alternative grills - terracotta
this is my first foray into the cookware side of the site and so forgive me if my impatient searching hasn't found any recent posts about this... but has anyone made a cheap alternative grill a la http://kitchen.apartmenttherapy.com/food/tips-techniques/outside-cooking-build-your-own-grill-024741 or http://twothirds.org/2005/09/26/smoki...
i was jonesing for a blue weber but the boy suggested i might try to charcoal grill a bit more (ie more than nothing) to ensure that the investment would be a wise one. i then stumbled upon the terra cotta pot and am entirely intrigued! i love that when not in use it would just blend into the my potential garden (i just moved) and be relatively unnoticed.
there are obviously flaws to both of these designs but i think that i have several solutions to them. to increase my grilling space i may also just have two of them although that's just more fire starting hassle.
some concern seems to lie with the use of terracotta itself and overheating it so that it will crack.
any other suggestions for materials? any other alternative grills?
pinstripeprincess
Jun 18, 2007 08:21AM
WHY?
jonathan & faith spent $42 dollar on a fragile heavy cobbled togtheter contraption that might EXPLODE...
You can get a small Weber for less money. It will be easier to use, give more reliable results and be far more portable: http://www.acehardware.com/product/index.jsp?productId=1288561
I suppose if you are into the aesthtics of the terracotta that is one thing, but frankly that has no appeal for me...
If you've never used charcoal I must warn you that despite the fact that it does burn it is not a particularly flamable product. That means you need to make up for the fact by building a fire with something much more flamable to get things going. I prefer the speed and lack of petrochemicals that can be achieved with a "chimney starter". One ot he best ones is also from webere: http://www.acehardware.com/product/in...
You have to save up your paper towel rool-cores and magazine subscription cards as they burn much more slowly than plain newsprint and really save time getting the charcoal going.
That said you have to allow at least 15-20 minutes of fire building /charcoal lighting. With the mass of the terracotta that would and to the setup time...
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i think it'll be fun and a bit more on the unique side. justifying having multiples of these is also a bit easier for me. i like to build things and am customing everything by my own hands for my place.
the thing is, if i were to get a weber i'd just upgrade myself to a gold with an ash tray. but i think learning how to use charcoal (with a chimney starter or not) would be a valuable lesson before i sink $200 on a bbq. perhaps you can get a cheap weber but it's more difficult for me up in canada.
either way we're not debating charcoal vs gas here. i'd much prefer to not use gas if i can possibly help it. that's a preference of mine just like how you don't like the aesthetics of terracotta.
besides, no one really knows if it'll break from heat. i'd assume if alton brown is suggesting these things then it won't likely be all that disastrous.
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Although it seems Alton Brown's setup calls for using an electric hot plate and wood . I could be wrong, but I think charcoal gets much hotter, and a lot of heat concentrated in a small area is probably the biggest risk of it breaking.
In the first example, they put some bricks in the bottom of the pot...their intent was to get the coals closer to the grilling surface, but it probably also may help keep the pot from breaking since the bricks are acting as sort of a heat sink, although I would still worry about hot coals around the side walls. I saw another tutorial that recommends filling 1/3-1/2 way with sand to minimize the risk of breakage, insulate the bottom from damaging the surface it's sitting on, and elevate the coals.
http://tinker.pbwiki.com/TerraCottaSm... In this link the guy uses a smaller pot inside the big one as a sort of firebox.
Anyway, people have been cooking with terra cotta for ages. What is the Kamado and Big Green Egg made of? Heavy/thick pots are porbably the safest bet.
Of course, around my area you can also get small charcoal grills for $20-$30. They don't look as cool are have the "hacker appeal," but one of your primary goals is to practice cooking with charcoal before upgrading to a "better" grill and they would indeed fulfill that purpose.
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hello, what people generally mean by terra cotta (basic flower pot stuff) is both softer and more brittle than the ceramic pottery material in the kamado and green egg, which are fired at a higher temperature and can stand up to heating to and cooling from hotter temperatures repeatedly. But you're right about them being heavy and thick.
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I wasn't suggest gas vs charcoal -- I like to use charcoal as often as time will allow.
I am suggesting that as Weber makes a full range of grills it may make more sense to get a small one as a training tool instead of struggling with something that may not work. Sorry if I came across as curmudgeonly .
I believe that others are using the flower pot as a smoker, but that is happening at a far lower temperature than grilling, and from what I gather they are using an electric hot plate as the heat source in those things.
I've grilled on lots of different devices/situations, from Weber kettles to $1.99 throw away foil 'grills' to braziers over a camp fire and with practice believe that good results can be achieved almost anywhere. I just hope that you don't get turned off by something that is not optimal and may be more expensive than a proven method.
I salute your adventurous / DIY nature and hope you report back with your results.
Good Luck!
