Weber Smokey Mountain Mods, tips, and tricks 2024 | Part 1

all right guys today I'm going to give you all my favorite tips tricks and modifications for the Weber Smokey Mountain oh can't see it Weber Smokey [Music] Mountain just felt like going old school and there's nothing more old school than the Weber Smoky Mountain this is like 1980s Tears for Fears in a Wendy's Jazz cap where the where's the beef right here in the Weber Smoky Mountain that's what we're doing today first part of this series I'm going to tell you about all the modifications I've done that I like all the modifications I've done that I don't like and all the modifications that you could do that I haven't done because you want to spend money and I don't blame you cuz spending money on grill stuff is fun so the way I approach modifications with this cooker is basically just to focus on problems I was having and solutions to those problems and that's the way I'm going to present this to you I'm going to tell you why I did what I did as much as what I did I hope that makes sense one of the biggest things I dislike about the Weber Smokey Mountain is it's not very mobile I think this has to do with lawyers they didn't like the idea of of having boiling water in a cooker that's easy to move around and for me there are times when I need to move it around and not having handles not having Wheels makes it actually more dangerous for me now your mileage may vary you do what you think is best but in order to fix this problem these are just cheap garage door handles they're gal galvanized steel I know a lot of people get nervous that galvanized steel can be poisonous just you're going to be fine don't eat the handles I think you'll be okay and then these are just cheap casters now I would suggest with the casters you focus on casters with locks and you're going to need at least two casters with locks all three don't have to have locks but you might as well at that point and what I did was I just drilled a hole right here through the foot and even at the time when I was doing this I thought ah this looks pretty shady but you know what I'll tell you this this it's been 8 years it's still working fine so but I would focus on getting the smallest the smallest casters that you would need for your for your driveway your patio or whatever because it does raise the height a little bit and it could make it more Tippy haven't had a problem but I'll explain we'll come back to that in a minute the other thing I did is these lower vents can get super duper hot it's super annoying because this is all this all transfers heat really easily so I just attached some carriage bolts to the top and now I can I can change these without actually burning myself it also makes it foot adjustable you can just like you know that is a lifesaver and then on my main front lower vent let me show you this okay so down here I've got a barbecue po y hold still there we go I got a barbecue Guru adapter permanently so to speak installed reason it's permanently installed is because even when I'm not using a barbecue Guru it gives me a consistent amount of air flow coming in so like every time I start the grill no matter what I'm cooking the only vent I have open is this vent this is my minimum amount of air it's usually enough to cook low and slow entirely and when I'm done I can just plug it back in and shut it down now I would say this dogs love this because it tastes like barbecue and it's really gummy so you might want to get a few extras um uh just something to warn you about and then I always have this attached if ever decide to use my Guru but most of the time I don't I just leave it like this um these other vents are closed off with metal plumbers tape I didn't get the high heat metal tape what I got instead was the extreme cold metal tape cuz as it worked out the stuff that was good for extreme cold it was actually better for high heat so than the high heat stuff so these are most of my mods the outside now let me tell you about some of the stuff that I chose not to do first let me plug this in so my puppy will have a snack she'll be so excited okay so one of the issues that people have with their Weber smoke Smokey Mountain mountain is the door this door I think it's aluminum I'm not sure it's very very lightweight and a lot of people complain that it leaks so there's some really really nice aftermarket doors that you can get I chose not to get one just because I don't I decided I don't really mind I don't really mind this door I like I mean I like the design I like that it creates the way it sits in here it creates a lip so it doesn't like it doesn't leak on the outside of the grill when it's cooking over time it's easy to form to the shape of the kettle or I mean excuse me to the shape of the cooker and I just I just haven't had any issues that made it worth replacing with a really good solid stainless steel door that's just that's just me um you can get those I think cjun Bandit sells one um 80 bucks something like that I I just I'm fine with this so I'm going to keep rolling with it another thing that I didn't do is I didn't replace my my thermometer because I I didn't have a problem with my thermometer now my buddy Troy has a big ba what do we call it a big d a big ass Dow ba b a d big ass d right this one I find um I find to be plenty accurate it's not accurate at first when you first light the cooker but over time it usually matches what my uh thermop P or my thermal Works will do on the great and and I I kind of I kind of think it looks nice but Troy has a good one I I'll refer you to his channel um another thing you can do is you can get handles for the top I'm might do that someday truth be told the plastic actually just just handles Sun better I've got one for my performer and it looks really really