The purpose of todays cooking was two fold:
1) Clean the charcoal grate on the 26 through some high heat.
2) play around just a bit with it's fire control.
I loaded a chimney with some Kingsford (for cost), some lump (because I needed some extra heat) and some pecan shell briq (because I need to get rid of it). Here it is almost ready to dump.
Notice the stubborn lid gunk and some at the top of the bowl. This was a strangely tough kettle to clean.
I am playing around with some configurations. Here is how I started out:
It quickly settled at 500 according to the top thermometer. I think tha ttherm reads just slightly high.
While I was burning off the grate, I used my "indirect inverted grate" method to cook some cheesy bread and pizza:
It was good! More updates to come.....