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thanks jzerocsk and renov8r!
i've been back and forth about if it would primarily be a smoker for me or more of a grill and i really can't say which. i guess for ease grill but i've been considering modifications already. i didn't hear of the sand, which would be a fantastic insulator and was at least thinking of containing the coals in a secondary bucket to make clean-up easier.
i'll take another look at the small grills though. i figure if i don't follow alton brown to the letter i can still transform the pot back into... a pot! and plant something in it.
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Don't bother with the terracotta, esp if you live in a wet climate. I had a terracotta chiminea (outdoor fireplace) that crumbled into bits after just a year's infrequent fires. Turns out that you're not supposed to build a fire in it while it is wet or damp....and in south Louisiana, that means never. So I ruined it through ignorance, but in retrospect, I wouldn't have been able to keep it dry anyway. Small grills are inexpensive; buy a cheapie hibachi or even use a recycled car rim & a piece of chicken wire (hobo-style), but the terra cotta tends to crack & crumble very easily.
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HC, you beat me to it. I was reading down and thinking of the car wheels/rims used in east Africa (and available with welded on legs in Uganda). They work really well. You can buy a grill to fit rather than chicken wire.
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The best homemade grill I ever saw was crafted from a "surplus" steel shopping cart: it still had the handle & wheels, the basket had been cut down quite a bit, and the lower rack was repurposed as the cooking surface. It was a thing of beauty. Second best junk cooking setup was seen recently in Baldwin County, AL: car rim w/rebar legs welded on used as a propane burner, topped by a beer keg converted to a peanut boiler. Give a guy a cutting torch and some time at the scrapyard and you never know what will happen.
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HC, those are two fantastic examples--and great that they come from the US! I really love junkyard utensils and equipment. I loved the "Junkyard Wars" series. And always wanted one of the BBQ grills from Kampala.
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My boyfriend's family has a grill which consists of the inside drum of a washing machine, with three metal legs welded onto the bottom. The holes in the drum allow for the perfect amount of oxygen uptake. It's called the Sputnik, and since it's not so big, it fits easily into the car for trips, and is cleaned by just turning it upside down over a garbage bag and shaking. Can't get much simpler than that...
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Seen at WalMart: galvinized 3-gal buckets w/a handle, fire grate, and cooking grill for $10...marketed as "beach grills".
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The Alton Brown design is a "hot smoker", meaning the meat does get cooked, not just preserved with smoke. With the hot plate turned all the way up mine gets up to around 150-170, depending on wind conditions and where you set the rack. In a sense, it's more like cooking true barbeque, low and slow. I agree completely with everyone who warns against using charcoal in one of these, but you can go through a couple doses of wood chips, then remove the pie plate full of ashes and expose the meat to radiant heat from the hot plate coil (or just finish it in the oven if nobody's looking).
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I agree with the above posts, terracotta is a smoking vessel ONLY. The high and relatively uneven heat (very hot at the base near the charcoal and cooler at the upper edges) of charcoal would make for an unsafe grill. It's simply not worth the trouble if you ask me. Would I use terracotta for smoking? Absolutely. Grilling at high temps? Never. Keep in mind we're not even close to talking about the same thing as a Big Green Egg. Notice how they only grilled chicken and some sausage in the cheap little thing? In other words, low temp grilling. Find me a 3 inch thick bone-in ribeye and try to cook it on that thing.
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I rigged up an old enameled steel(interior) refrigerator with all of the cooling coils and plastic removed as a smoker. made a firebox from some medium gauge mild steel and connected it with a short pipe through the side at the bottom. made an exhaust vent(another piece of pipe) out the other side at the top and put a damper it it to control the amount of draft. It worked wonderfully on stuff like fish and shellfish and making bacon or sausage as you could smoke at nearly room temp. i had thoughts about trying it with a working fridge to do cold smoking but couldn't find the right kind and moved on to other stuff.. I do love and use frequently my Great Big Green Egg for just about everything I cook outside anymore. It's great for holding a temp for extended time periods without having to check or mess with.
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ck, wow, do you have any photos!
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sorry, but no. i don't have a scanner or I'd sketch the plan for it. If you're awelder, it's not that hard to do. A smaller apartment size refer is the best. but the most important part (and the hardest to find) is one with an enameled inside (including the inside of the door or you'll have to remove the door facing) I used a section of stove pipe to connect the fire box into the fridge and another as a vent(that wat I didn't have to make the damper, just bought pipe with one. The fire box was 15"x15"x24" with a door on the front and a sliding vent on the side opposite the pipe. imounted a grate about 3" from the floor for the charcoal and wood. . If you need more specifics, let me know and I'll try to send you a sketch.
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Thank you, you description is clear. I can weld, but don't have access to equipment here. But there are shops. If I find the materials, I'll check with you again.
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