, there is no comparison in my view to the tasty results between a Weber and a gas barbecue, whether it be for simple directly grilled steak and snags or the more fun stuff of indirectly grilled (and therefore well smoked) joints of meat, poultry, etc.
I especially like cooking ducks in mine. In the last few minutes of the cooking, I place sliced pineapple and cherries on toothpicks all over the duck and after a few minutes with the lid back on, the whole feast looks terrific and delightful to eat.
I think that the basic Weber will last for centuries as the enameled casing, grill etc just never seem to wear out. The moving bits underneath (vent opening lever mechanism) will rust if you leave it in the rain for many years like I do but I recently refurbished mine by buying a kit of various parts , including the plastic cap for one leg and new springs for the ash tray underneath all for about $35 from this crowd http://www.aussiebbqs.com.au/index.cfm They are not far from where Glasscraft is at Murrarie. The refurbishment was easy to do and successful such that after using the Weber again after all of these years, I went back to that store and bought the Webber rib-holding accessory.
The Heatbeads website gives some information and some useful videos about using Webers. http://www.heatbeads.com.au/
I think that Webers only come in black these days. When I bought mine, there were other colour choices like red and green but I don't think that is the case anymore.
I am obviously a very happy user of my Weber and my gas barbecue is sitting all covered up at the moment likely to be used only very rarely in the future but I reiterate that Webers are a bit time consuming to fire up and clean afterwards but the cooked results are truly stunning.
.
Neil, I have bought off this bloke before and he is a true BBQ chef.
He is Aussie and this smoker is cheaper then the Cabelas option.
http://www.urbangriller.com/Gas_Smoker.html
This smoker is cheap compared to my webber WSM.
You should also ask him about "Cold" smoking your fish
I have an old Kmart "webber" that I use as a smoker only, and it seems to work a treat (not too good as a cooker though compared to a proper webber), agree a gas BBQ is easy and convenient, but nothing beats the taste of a heat bead cooked meat/fish/chicken, I guess it has something to do with the direct "coals" heat and slight smoke that you get from a Webber, the only difference is you need to have the BBQ going well before you actually want to cook, whereas a gas job, you just grab a few sausages, walk out the back, light the gas and your cooking, but a webber needs to be lit for half hour or so before anything goes in, same goes for smoking, you need to light the heat beads, get them red/white before you add your wood/sawdust/woodchips, but it is fun, it is rewarding and you will have some great results and some dysmal failures, but without a few sad results, you will never learn what works, and what doesn't.
There is a slight advantage to webber cooking over a gas BBQ though, once you get good at it, all you need to do is get it ready, put in your Pork or whatever, then back to the guests and a few beers, no standing around cooking, smoking is a slightly different kettle of fish, it does not take all that long, but the end result can be spectacular, I was at my mates place in Caloundra not so long ago and we got a few spotties and smoked them to have as a "snack" while having a few beers in the coming days, we ended up eating the lot straight out of the smoker!
Agree Noel, my old red weber is a smoker only and smoking is a planned event that takes time and is enjoyed. I usually smoke up a bit at a time and love the following days of cold smoked chicken/fish/meat (do yourselves a favour - smoked chicken,basil and brie pizza). The flavour and smell is all part of the deal and seems to travel a long way (like a camp oven roast) when cooking. The bloke in the neighbouring farm even came over once just to find out what that wonderful smell was. It was driving him crazy.
Steve
here is another short smoking thread
http://www.ausfish.com.au/vforum/sho...ighlight=smoke
Horse,
the best allrounder for me is the webber kettle, grill, smoke, add a rotisserie, and you can smoke on it as well but i use a WSM for that, here are some recent pics, had some homemade pastrami for lunch today and currently curing some bacon which will go on the smoker next Tuesday,
some of these pics are Texas Chilli cooked on the grate with some Marrow bones as a Side, Xmas Turkey, some ribs, Pastrami and some pulled Pork, most of these where done either on the Webber Kettle or the Webber WSM.
Thinking about getting an Offset Smoker or a Pellet one as sort of getting into really slow smoking for Bacon and thinking about smoking snags and Pancetta
This is in the firing line
http://grillpro.com.au/yoder-durango-vertical-smokers/
Tangles KFC
check out this site before you buy anything, www.amazingribs.com some great info on there about smoking meats.
cheers.
Originally Posted by Horse
ok Mike what time is dinner? is there room for a swag on the veranda hahaha
cheers Murf
Kind of funny how we Aussies are only just getting into smoked/pickled/preserved stuff, other nations have been doing it for centuries, I love doing Christmas dinner and stuff in the Weber, a Turkey comes out fantastic, wonder if they make a double size Weber? thats one of the drawbacks (well to me it is) they are quite small, if I wasn't such a tight ar$e I would buy one of those Weber cool sided things (egg?) the old Weber is a pretty dangerous affair if there is any little kids wandering around. I smoked a big "chunk" of Marlin the other day, it came out great, nice and moist in the centre, but had a crisp smokey "bark" on the outside.
I agree Noel, theres nothing like a leg of lamb or chook cooked in the weber.
A little secret i found out early days re roasts such as lamb, beef and pork - you simply measure the height of the piece of meat as it sits on the bench. Use 20 beads each side in thw weber, and cook the roast for 1 minite per mm in height. S a roast that is 100mm tall = 100 minutes. Comesmout perfectly cooked, just pink in the middle, every time.
My favourite chicken in the weber is a recipe from the weber cookbook called "Old Mcgregors Smoked lemon chicken."
Simply cut a lemon in half, shove it inside the chook, into the weber, with a 3" chunck of chickory wood dropped onto each side of the coals just before the chicken goes in. Yum!
One thing i would love to do is a whole rib fillet, cooked the slow way over like 8 hours like they do at hogs breath. Anyone done that? Love to know the proper way to do that!
Note to self: Don't argue with an idiot. They will only bring you down to their level and beat you with experience....
The Hark is great. They come up at Aldi yearly
The ALDI version is the old single door HARK. They were on runout special at Carindale for $99.00
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