Minion method - what did I do wrong?

[LloydQ]

I cannot stress enough, the charcoal lighting nor the type of charcoal is not the issue. Use the water pan for a heat diffuser. If you put water in it, you you will be amazed.

 

[dadsr4]

I cannot stress enough, the charcoal lighting nor the type of charcoal is not the issue. Use the water pan for a heat diffuser. If you put water in it, you you will be amazed.

There are a lot of people who do not use water in the pan, and they have no problems with incomplete combustion or too high a temp. What ever fuel you use, wood, lump, or charcoal, choking down the exhaust leads to dirty smoke and too large a fire leads to overheating.

 

[el luchador]

I have done numerous comparison cooks and not one person could tell the difference between lump and briquettes when using the same/amount of wood chunks.

It was smoldering and you were getting bad smoke, IMHO.

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that could be the case if there are a lot of other flavor adders on the meat - sugar, worcestershire sauce,soy sauce, etc etc

cook with no chunks and use salt and pepper only and you will notice the difference

 

[el luchador]

to the OP, the good news is that a bag of lump is only 15 bucks so it doesnt hurt to try.

I cook direct over the coals and as low as 225 and the coals are SMOLDERING. thats just the nature of efficient cooking.

with lump, there is no nasty smoke coming from coals lighting up and there is no nasty flavor. matter of fact the flavor from lump is really light. if you dont add wood chunks you may not even taste any smoke flavor . cooking direct over the coals means your fire doesnt have to get very hot to maintain 225 and you were not burning a lot of charcoal.

here is the test. light a half chimney of briquettes and see how much white smoke comes out, then light a half chimney of lump and compare how much white smoke comes out. the briquiettes have like 10x the white smoke of lump and all that smoke is flavoring your food.

 

[dadsr4]

that could be the case if there is a lot of other flavor adders on the meat - sugar, worcestershire sauce,soy sauce, etc etc

cook with no chunks and use salt and pepper only and you will notice the difference

I cook meat with only light seasoning and have used both lump and charcoal. Never noticed any flavor problems, and no one has mentioned any off flavors. I've settled on charcoal due to inconsistent burn times using lump.

 

[el luchador]

I cook meat with only light seasoning and have used both lump and charcoal. Never noticed any flavor problems, and no one has mentioned any off flavors. I've settled on charcoal due to inconsistent burn times using lump.

it also may be possible that some are more sensitive to it than others because there are a lot of people who can tell the difference and a lot that cant.

even harry soo advocates controlling the temp in a wsm by adjusting the exhaust, not the intake.

 

[93_confirmed]

KBB is garbage. I know people swear by it for loyalty, cost, whatever but it burns dirty and stinks. I hate it.

I've done hundreds of minions with RO lump, Stubbs and/or Weber briqs and have never once had this problem. Spend the extra cash for a better quality of fuel.

 

[Monkey Uncle]

I think you should use your water pan empty and wrapped in foil for easy clean up. I use kbb and only cook on a wsm. In my experience I only light maybe 10 lit briquettes and let the temp come up slowly with all vents open. When I’m about 10-15 degrees from target temp I’ll close two of the three bottom vents and keep the top one wide open. Since it’s the first cook maybe some of the chemicals being burnt off . I would assume the grease dripping down directly on the fire may have contributed to some of the off flavor. Check out the tvwbb.com. Great bunch of guys with tons of tips

I don't think it was drippings. It didn't taste like burned fat, it tasted like unburned charcoal. And I actually like the flavor profile of direct-cooked meat - that's the way barbecue was done in the old days, and still is done at many of the most popular BBQ joints in NC.

Your point about not lighting too many briquettes at once is well taken, and in line with what several other posters have picked up on.

Thanks!

 

[Monkey Uncle]

Don't have one but from what I've read and seen in videos I'd use less lit charcoal.

One broader perspective, I think that charcoal smokers do tend towards a heavier smoke profile and some folks (me included) can also taste the charcoal itself. While we all know that pellet grills are light on smoke, a well run offset can be too -- at least when compared to a WSM. There have been a number of posts recently from folks going the other direction and being disappointed with the light smoke they are getting from the offset vs what they were used to with a UDS or WSM.

In both my old kamado and now kettle I have to be careful how I run it to minimize the charcoal flavor -- something that I'm not found of.

I actually thought it didn't have enough smoke flavor. I'm used to getting a pretty heavy smoke flavor from my cranky old COS because I frequently have to choke the fire to keep it from running away. I think the off flavor had something to do with the charcoal specifically and not the overall amount of smoke.

Thanks!

 

[Monkey Uncle]

The WSM is pretty much all I have ever used. I don't do minion at all. I start with a full basket and put (GASP) lighter fluid on it. I don't let it soak in, no more than 5 minutes or so before i toss in a match. I let it burn until the crummy white smoke thins out, then put in the water pan ( with or without liquid, but better results with ) and add the meat. I have never had a problem with temps out of control. By the time the cold meat comes to cooking temp, the fire has stabilized.
Seems to me that your biggest issue with the cook was leaving out the water pan, not the lighting method. The WSM is designed to have it in place.

