So I bought a 22-inch Premium Kettle Weber Charcoal Grill. I chose charcoal because from my understanding and research, charcoal grills produce the authentic BBQ flavour and easier to smoke compared to gas grills. As we already know, charcoal grills are more time consuming to set-up even with a chimney. With the chimney, it takes me around 40 minutes to light up the charcoals. Even with the difficult and time-consuming setup, grilling burgers was not an issue. I was able to heat up the grill to the required temperature and then grill the burgers.
However, I had great difficulty using it for indirectly cooking my beef ribs. The fire does not stay for that long and I have to keep adding lit charcoal. Also, it was difficult to maintain temperature. It either goes too hot or low and the temperature dies which forces me to add more lit charcoal. I tried playing with the vents but with no luck but that could also be because that was my first time indirectly grilling ribs. I admit that I am rookie when it comes to grilling which is why I am seeking guidance. After 12 hours, the beef ribs were still not cooked which is ridiculous. The same ribs were cooked with success in the oven for 3 hours.
So here are my questions:
However, I had great difficulty using it for indirectly cooking my beef ribs. The fire does not stay for that long and I have to keep adding lit charcoal. Also, it was difficult to maintain temperature. It either goes too hot or low and the temperature dies which forces me to add more lit charcoal. I tried playing with the vents but with no luck but that could also be because that was my first time indirectly grilling ribs. I admit that I am rookie when it comes to grilling which is why I am seeking guidance. After 12 hours, the beef ribs were still not cooked which is ridiculous. The same ribs were cooked with success in the oven for 3 hours.
So here are my questions:
- Am I doing something wrong? With my limited expertise and knowledge, should I have done something differently?
- Would you recommend a gas weber grill over the charcoal grill I have? If so, why?
- So apparently there is not much difference in taste when grilling burgers on charcoal and gas grill but there is a clear difference when grilling ribs for instance between charcoal and gas due to the lack of smokey flavour in gas grills. However, there are methods of smoking a gas grill by using a smoke box. So my question is, will grilling on a gas grill using a smoke box produce similar results to a charcoal grill? Or at least close it? If the difference is not huge I might just go with gas using smokebox but I would not want to lose the smokey and authentic bbq flavour.
- Ultimately, I am trying to figure out whether I should sell my charcoal grill and buy a gas grill. Your comments and assistance will be greatly appreciated. Thanks for reading!