HOW TO Big Green Egg! Tips and Tricks for the New User - How to Start, Stop, Plate Setter, Clean

[Music] hey what's happening barbecue brothers and sisters it's pete with backdraft bbq coming at you live again and today we're going to cover a very basic topic if you haven't gotten a green egg already and you watch this video this will give you an idea about what is required and how these things work and hopefully it sells you on buying one because gosh darn it these things are pretty awesome if you have a big green egg you just got it you don't know where to start this video is for you because we're going to go through the basics on using a big green egg starting a big green egg re-lighting a big green egg and all that type of stuff if you're a veteran green egg user you probably already know these tips but if you find one thing in this video that you like or it really helped you please chuck it down in the comments section and let me know it helped you first things first we put the egg away we've got old coals in there we've got to do something about them check out what we do an ash tool all this is is a tool with an l on it all you do is take this tool and clean out the old ash let me show you how you do it we open it right up and you can see the remnants of the last delicious meal we had which i think was pizza we're gonna take our ash tool and we're just going to knock the ashes off the sides and we're going to kind of just move them around to to move all that small ash and soot down into the holes that go down into the bottom of the egg the reason why we do this is because these holes right here are what supply air to make your fire those as well as these and if these are plugged up with ash or small things the fire won't get very hot in fact it may not even burn properly one thing to be on the lookout too when you do this is rocks i don't know where these things come from but some of the cheaper barbecue coals end up having rocks in them so we just get rid of those the next thing we're going to do is we're going to use a wiggle stick just a homemade invention it's just a piece of wire that's got a 90 degree bend on it and what this does is it helps us get the rest of the ash out of the bottom now this is an xl size the large size doesn't have as large of a grate on the bottom so oftentimes you'll burn and you'll have a mass of charcoal on top of that and you can't quite move it around as easy as i did in this video so that's where this comes into play what we're going to do is insert it in through the fire door and we're going to go up and hook it right on to that grate on the inside so just picture this it's going up inside and it's hooking onto the grate and we're going to wiggle that grate back and forth and what that does is it allows ash that might have been deposited to fall right back down now that we've rustled all that coal around and all the fines have followed through they're in the bottom of the egg we got to clean those out i use a big green egg ash pan you don't have to but it works good because it's got that curve to it i take my ash tool i open up both doors like so i put it underneath there some people say what do you do with this this actually makes really good fertilizer i put it in my garden now that we've got the big green egg all cleaned out and ready to go for our next load we're gonna load some charcoal in it we'll soon have a video up on our channel and you can look at the different brands of charcoal and how they stack up specifically using a big green egg one thing is for certain though you have to use lump charcoal lump charcoal is the charcoal that is in chunks it's actually wood you can't use briquettes because they're made out of chemical binders and it's a no bueno situation inside of one of these type of cookers let's load the egg with charcoal to cook properly on the egg you want to make sure that you fill that up to at least the bottom of the top fire ring don't over fill it though because if you're using a plate setter that ceramic disc it's going to touch it and it's going to cause a problem once i get it all laid out i just kind of move it around and flatten it out so i got a nice even bed i think we're ready now to start this egg so how do you start an egg well i have a video on how to start it specifically but if you're watching this for the whole deal i'll show you briefly i use a weed burner why it's available i have it it's super fast and easy and it's cheap alternatively you could use a small propane torch with map gas or regular propane and it works perfectly fine as well two big green eggs disclaimer and many of the other manufacturers out there they make lots of fire starters but the thing is they cost money and i don't always have them around now before we light this we want to make sure that we have the bottom vent open all the way and we want to make sure the top vent is open all the way let's light it we're gonna light this baby up like a clock we're gonna go 12 o'clock six o'clock three o'clock and nine o'clock we start at the 12 o'clock position we give it some propane until we start to see the coals start to glow then we go to six o'clock nine o'clock if you're doing a low and slow cook you might only want to light this in one area because if you get this too hot you'll never hold that low temperature of like 200 250. not a problem today because we're cooking up some steaks like a glove we got this lit and it's ready to go a couple of things now that this egg is warming up that we want to be thinking about first off are you doing a low and slow cook i happen to have a brand new plate setter here let me just explain to you what this is you probably heard about it i don't know why big green egg doesn't sell this with the egg actually i do because they sell it so they want money but this deal right here is super important this is a plate center now this is from my little mini guy over there but basically they're all the same there's a flat surface and then there is these three legs on it when someone says legs up this is what they're talking about when someone says legs down this is what they're talking about when someone says they're cooking indirect this is inside of the egg and typically this is the position it put your you put it in you end up sticking it in the egg like this so that your grate can fl sit on top and you have space now there's big green eggs got some new accessories out right now they have like a raised grid with two half moons and all this other jazz but this is the old standby and it works very very good self cleaning too if it gets super dirty just put it in the egg and let it get really hot and it will be almost brand new oh and be careful because they break very easily so i've got my plate setter i'm ready to go i'm going to stick it in with the legs up because i'm going to be cooking indirect and as you can see it fits