nice or it did when it was new and now it needs work and it needs to be replaced so I'm probably going to stick with just the regular handles even though I think the custom ones look so so so nice another mod I chose not to do even though uh Weber does it with the newer cookers is I didn't put a thermometer probe port in this particular cooker and the reason I didn't do that is because the probe ports are going to sit underneath the cooking grates and and so every time you use it you're GNA have to string the thermometer outside put your grates in it's not as convenient as it is in the kettle where you can get the thermometer above the grate and it's less to fuss around with I've been fine just running thermometers underneath this lid it's never broke a thermometer wire it's not been in the way if I if I started having problems with it this is one of those things like if I started having problems with it I would re-evaluate but it's been years and I've never I've never had an issue another thing with the lid my buddy filling Florence uh rip used to have a lid holder on the back of his where you could basically put this on a hinge and lift it back and the and the lid would stay there so you didn't have to like when you took it off you didn't have to find a place to put it down the reason why I didn't choose to do that is because I live in Dallas Texas and if you don't live here you probably don't realize Dallas Texas is one of the windier cities that you can live in and um I am just scared to death with that lid you know hanging back here on the back with my casters I told you I was going to come back to that that I could catch I could just catch the wind like a freaking parachute and knock the whole thing over and while you're cooking that could be super duper bad y'all check this out we're trying to shoot oh Troy's here and Ken's here we're trying to shoot a video and we're we're having a tornado and we're hanging out here like idiots this what YouTubers do man it's fun though that's the reason why I didn't do that it's not that I don't think it's a good mod I just I just for me I I that's where I am with that all right I'm just getting warmed up here but this is probably a good place to stop and say you know if any of these things that I'm doing don't work for you or any things that I've decided not to do for me work for you good like share your experience below I'm not trying to crap talk anybody or any product or anything like that I'm just just talking barbecue all right let's talk about some of the internal mods here hang on actually you know what actually before I do that [Music] looking for something else I ran across I ran across this and I don't know if this one specifically will fit I actually got it when I had a ranch Kettle it looks like it's pretty close though but anyways you get the idea of what the custom uh what these Customs candles look like and I mean they do look nice don't they yeah I think I might have just tuck myself into it all right so here's a mod that I don't necessarily I don't necessarily recommend but I still want to talk about it I Weber Weber cooking grates the the Chrome plated steel cooking grats are not the most durable in the world especially on the kettle so I have a thing where I just upgrade all mine to stainless steel in this case with this cooker if you're going to use it for barbecue I don't think that's worth the money honestly now if you're going to cook directly over the coals as if you're using a regular Kettle then I do highly recommend this because again the stock who grates just they're just not very they're not very robust but for barbecue low and slow I mean it's just very gentle on those cooking grates and they can last forever plus the Weber grates are going to be a lot cheaper than stainless steel but that's something to think about so you guys who have been following the channel for a while know this one this is the the Weber Fish Hooks it's a kit I'm not sure if they make them anymore I'm not sure if they make them anymore I was told that they didn't and I was told that they did if you can find it for the 22-in kettle get it um basically what this does is it makes it where you can hang meat allaha Pit Barrel Cooker it's our favorite way of cooking ribs now the hooks that come with this are not very good pit will sell you the hooks directly I believe and if not you can get them off Amazon you can get something similar off Amazon and it's just a fun wonderful way of cooking you just hang them right over the coals and uh yeah it's awesome so this is this is definitely an upgrade I recommend if you can find it all right I'm going to put this back together oh and that's another thing that's cool about this is this folds up and takes up very little space I mean it's really nice um you can just put it on a shelf or something put this back on here put this back on here and then I'm going to take this off and show you what we're doing below there oh it's a good thing I have handles all right guys this is something I learned a long time ago and I've been doing it ever since this is the these are the Weber charcoal grates um my issue with the charcoal grates is they're they're cheap which is good but they're also um over time they start to Sag and I actually think that there is a gap that is too big between between the the tines and so what I've been doing for a really long time is buying a second charcoal grate crisscrossing it over the top and that way it prevents it or at least reduces the amount of sag and you don't lose charcoal to the bottom of the Bowl before it's done burning the other thing is this is the Weber charcoal basket or excuse me charcoal ring uh I don't I don't really love the ring and someday I'll probably upgrade it mine broke it's split at the weld right here but I I I