How versatile a BBQ chef are you?  I got to find out this holiday weekend.  My brother-in-law asked me to “make some magic” (his words not mine) with his CharBroil H20 smoker.  Now it’s been a good long while since I’ve cooked on one of these but we set out to give it a shot.

It was a cold and windy 25 degrees in Pittsburgh and I knew that keeping the temps up with this thin-walled smoker would be an issue.  I decided to forego the water in the water pan and instead filled it with some small gravel in hopes that it would hold more heat than water.

We started a full pan of charcoal and realized that we’d need to keep pouring the coals to it and keep it out of the wind to keep the temps up in a good cooking range.  Unfortunately, my BIL didn’t have a chimney starter but was able to fashion one out of a piece of stove pipe he had in the garage.  This worked out better than I had hoped.

In the end, we were able to serve up 3 dozen ABT’s, 3 lbs of chicken wings, and a couple of salmon fillets.  They were very tasty and I’d say that in spite of a cooker with a few limitations, we proved that you can cook decent food if you’re patient.

So don’t let this cold weather stop you.  Get out there and get cooking!

Cheers,
Braddog

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