Minion method on the Weber performer grill

[Davo]

Recently I've been doing a lot of reading on the Minion method which is commonly used in smokers to get a longer lasting fire and thought,"I wonder if it'll work in the kettle", so I went out and bought a fresh bag of heatbead briquettes and a 2.2kg Pork shoulder.
Ok, I placed a combination of briquettes and lump charcoal in the chimney till I couldn't fit any more and filled up one side of my Charcoal grate,then I lit 10 briquettes in the chimney till they were grey and placed them evenly over the top of the unlit lot.
I took the skin off the pork shoulder and placed it aside as I was going to make some crackling in the little Q seperatley, gave it a light coating with olive oil then rubbed in a standard rub using cooking salt, brown sugar, onion powder,cheyenne pepper, garlic powder and salt and ground pepper powder.
Ok, now back to the BBQ, I had 2 paver bricks that i put in front of the fire as a barrier, then an empty foil tray under where the meat will be, placed the top grill back on and put the meat on the opposite side to the fire(of course) and a smaller foil pan full of water over where the fire is and closed the lid. I kept all vents open till the temp rose to 200F then I almost closed the bottom vent entirely except for 3 little slits and left the top vent open.
Oh yeah, almost forgot, I place 2 fist sized chunks of redgum on the lit coals for the smoke.

The kettle held onto about 250-270F for a good while then it started climbing over the 300 mark and onto 350F which is roasting temps, so i closed the bottom completely and the top to about a quarter open and the temp came down very slowly till it settled back on 270F.

I got about 6 hours cooking without adding anything apart from a little more smoking wood after 2 hours and again at 4 hours.

It took a lot of monitoring but the results were superb...well for me anyway. The meat was so very tender and moist that the knife didn't need much pressure to slice it. I had enough meat for my sangers for work through the week and for dinner that night and gave some to my neighbor nextdoor and she loved it but her husband wasn't keen on smoked meat (he just don't know what he is missing), even my dog complemented me on the tasty morsels I gave her, with a whipping tail and a big grin from ear to ear.

So that was my experiement and it worked well,maybe not as good as a propper smoker but had great results. Oh yeah, and it had a nice little smoke ring about 2 millimetres inside and was just slightly pink in the middle. I just used a standard weber meat thermometer and foiled the meat at 75C.

[Captain Cook]

Good one Davo,
Jim (Minion) would be proud of you.
Try a litte less fuel spread out a little more and fill the foil drip tray with water this should help stabilize the temps a bit better -
Great first attempt with the Minion Method it sure makes cooking low and slow easy. It is ideal for the WSM, I guess your waiting for the next wool check to buy one eh!

Isn't the Performer just the absolute best for barbecuing and grilling and to think that there are so many people out there that just use their Kettle for Chrissy dinner or a roast.
I love usng my Performer on the weekend when I have a bit of time and want to kick back with a glass or three of Cabernet.
The doc said to me years ago "a glass of red a day is good for you" so I figure a bottle or two would be a darn side better.

Regards
Captain Cook

[paulr]

I got about 6 hours cooking without adding anything apart from a little more smoking wood after 2 hours and again at 4 hours.

That's a pretty good time Davo, I believe you can connect a guru to a kettle (which would control the temperature for you)..
But a 6 hour manual cook is excellent work!!
Ribs slow cooked are just amazing (5 hours approx)...

How did the crackling go... I have a hard time getting that right and forget about asking about crackling on the US boards I don't believe its customary in the States?

[Davo]

G'day Paul & Phil (Captain Cook),

Yeah I used a fair bit of charcoal because i was trying for a long burn and wasn't sure how long it'd take to burn down. Next time I won't use as much and I'll also put some water in the pan under the food. I was going to do that but I thought it might've been a bit of overkill with water considering I had a container of water over the fireside and topped it up a bit after a couple of hours.

As for the crackling, there was a fair bit of it and i cooked it on the trivet on the Q120. actually it was near disaster because as I was putting so much concentration on the Performer, I nearly forgot about the crackling on the Q and I got it just on time. The result...eeerr...very crackly
It was a bit blacker than i wanted but it tasted well, I shared it with the dog and there were no complaints from her.

I would like to be able to justify more cooking time on the Performer as it's such a great BBQ, but seeing it's only me and the dog here over the past 3 months because the mrs is overseas, I tend to utilize the little Q when i cook dinner.
I'm pretty keen on sipping a nice Cab Sav or a Merlot myself, especially Barrossa and Hunter valley blends.

Cheers

Davo.

[paulr]

I now finish of my crackling on my gasser...
It works pretty well but I would like to get a "good" result with crackling on my charcoal cooker as well... Ah well maybe in the future...
I'm going on holidays for a week so might be a bit quiet!

[Davo]

One of the main problems I see about cooking the crackling on the charcoal wold be if you were doing Low & slow with temps down around the 250F and by the time you get to do the crackling,most of the charcoal has lost it's heat and then you gotta ask yourself, is it worth throwing on more new charcoal just so you can do the crackling.....easier to do it in the gasser when you can time it better to coincide with the rest of the cook.

The only exception to what I've written above would be that after doing the low & slow and after foiling and wrapping of the main meat dish, you might then want to bake some Potatoes & Pumpkin etc so yeah, then it'd be worth while to stoke up the fire as you could then do the crackling with the vegies.

I love smoked vegies almost as much as smoked meat

cheers


Davo

[Captain Cook]

Davo,

When I am doing low and slow I want the smoke to penetrate into the meat. I generally use pork neck, it has several streaks of fat through it and I always look for a well marbled piece. Cooking it low and slow allows the smoke to penetrate deeply and the fat to slowly render down . If you brine it first it will retain a lot of moisture and not dry out. Save the roasts and crackling for indirect high heat on the kettle.

Regards
Captain Cook

[Davo]

In this case Phil, I was smoking a Pork Shoulder trying out the minion method for the first time and because this sholder still had the skin and some underskin fat on the top, I sliced it off as well as any other excess fat then I applied the rub and then placed in the kettle for the slow cook.

The crackling was too good to chuck so I salted & peppered it up and placed on the trivet in the little Q with a good sized fold of foil underneath and let it crisp up and I kinda remembered that I was concentrating so hard on the kettle that I almost forgot about the crackling...saved it just in time...phew!!

I've never tried Pork Neck, must give it a whirl sometime.

cheers

Davo

[paulr]

My next blog post will have a pork shoulder where the crackling actually worked (650F to start).
Decent crackling finally!