Are you able to run it for 12 - 14 hours without adding fuel?

Why do you think the water pan was the issue? I ask because without it, the WSM is basically a UDS, and lots of people cook on a UDS.

Thanks!

 

[Monkey Uncle]

to the OP, the good news is that a bag of lump is only 15 bucks so it doesnt hurt to try.

I cook direct over the coals and as low as 225 and the coals are SMOLDERING. thats just the nature of efficient cooking.

with lump, there is no nasty smoke coming from coals lighting up and there is no nasty flavor. matter of fact the flavor from lump is really light. if you dont add wood chunks you may not even taste any smoke flavor . cooking direct over the coals means your fire doesnt have to get very hot to maintain 225 and you were not burning a lot of charcoal.

here is the test. light a half chimney of briquettes and see how much white smoke comes out, then light a half chimney of lump and compare how much white smoke comes out. the briquiettes have like 10x the white smoke of lump and all that smoke is flavoring your food.

I've used lump a lot in the past, and although I can definitely tell that it burns more quickly and makes less ash (due to being less dense than briquettes), it still makes a tremendous amount of white smoke while it is lighting off in the chimney. But I've never done the side-by-side test you suggest, so perhaps it makes less smoke than briquettes.

 

[LloydQ]

Are you able to run it for 12 - 14 hours without adding fuel?

Why do you think the water pan was the issue? I ask because without it, the WSM is basically a UDS, and lots of people cook on a UDS.

Thanks!

I think the water pan in place, with or without water, is essential to using the WSM as it was designed. I bought a Gateway rib hanger for my 22" and did 10 racks of baby backs with Weber briquettes. I did not let them ash over completely before putting the meat on. As the drippings started hitting the coals, the fuel that was not fully ignited began to smolder and some of it died out completely. Nastiest, foul smoke you could imagine. I gave them away as I planned, but to me they were inedible.
I feel like some people in this thread are saying that I said you have to put water in the pan. You don't. When I got my 22" used, it had terra cotta saucers in the water pan. I tried a couple of cooks on it, and did not have any difficulty controlling temperature. I think with the pan acting as a diffuser, you can let the coals do their thing without having to choke them down to the point of dirty smoke.

 

[Pig_Farmer]

Thanks, everyone. I've got one vote for switching to lump and several votes for using less lit charcoal at the beginning so the temp will come up more slowly. I'm about out of KBB, so I'll need to decide if my next purchase is going to switch to lump or try again with briquettes.

You folks who do Minion with lump, do you also start with a very small amount of lit charcoal and bring the temp up slowly?

Yes.

 

[Monkey Uncle]

Resurrecting this old thread to give an update.

I did a short-ish minion burn to cook some spare ribs and mac & cheese yesterday.

Filled the ring about half full with KBB. A little more than half of that was partially burned briquets saved after the last cook.

Lit off just enough new briquets to cover the bottom of the chimney. Chimney was sitting on top of the charcoal in the ring, so a few of those briquets got lit also. Scattered the lit briquets from the chimney evenly over top of the unlit charcoal.

Used one large (double fist-sized) chunk of white oak.

Started with all vents wide open and gradually closed the intake vents to around 1/4-1/3 as the temp rose. Reached 225 at grate level after about 30 minutes, at which point I put the meat on.

Water pan was in place, but empty. I lined it with foil, and also covered the bottom with foil so it would act as a heat deflector instead of a radiator. This seems to have worked, as the temp on the lower grate stayed lower than the temp on the dome thermometer.

Most of the meat went on the lower grate; mac & cheese and one strip of rib tips went on the top grate.

Ribs took about 6 hours. Mac & cheese didn't go on until the last two hours.

I had to add a 1/2 chimney of lit charcoal shortly after putting the mac on because the temp had dropped to 217 and wouldn't come back up with all vents wide open. Also added another large wood chunk. Adding lit charcoal was a hairy experience that I would like to avoid in the future!

I mostly kept the temp on the lower grate between 225 and 240. This required fiddling with the intake vents periodically. They mostly stayed between 1/4 and 2/3 open for the entire cook. Exhaust vent was wide open. The only exception was right after adding the 1/2 chimney of lit charcoal, I had to shut down all of the vents for 5 minutes or so because the temp had zoomed up to 300.

Result: No off flavors! Yay!

The one lingering uncertainty is whether my success was due to my fire management, or to the fact that a large portion of the charcoal that I used was partially burned and might have already had all of the nastiness driven off of it. Next cook I'll be using mostly new briquets because I didn't have much left this time. We'll see how that goes.

Thanks very much to everyone for all the help.