First of all - hello! I am a new user of the forum and also a new user when it comes to Weber BBQs!
I recently bought a Weber Master Touch 57cm charcoal bbq, and used for the very first time, yesterday.
Here is my initial thoughts and experience so feel free to provide advice or any pointers if I am going wrong anywhere.....!
I firstly used the Weber chimney to fire up my Weber branded briquettes (more on these later!) - the chimney was awesome as it literally took 10 - 15 minutes before all the charcoal turned white and was ready to use!
I then poured the briquettes, into the Weber charcoal baskets (came with my bbq) and I positioned the baskets at the top of the grill and had my drip pan, with some water, at the bottom (I wanted to use the 50/50 option of direct heat and indirect heat as shown here:
https://www.weberbbq.co.uk/cooking-methods-charcoal/ ). I then laid the cooking grill into the bbq, closed the lid, opened all the vents and let it preheat for about 15 minutes. When it was ready, I started to cook - I had pieces of chicken (drumsticks and thighs), which I was going to do first.
I started by first searing the chicken above the charcoal baskets, and then moving the chicken above the drip tray for indirect heat, and I closed the lid. I had a thermometer, plugged into one of the drumsticks, so I could keep an eye on the temp - when it hit 175F, it was ready. After I was alerted, I opened the lid and checked the chicken - it was indeed ready ( I cut one of the drumsticks open to ensure the chicken was white all the way through). The chicken was ready but lacked a little colour on the outside - perhaps I hadn't seared it enough?
Anyway, I then stuck it over the charcoal to give it a little more colour, and then took it off, to serve.... The chicken tasted great!! Nice and juicy (it was normally quite dry inside whenever I had previously cooked it over a standard non Weber bbq previously)!
I then followed the same procedure in order to cook some sausages and burgers - seared them first and then cooked them over the indirect heat until the thermometer alerted me of the correct internal temps! Again, sausages looked a little lighter in colour than what I was used to on a non Weber bbq (they normally come off quite darkened and crunchy on the outside!), but they tasted great, as did the burgers!
Once all the food was removed, I closed the vents, and kept the lid on, until after we had sat down to eat. Later on, the briquets, has extinguished themselves but although, on the Weber website, these are touted are "longer lasting" and provide a cook time of "3 hours", personally, I don't feel they would have lasted even for 2 hours, or even over an hour as after I had finished cooking, the briquettes had become quite small in size and looked pretty used! I think I used around 25 or so briquettes but perhaps, I should have used more.....
Also, I did find that the clean up at then end was quite messy (I like to clean my bbq at the end and not leave it until the next cook, to clean) - at the bottom of the bowl, there was all this dark grey/black sludge and I'm guessing this was a combination of the water from the drip pan and the burnt bits of the briquettes, combined together to form this gunk...!?!?
But all in all, I was very happy with my experience.
EDIT - Sorry, just one more thing to add - I didn't like using the charcoal baskets as it seemed to limit the area you can use for direct heat. Next time, I am just going to pour the charcoal onto the bottom grill and have half of it for direct heat and half for indirect.
Thoughts?!
Topic: Master Touch Grill - New User (Read 8403 times)