On my new Cook Air.
To give a perspective on the size of the grill, here is a picture of the Cook Air grill laid on top of the SRG grill.
Prepped a couple of rib eyes with some gunpowder, garlic powder, salt and pepper.
First problem I ran into was that I didn't have any newspaper. All I had were some junk mail sales inserts. So I used one of those. Balled it up and put it in the center hole with some wood chunks.
It was a little difficult to start, probably due to the paper I was using, but after a bit it started up ok.
Put the fan on #1 for about 20 seconds and then up to 3 and ran it for about 5 minutes to burn off any factory oil, etc. Bumped it up to 5 and it was roaring and getting up to high temp quickly.
Threw on the rib eyes. Covered them for a few minutes to get some smokey flavor.
Almost done.
Father's day meal of ribeye, baked potato, salad and corn on the cob. I have seen where people have put mayo on the corn and liked it a lot. So I looked up a recipe and made a mixture consisting of mayo, paprika, lime, and red pepper. Put that and butter on the corn and it was delicious. Will be eating my corn that way from now on.
Close up of the steak.
Overall impressions.
1) As I said before I had an initial problem lighting it but I think that it was the paper I used that was the issue.
2) After the initial load of wood chunks I added wood about 3 more times. (one piece each time). I don't know if that is normal but it wasn't a big issue.
3) Using my cheap Harbor Freight infrared temperature gun, the highest temp I was able to record was 860*. Don't know if it went higher as I stopped checking after a while.
4) Don't know if it was because of the paper I used but as I added wood chunks it stirred up the ashes that ended up flying around, some landing on the meat. Next time I will turn the fan off when adding wood.
5) I put the cover on for a few minutes and noticed that the handle got on the warm side. Not hot where it burned but I also didn't have the cover on for very long.
6) Did have a couple flair ups, but the ribeyes also had some fat pockets. However, the flair did not last longl.
7) After the meat was done, I left the fan on 1 for the remaining wood to burn up. Forgot about it and didn't go to turn it off until after I ate so it was on for a while. But when I went to turn it off it had gone off by itself. Not sure if it was an auto shut off after a while or what the story was. I tried to start it and it would turn on but I could get it to number 3 but it shutoff if I went to 4. Went on to clean it up and tried again. This time I was able to take it to 1 thru 5 and all was well. So I will have to see what it does next time.
Once it cooled, clean up was easy. I just dumped the ashes, took a wet sponge to clean the grill and a wet paper towel to clean the rest of the unit.
Verdict:
I like this grill a lot and think it was a good buy so far. It will be my grill for steaks. It was easy to use, and easy to clean.
