These 5 grill accessories are a WASTE of money. Get THESE 5 instead!

what barbecue accessories are a waste of money today i reveal my top five hey i'm james from smoking dad barbecue and we've all got our favorite accessories maybe uh along with a few that we don't use that regularly so i'm sharing my top five favorite grill accessories as well as my bottom five now this is a deeply personal list but i'll share what i love about an accessory as well as the ones that i'm not using hardly ever so you can save your cash and make sure that you're getting an accessory that really enhances your grilling experience and you don't put it in the category of a waste of money i want to thank david from butcher's barbecue for sponsoring today's video and deleting all ads thank you david for that more to come on butcher barbecue a little bit later on but before we do that let's get started with my top five favorite grill accessories so starting with my top two and i couldn't pick number one so we've got a tie in first place and that is the jotisserie accessory as well as the soapstone so why are these in my top tube well in general my rule of thumb with an accessory is anything that significantly enhances the cooking experience and opens up new methods techniques i'm a big fan of and the joetisserie is at the top of this list for a very good reason i absolutely love the experience of raking coals around and being able to control my hot spots and fire different parts of our meat as well as the aroma and flavor that you get from the jotissary i saw a video recently where mad scientists did a bit of a reveal of throwing some fat onto the fire and that's something that enhances the flavor at a couple famous barbecue joints this is also partially true why food tastes so amazing on the jotisserie is you get the benefit of those fat drippings falling into your live fire and coming up and imparting some wonderful aromas and flavor on whatever you may be cooking the second and tied for first place is the soapstone now i've started off with a whole bunch of different grids and i'll have some of those in my bottom five later on but the soapstone is my absolute favorite depending on what size you get in the joe jr it serves as a great sear surface as well as a pizza stone it provides awesome crust for anything you might be searing whether it's seafood scallops your steaks and unlike cast iron if you leave it outside it's not going to rust and if you want to clean it off i just flip mine so that the fire is doing most of the heavy lifting but it is completely safe to take inside and use some warm water and dish soap clean off anything you don't want and you're ready to go cast iron again i mentioned it's often something that might rust and if you use soap or things like that to clean it you're stripping away your seasoning and you have to start all over again big fan of cast iron but if i could only choose one aftermarket grill grid accessory the soapstone would be it so as you might guess my my props here the number two favorite grill accessories are occupied by temperature probes now why two and why are they tied for second place let me walk you through each one quickly and how i use it differently than the other and why they make my top two list i'm a big fan of tools like this because it gives you information information that helps you improve and become better at cooking and ever since the meter app got an update this year that allows you to take notes so you can log if that cook went exactly as you want it or if something went off the rails you want to remember leaving the dome open for five minutes caused that huge temperature spike or whatever might be your unique case the meter app is a really really helpful tool for keeping track of what's worked and what's not worked so that you can modify your game plan the other thing that the meter is really nice for whether it's the rotisserie cook like i mentioned my favorite accessory is that it gives you the ability to keep track of that with no wires no fuss no mess and helps make sure that you're getting all your cooks close to those finishing touches now this is where this tool comes in so it doesn't have data logging or a cloud to remember your cooks but it's great for probe feel so i rely on this for anything that is going for a probe feel since once you figure out that jar of room temperature peanut butter feel it's the easiest way to get repeatable great results now i already have a few of these i think i even have another one out here this is the same as the mk4 so from a probe perspective it's identical so if you see one of these on sale or the new one the thermapen one which is a little bit quicker than both of these models they're going to do something very similar but what's unique about this one is it has an infrared gun inside of it and that allows you to check surface temperatures and so if you're wanting to get a great sear and you're just trying to guess is my soap stone up to temperature is my cast iron up to temperature i get a good sear it's really no good way to tell this and so i'm a big fan of information is power and it helps you learn what's working and what's not working so you can adjust and this is where again this pays off in spades helping get consistent repeatable results as well as making sure that that probe feel is exactly where we want or a great finished product let's move on to number three number three it's all about i'm gonna torches these off before i burn my hair so there are a lot of ways that you can start your fire in a kamado-style grill and a year or two ago i tested five different ones and at the time when i first got my grow blazer i said it's absolutely the fastest this is true i'm going from adding charcoal start completely dirty grill needs fuel to lighting to up to temperature with good clean smoke in about 20 to 23 minutes on average and so this is absolutely the fastest way of getting a fire going and the other area that i said it was the hands-down winner is overall fun now what i didn't know maybe a year ago that i know now is