Sadly, I meant to take pictures but I got off to a late start and by the time the food was ready to come out everyone was sitting at the table waiting. Plus it was dark out. And snowing.
Seasoning went smoothly. I rubbed the inside and outside of the drum with oil and cranked the grill onto high for 15 min. I looked out at one point and saw smoke. By the time it was done it was too dark out to see how well it worked but I figured good enough. I'll probably rub the inside with oil for the first few grillings and then every few after that.
For my first grilling I was probably overly ambitious. But reading the posts here gave me so many ideas on what to cook I had a hard time doing only one thing.
On the bottom I did "Smokestack's Chicken Wings". This was more of a trial run so I only had 1.5 lbs of wings or about 7 of them. I put them onto the bottom because I figured they would be the fastest cooking thing.
In the middle I put a whole chicken rubbed down with a rub from the "Everyone Cooks" book.
Above that I put in 2 potatoes rubbed with oil and a bit of salt.
At the end I put the grill on top and put on some corn rubbed with butter and salt.
Over all it turned out well. The wings were the fastest cooking thing even at the bottom. I pulled them out at one point to put the sauce on them. There was enough room on the side of the cage that I could pull them out without taking everything else out first. I ended up pulling them out first before everything else was done. Except for the wing that was in the middle of the cage. I left it in as it didn't look as well done.
Sadly I made a mistake on the potatoes. After they hit 210-ish and the skin was nice and krispy I wrapped them in foil to keep them warm while the chicken cooked. This had the effect of steaming them and the skin got soft. Oh well.
After pulling the potatoes I put the corn on. They took longer to cook then I thought they would. It seemed like only a very narrow slice of the corn was cooking at a time and I had to keep turning and turning and even when I was done I wasn't sure I had hit all the spots. That said though, the corn turned out awesome. While it was blackened and cooked in spots all the parts were still crunchy and not soft. Very nice.
With the corn taking longer then I thought and having the grill on top and not getting to the chicken I think I over cooked it a bit. It was just a little dried out. The skin was very nicely dark and crunchy and over all it wasn't bad.
A pretty good first run. Next up will probably be the Thanksgiving Turkey unless I'm able to sneak something else onto the grill before then.
And the question... do you leave the LP tank hooked up all the time or unhook it between grillings? Do you cover the tank? Right now I have the cover over the grill and a deck chair cushion over the grill to keep the snow off it.
Thanks for all the tips and advice that has already been given out.
rv
