How To Use the Weber Kettle Charcoal Baskets - 4 Charcoal Configurations

welcome back to a view to a grill i'm johnny and today i'm going to show you four ways to use the baskets that your weber kettle came with now contrary to popular belief the two baskets that your weber kettle came with when you purchased it they're actually quite useful now let's get into four configurations that you can use when you barbecue on the weber kettle the first configuration that we're going to look at is the direct indirect grilling configuration now this video there won't be any actual cooking but i do have training aids all we're going to do is set up a hot zone and a cool zone we'll do that by pushing the charcoal baskets together and then sliding them all the way to one side of your weber kettle this method allows us to sear off our protein and then move it to one side we're going to put our protein over the direct fire i know this is wood just work with me so we'll start off by grilling directly over our heat source and as you're getting some nice color on that meat you can then start moving it over to the indirect side of the grill and you'll just be working your protein in batches just like i'm doing whenever i'm doing this method i'm just marking my meat to the color that i like i move them over to the indirect side and then i put the lid on now our next configuration is what i'm going to call the vortex configuration and if you don't know what a vortex is this is a vortex and supposedly this cone shape helps circulate the hot air evenly around your weber kettle kind of turning it into a convection oven if you don't have a vortex this is what you can do in place of that we'll just put both charcoal baskets together and put them right in the middle of our weber kettle we'll put our grates on and if you have the master touch premium where you can remove the center grate go ahead and remove the center grate now we'll get our protein down generally i only use this method when i'm cooking leg quarters legs thighs and chicken wings now this method of cooking is a high heat indirect method of cooking and normally you go through the whole cook never using direct heat and whenever i'm using this configuration i like to turn the lid 45 degrees every 10 minutes i just feel like this cooks the meat more even when i change the direction of the airflow next we're going to talk about the parallel indirect method of grilling talking about the design of the weber kettle and how it was meant to barbecue on it a lot of times you hear people talking about how the thermometer is on the wrong side of the weber kettle that it should be over on the side of the vent that is true when you buy after-market products for the weber kettle but if you cook on the weber kettle the way it was designed then the vent and the thermometer is right where they're supposed to be now let's get this set up for the indirect parallel configuration with the weber kettle baskets because the weber kettle was designed to use these two baskets and the little flip up things on the sides are there so you can add charcoal as you need so it's designed to work just like this this is the setup that your weber kettle was designed for you'll need to push both baskets to the sides of the weber kettle that's going to leave this center part open for indirect grilling or cooking the heat is going to arise from both sides of the kettle and up and out through the vent now notice that the thermometer is on the side that you're cooking from so you can see it and the vent is on the opposite side from where you are that's where the smoke is going to come out now is this the most efficient way to cook or does it allow you to put enough fuel on there to last through a long low and slow cook no it doesn't but this method does work extremely well with smaller cuts of meat like your pork loin or your pork tenderloins two chicken halves where you can place them one under another on the grill this works great for ribs as a matter of fact this is how i used to do ribs before i got a slow and sear just like this i need to put a video out doing that too make sure you put your grill grate down so you can access it and through these hinged doors is also where you're going to be adding more charcoal as you need it during longer cooks now in this configuration i'm going to show you how i would do it for rips i'll just simply place the ribs ribs right in between our weber baskets so now to start it all up we'll put our lit charcoal in one corner of both baskets with the ribs in the center and now we have our parallel indirect method of cooking we'll make sure that our doors are closed and get the lid on now we'll take a look at the thermometer placement it's right in between the baskets so it's not over any of the direct heat and the vent is on the far side of us which gives us that heat which will come over the protein and out through the vent and that's how the weber kettle is supposed to work and again that's why you have two baskets and two doors now this last configuration i want to show you can actually be used for two methods of cooking this is the setup i used to use before i got a slow and sear to do pork butts or briskets and this is just basically a different way to do direct and indirect two-zone grilling i'll use the weber kettle baskets to create a barrier and what i'm basically doing is a very large area for my fire we'll talk about how to use this configuration for low and slow first i like to put my wood chunks underneath the coals so the first thing i'll do is put my wood chunks down and then pour my charcoal right over the top you can get between 10 and 12 pounds of charcoal on one side of your weber kettle when you do this you want to put as much charcoal in as you can but you want to make sure that it's not piled too high because you're going to need to put your grates on top of that i'll take out about eight or nine briquettes get them lit and then put them in on one corner of the charcoal bed now all we have to do is get the grill grates on in this case i'm using my charcoal baskets to simulate a pork butt we'll get the pork butt on the indirect side and close the lid and now the thermometer is in the wrong place because now your thermometer is directly over the heat source your vent is over your protein which allows for the heat to cascade over your protein and cooking it more evenly and then it goes right out the vent once you use this method of cooking you have rendered your thermometer useless because it's now directly over the fire and you can no longer keep an accurate temperature you're going to need an after-market thermometer and if you're going to buy an aftermarket thermometer i will recommend that you get the inkbird ibt 4xs it's a bluetooth thermometer and for the amount of money you pay for it it has all the features you're going to need for a successful cook if you want one of these for yourself i'll have the link down below and this configuration works for any large piece of meat ribs spatchcock chicken brisket whatever you have that's big and that's going to take a long time to cook this is the configuration you want to use and the heat will rise go across the top of the kettle and out of the vent now using the exact same configuration with about half the amount of charcoal that i originally put in it's just another play on the direct indirect two zone method of grilling now the nice thing about using this method is that you have a lot of charcoal so your hot burn time is a lot longer for those short cooks like thin cuts of meat chicken breasts steaks hamburgers hot dogs anything that takes a high heat sear this is worth doing because you get a longer high heat burn time which means you can cook more food in one setting and you have more real estate a larger hot zone to grill on so i usually use this method when i'm cooking a lot if i'm cooking 15 20 hamburgers 8-10 steaks this is how i do it on the weber cattle now i do have another charcoal configuration video that shows you how to do charcoal configurations without any aftermarket products if you want to check that out check out the link above now if you haven't already go ahead and hit the subscribe button thank you for watching a view to a grill and i'll see you guys on the next video

Channel: View to a Grill

Views: 132,927

Keywords: indirect cooking weber kettle, weber kettle tips, how to set up a weber kettle for indirect cooking weber kettle cook times, how to use a weber charcoal grill vents, weber bbq instructions cooking, how to set up a grill, how to grill with charcoal, best charcoal grill for beginners, charcoal grill for beginners, weber kettle setup, charcoal fire configuration

Id: jzeRfil-siw

Length: 10min 29sec (629 seconds)

Published: Sat May 22 2021