just how much those two forces would win me over the speed and convenience of getting a fire going quickly as well as the fun and if you've been following my channel for a while i haven't lit a fire any other way and what feels like at least now the past year in fact i've added the second grille blazer grille gun because this is the suv gun so this one's about 400 000 btu is about 240 000 btu they do a couple things similarly and a couple things differently so the punch line here is the grille blazer grill gun is a great way to get your fire going so you've got some extra distance so you're not getting hit with any sparks or anything coming up out of your grill or if you're lighting something like i use this on my solo stove it's nice having that extra reach from the fire so that you're not getting any part of that heat or flame coming up but at the same time while this is super powerful it's maybe a little bit over strength when it comes to fine touches if you want to sear your steak and that's something i get asked all the time this is just like what's coming out of me right now carbon dioxide and it wouldn't hurt my steak if i were to breathe on it a nice clean blue flame coming out of the grill laser grow gun doesn't impart any gas taste or any negative chemicals and so the suv gun comes with this regulator on it which helps moderate the flame be a little bit more predictable and controllable but if this is the only one that you have you can absolutely still start your grill with this and so if you're going for a solo stove you've got the big joe you're lighting fires all the time and you're going to sear on your grill go for this one if you've got something like the joe jr and or you like to sous-vide cook and sear your steaks or melt some cheese or do like a creme brulee or something like that the sous vide gun is absolutely the right tool for that job now let's move on to our fourth position so fourth spot is all about the drip trays and i've got three different sizes here of smokeware drip pans now when i first started i didn't use drip pans at all i thought they were maybe just another thing that i need to clean what i didn't realize until i got the slow roller is what a game changer this is of keeping the slow roller clean so you get you guys ask me this question all the time which is how do i keep my soil roller clean and the punch line is starting with prevention so good prevention using a drip pan helps keep a lot of that food oils fats off of your soil roller and then the second step when i'm done my cook i like to turn that heat up to about 400 degrees fahrenheit and let anything that's been missed and landed on the soil roller burn off i flip the top of the soil roller so next time that's exposed to the heat and that is how i keep my slow roller looking and performing like new years after i got it and so the three different sizes that i have here first is the 10 inch drip pan so this is ideally really perfect for the joe jr or big green egg mini max you can fit this in the classic but it doesn't provide a lot of protection and coverage the next one is a little bit of the middle sibling here so this is the 12 inch size so this will not fit in the joe jr and in the big joe it's not providing a whole lot of coverage so this would really be something is suited for the classic or large big green egg but if you're gonna do that i actually suggest you just jump straight to this guy so this is the 14 inch pan and so this will work in the kamado joe classic where it'll fit no problem in that 18 inch size grid as well as providing some good coverage on the big joe now i guess i didn't mention that with the slow roller the thing that is nice about the 12-inch pan is it mirrors the top size of the slow roller so if you don't want to have anything interfering with the smoke design and the benefit of the slow roller is getting that 20x more circulation that's where these pans and their shape fits in so the 12 inch would fit in the classic without interfering with the soil roller just like this 14 inch one fits in the big joe without interfering again with the smoke now you can get away with an even bigger pan in the big joe so if you have something like a full size pack or brisket you have a little bit of the edges sticking out but this is usually enough to collect 80 90 percent of anything i don't want to have to have hitting my soul ruler and putting off some smoke and or just adding to the level of things that i need to burn off and clean at the end so put a link down to those but drip pans definitely make your life easier for the cook as well as the cleanup and getting ready to go for next time that's about it for our top five we've got one more let's do number five all right time for our last on the favorite list and this one is a big topic i'm gonna actually have to do a dedicated video since i won't be able to fit all my thoughts on this topic in a short segment on it but this is probably as a consumer the most difficult barbecue accessory to buy because there is so much information or should i say misinformation on the subject and it's a category let me show you what we're talking about we're talking about knives and so as someone now uh has a channel that's growing a little bit over the last year the offers for companies to send sponsor to say made up things about their products with knives it's crazy and this is what drove me nuts as a customer i've bought several knives and been bitterly disappointed with how they perform they don't hold up they come dull they dent get an edge rust whatever it may be there's a whole bunch of reasons that i'll save for another video but this is a bit of a dirty industry and it's incredibly frustrating when you start spending you know 50 hundred several hundred dollars my most expensive adventure was several hundred dollar night and i could not have been more disappointed when it arrived and i found out i'd fall in for some great marketing and the product didn't perform the way that i hoped it would now so if you're looking at knives there's a few that i would