bought rebar ties and twist tied it back together it's like a $4 fix and uh it's still it still keeps on chugging while I was added I actually rebar tied it to those charcoal grates after you're done cooking you set this aside and you can get in and get after your calls Weber used to make these shovels and I I think it was called the Weber shovel but basically it's this curved piece and it's just perfectly designed for scooping out ash from the Weber Smokey Mountain and the ranch Kettle so uh recommend this uh if you need something like that if you don't want to spin any money you can get I saw some guys on the virtual Weber bullet uh they they actually took milk jugs and cut out a scoop in that exact shape it was it was a perfect diyi solution it's a lot cheaper than the Weber shovel so um if you want to play around with that that's a good way to that's a good way to save money now while I'm down here one more thing I want to share with you is a technique I picked up from Harry Sue when he was here oh gosh it's been a while now but before he dropped the paa here a Teddy be over here oh [Laughter] no what he told us was take your wood chunks and put them in your charcoal basket before you put your charcoal down and what that does is you pour your charcoal over the top of it and then you can put a few wood CH wood chunks on top and then it allows you to continue to get wood smoke throughout the cook instead of burning it all up while your fire is at the top of the pile so it's an interesting tip it's something that crossed my mind while I was down here so I thought I'd pass it on to you all right guys this is the water pan that comes with the rubber Smokey Mountain and I freaking hate it and honestly I was going to in this part of the video I was going to give you ways of using the water pan to make it more tolerable but the truth is is I just don't use it I haven't used it in 5 years and I'm just going to jump straight to that recommendation don't use it just throw it away I'm someday I'm going to throw this away some I'm going to run it over with my car shoot it with my gun dump it in a lake dig it out again throw it back in the ocean dig it out again run it over with my car bury it in my yard have my dog poop on it Tannerite Tannerite that's how much I hate this thing um and like I said you don't need it not using it has made me fall back in love with my w Smoky Mountain and I think it'll help you too so I'll show you how to do this in just a second uh it's easy you're going to you're going to love it and I promise you you don't need this hey guys so I could go on and on with more tips and tricks and all this stuff but I feel like I'm never going to be able to cover all of it and I kind of feel like this video's already gotten super duper long so um I'm going to cut it here and in the next video I'm actually what I really want to do is I want to cook ribs show you how to do that without the water pan just to show you it's really easy to do if you've never done it before it's kind of scary the first time but man it's it's it's just the way to go so I'm going to do that in the next video in real life I'm going to do it here in just a second but uh like I said too long of a video two separate topics it feels like you know um I think I'm you know I think this is a two-part Series so which is fun more Weber more Weber Smokey Mountain throwback so if you guys have any suggestions of your own tips and tricks that you'd like let me know um I you know there's so many options it's such a versatile cooker and that's why we love it right so yeah there we go love you guys thanks for watching see you in the next [Music] one so this Weber Smoky Mountain series kind of kind of takes me back you know um my first my first smoker ever was the 18-in whoever Smoky Mountain and that's kind of where I where I started off and uh I learned so much Through The Years from the barbecue community and especially on this video this kind of reminded me of all the things I learned from other people none of these one of these was an original idea the rest of this is stuff I picked up along the way from other people sharing and I want to I'll never be able to remember all of them but I want to give some credit um going all the way back to the Weber uh Weber virtual virtual Weber bullet uh was I spent so many hours on that early on in my barbecue career and learned so many tips and tricks from that group of people and I I'm really thankful for them similarly uh barbecue Brethren was a place where I I learned tons of stuff about how to use the Weber Smokey Mountain and some of my other grills uh T Roy Cooks now A buddy of mine um you know I I watched all of his Weber Smoky Mountain videos uh Harry Sue both both from both from the barbecue pitm show you know and just later on he came over we became friends so many tips along the way and I just want to be able to give like make sure I Express gratitude for what other people have given me because it's uh you know that's what this is all about at its core that's what this is all about I'm I want I want to always keep keep that mindset if that makes sense I also want to give a shout out to um I think it's it's GF Coast barbecue and maybe GF Coast smoke when I was working on the title for this series I ran across one of his videos and even though he didn't directly Inspire this video he actually um like there's so much parallel thinking it's such a good video I'm going to go give uh put the link to his video below cuz I think you'll enjoy it um I hope you guys go check that out and tell him I sent you and uh yeah thanks for watching guys

Channel: Baby Back Maniac

Views: 33,194

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Id: twyuk4TqhnM

Length: 16min 55sec (1015 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 20 2024