you guessed it like a glove once the temperature is up to speed for where we're cooking this egg is going to be hot inside so be careful you can wear welder's gloves to move these things around they have a plate center thing that you can lift it up if you need to but we want to add our wood before we put our food on problem is if i put this in here and i let it cook for like 20 30 minutes while the egg was getting stabilized and the plate setter was getting hot most of the wood initial smoke is going to be gone and i want that in my food so i wait until it's hot and then i sneak these in the side of the plate setter once my plate setter is in and i've got every the wood loaded up i'm going to put my grate in just set it right on top then i'm going to close my egg and let this temperature get stabilized now here's one part of the video a lot of people ask questions about what do you do with the top and the bottom vents well to be honest it's a little bit of a balance the bottom vent feeds air in through the top and there's two screens on here all this stainless steel screen is is a spark arrestor so that sparks don't leave this and catch the forest on fire this right here is your main air damper controlling how much air actually goes in and out if i were to tell you which position to be in if you have this all the way open you're you're talking like nuclear reactor situation if you're doing low and slow you just barely want to have that thing cracked open and you want to be super duper careful when this is in the warm-up phase because once the egg gets hot it's very hard to get it back down to a low and slow temp if you're cooking steaks burgers egg right about position like that you're going to achieve about a 400 degree temp which is what i'm shooting for today now with this egg i have one of the new regulators on top which i absolutely love these things the more this is open the more heat is going to escape and the more smoke is going to escape and again it's a little bit of a balance act between this and the bottom vent for the purposes of this cook and i'm aiming for about 400 degrees i'm going to leave this open about an inch and i'm going to watch the temperature gauge as my fire gets up to temperature so that i don't overshoot it's not super critical unless you're doing low and slow and you really only want this thing just a pinch open let me show you the traditional caps so this is an old tested true friend of mine she's been through a lot of cooks now there's a daisy wheel right here that opens and closes as well as this adjustment as well so if you were cooking on pizza pizza time if you will about halfway open to three quarters of the way open that's going to provide quite a bit of air flow you're going to be looking anywhere around 550 to 600 degrees for a low and slow cook though once the temperature has gotten up to where you want it you're literally only going to be having this crack open maybe a hair on the daisy chain and remember this style cap has one two three four five openings so every time you crack this open just a little bit you're exponentially increasing the airflow again for low and slow on the 250 to 300 range you only want to have a little sliver of this open as well as the bottom grate just cracked open a hair the next tip and trick that i want to show you i'm going to use this mini max to show you by the way my favorite size egg because you can take it anywhere with you so you're done cooking it's been a great deal you want to shut everything down literally just take this off and be careful because it'll be hot that's why they got the little cute little thing there take it off open up your egg stick it in close it and then cap it what this will do also make sure your vents closed what this will do is it will extinguish the fire inside you don't have to let it burn itself out it will literally snuff it out and that coal will be ready the next time you want to make a cook all you have to do is fluff and puff and light it and you're good to go keeping your cap inside of the egg with this old style keeps it from getting rusted crusted and disgusting it burns off does like a little self-cleaning deal and it's going to keep it from being exposed to the elements the cap that you put on the top obviously snuffs the fire out and that's really important on the regulators the new caps you don't have to do anything you just close it and you're done that's why i like it so much but this style works really good for this as well the last thing i want to talk about is using some sort of implement to cook with i love these meat flipper hooks they work so well you can even flip something as small as a piece of bacon over with it or you can cook a steak right on the coals like i have in a few of my videos uh the brand that i prefer just because he's a local business is the super stick food flipper these are amazing on a big green egg because you obviously have a very hot surface that you're working with so having a stick that you can go in pick things up flip them out over it just keeps your arm hair intact the final tip and trick that i want to let you guys know about and this is another one that people ask me all the time about is how do you clean the egg when you're done it's an easy question to answer all you do is let her rip so just like a self-cleaning oven if you open these babies up and let this get up to temperature up in the six 700 degree range it's gonna cleanse everything inside of the egg and burn it off in fact your egg will be looking almost like it was brand new when you're done with the self-cleaning do you really need to do that ah i don't know if you're a clean freak maybe but if you're just cooking low and slow on these it's only going to take a couple cooks to get that sheen of black goodness that we have on the inside of rag which shows that we're actually using what we bought right well i hope you enjoyed our tips and tricks video i hope you learned something please leave me a comment below if there's a video you'd like to see and if you don't mind give me a subscribe and a thumbs up it really helps me out until next time stay safe hey you're gonna hurt yourself what are you doing get come back here with that egg come back [Music] [Applause] here

Channel: Backdraft BBQ

Views: 199,936

Keywords: Chicken, Grill, Big, Green, Egg, BGE, Smoked, smoker, smoke, not fried, super, bowl, superbowl, trager, big green egg, grilling, backdraft, bbq, barbecue, barbeque, backdraftbbq, healthy, pork, swine, pork butt, pork shoulder, shoulder, picnic, pork picnic, pulled, pull pork, pulled pork, bbq pork, barbecue pork, shred, code3, firefighter, code 3, rub, pork rub, review, low, slow, smoked pork, start, how-to, how to, stop, clean, grill, light, snuff, build, fire, charcoal

Id: ezD0DJldLE0

Length: 13min 34sec (814 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 17 2020