recommend i recommend a filleting knife for trimming that's very very handy so let's say you're trimming a brisket and you want to work around that so i use a six inch fillet knife from dow strong for that and the other knife that you would want is jumping into the slicing side um and so since if i'm gonna go top two i'd probably recommend a long chef knife since i can use this for lots of other things like veggies potatoes prep and it's almost long enough to get away with slicing but if you've got room for three knives going with the full length slicer is perfect for things like brisket ribs but if i could only do two it would be a large chef knife that could also play that slicer category as well as a filet knife let me know in the comments down below if this is a topic that's interesting to you and you'd like to see and learn even more as to my experience in years before i ever started mentioning what knife i was using because again i wanted to make sure it held up and i was proud to say that this is something i would endorse and recommend to you anyways enough about this we're gonna know we've covered off our top five we're gonna transition now to our bottom five and some of those things that fall in the waste of money at least for me camp but before we do i'm gonna turn over to our sponsor butcher barbecue for a few quick words and again let them know your support by checking out their link in the description below for uh helping delete all the ads in today's video i'd like to thank david boska from butcher bbq for sponsoring today's video and if you're wondering about my excitement it's and you haven't heard that name david is kind of a big deal in the barbecue community he started off as a butcher for three decades before going into competitive barbecue and you won something called the world championships more than once he's also appeared on one of my favorite shows which is barbecue pit masters so he knows a thing or two about award-winning flavor profiles and compounds and that's where some of his products like these grilling oils really showcase his experience if you've been following my channel for a while you know my recipes tend to have two categories one you've got unlimited time and we could do all the prep in the world days in advance and the other one just came home from a grocery store it's the end of the day it's the weekend we want to get to cooking enjoy our grill enjoy our family and friends but maybe not have all that time to think about award-winning flavor combinations and that's where david and his team at butcher barbecue take the guesswork out of it and have created some amazing products like these three grilling oils in front of me now i did just for fun with the family a little experiment with these the other day where i injected three steaks with each different oil as well as basted them and i was blown away with no other prep none of my other tricks no smoke hacks or anything like that the quality of these steaks using just these oils for our flavor and so i would have guessed that our top one would be the garlic and butter compound and that absolutely just worked so well with beef so that was an obvious choice was not so obvious second choice for the family was actually the honey i would have guessed injecting a turkey or chicken or something like that or if we were basting these on some pork baby back ribs that would be amazing and it absolutely uh would be but in a steak honey showed up really well and so our family's top two on the three-way test was honey as well as the garlic and butter but there's really no such thing as going wrong with this and about nine dollars a bottle you can afford to try a few different flavors and find out what your family might absolutely enjoy or again for nine bucks it would make a great stocking stuffer i wanna again send out a big thank you to david for deleting all the ads i know those get in the way of you enjoying some great content and i'm gonna send you right back to our bottom five now but thanks david your link's down below check it out after the video is done on with the show so welcome to our bottom five or my bottom five accessory list for the money and i do want to stress that this is very much my bottom five may not be your bottom five there's nothing seriously flawed with any of these products i just find for the money i'm not using them hardly ever and that first category couldn't be more true for me which is the automatic temperature controllers so i'm not picking on the i command here i just happen to have that one there's a number of other competing units and this one does a fine job i've done a review and unboxing of that on the channel and it does exactly what it says it uh will do which is keep your grill at a stable temperature when you're not there to tend to it but what has impressed me about kamado joe and especially the series 3 is these are the most stable kamado style grills i've ever used and if you build your fires properly i have no hesitation you know setting my vents to where i want them go to bed and wake up seven eight hours later and the grill is exactly where i left it you can draw some pretty flat lines with these things and so i just find you know whether it's getting power out to your grill making sure it doesn't rain overnight and get your electronics wet and or cable management and having to fuss with some extra wires and cables it's just really not something for me i use that often so no fault of again the product but for me i don't find that a temperature controller is something that these series 3 grills really need they've done i don't know exactly what they've done this is incredibly stable so i would encourage you if you're thinking about that just try a few runs log someday to get some information and see if you feel comfortable doing it yourself and if you don't feel comfortable and you're worried about that brisket overnight by all means go ahead and check out some of these controllers but for me that's the first one on our bottom five in our number two spot is specialty cooking grids you might say wait a second james specialty cooking grids wouldn't that include things like the soapstone which made your top five list in fact i think even tied for spot number one and you'd be right but it's because the soapstone is my favorite or tied with the joe history favorite accessory i find i am not reaching to the bottom of my accessory drawer very often for things like the laser cut half moon or my cast iron half moon because the soapstone has just taken over all of those functions now there's nothing wrong with these accessories they do a great job on salmon or vegetables this grid is awesome but i often have the soapstone out i'm using it all the time and so it's done a great job on salmon and vegetables scallops or searing steaks and so i just find i'm using that all the time and it goes months between me using these and so if you could only pick one just like the olympics there's only one gold medal winner i'll give that to the soapstone no shame in the silver or bronze but for me it's absolutely the case soap stone is pole position and these come in at a close number too but i'm not using them often enough and these are ones that i did buy kind of with my own cash so again personal opinion here is i would not buy this again because i find the soap stone does such a great job on so many different foods that i just don't reach for it often enough to justify the cost on to number three so number three is a product that i saw online and immediately thought i need this in my life and after one use i've never used them again and that is these bare claws for shredding pulled pork so the idea get these nice little handles and you can shred away these do nothing that two forks can't do easier quicker and using tools that you already have and so marketing got me on this one it looked like a really useful tool but it is just not more practical or easier to use now it's fun running around saying i am wolverine but outside of that it is not very practical for your grilling and pulled pork i find we always reach for forks given the choice versus using these so this falls again in my list of i'd never buy that again even though i completely understand when i saw it in the marketing how i thought it would be a great must-have accessory it hasn't proven to be the case for me on two number four okay so number four is actually a great product and that is a briner bucket but this again like i said it's not a list of a good product or a bad product it's products that i don't use and everything in my bottom five has been at least six months since i've used it and that's where the briner bucket falls into the play here now if you do a lot of wet brining this is a great tool to have it comes with a little plate allows us to submerge whatever you want to brine and make sure it stays in your liquid but ever since i discovered the joys of salt dry brining i'm hardly ever reaching for it and i can't remember the last time i used it and so even though it's a really good product and really handy if you do that this is very much what i use or don't use and this one is another one that falls into the six plus months since i've used it and i put in the category of maybe wasted a little bit of my money buying this accessory for our particular style of cooking that takes us though to our last product number five so coming up in our last one is the rib rack now this is still a handy tool to have around i use this for anything other than a rib rack i found that as a rib rack when you stack ribs i don't like how they cook on their side as well as i do flat so i'd rather get something like the kamado joe grid extender and lay more ribs flat stacked on top of one another than i would packing them side by side where they don't develop a bark as well and the taste just isn't and the texture on the bark isn't where i'd want it to be this is still handy if you want to spatchcock a chicken or drape a brisket over i found ways of still getting some utility out of this accessory because i bought it and i have it but if i were to do it all over again there's nothing that this is being used for in our arsenal that can't be replicated with other tools or even something as simple as a chunk of wood if you have a big piece of brisket and you want to drape it over that that's a tip i saw from harry sue and that works just as well as this dedicated rib rack accessory does so what do you think anything that surprised you on that list either in the top five i would buy again or recommend in the top or the bottom five that i maybe wouldn't use my money is there anything on there that surprised you anything you think should be on there let me know in the comments down below not only letting me know have a great dialogue it counts as an entry for winning that kamado joe kettle joe so i wish you all good luck on that but that is about it for today's video if you enjoyed it please let youtube know by smashing that thumbs up button and let me know by hitting subscribe to catch future videos also mention it's just around the corner i'll be doing my next members only live if you haven't seen that check out my membership page for a chance to go one-on-one in a little bit more personal uh intimate way where we can answer questions live rather than these pre-recorded formats or answering questions down below but if not i'll see you on the next one i'm james from soakin debt barbecue signing off don't be afraid to fire it up [Music] you

Channel: Smoking Dad BBQ

Views: 313,055

Keywords: kamado joe, big green egg, bbq accessories, grill accessories, kamado joe accessories, bbq accessories must haves, bbq grill accessories, best bbq accessories, bbq accessories 2021, bbq smoking accessories, best bbq grill accessories, best grill accessories, best grill accessories 2021, best charcoal grill accessories, big green egg accessories, joestisserie, soapstone, meater block, meater plus, thermoworks, dalstrong, smokeware, ikamand, briner bucket, meat claws, grillblazer

Id: ORcbo6fTHmk

Length: 23min 40sec (1420 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 21 2021