"He was also really amused at your rules about clockwise/counterclockwise rings for different meats."
as well he should be......why be so terribly serious about all this.....
I have old style charcoal rails that I bought new in the 80' / 90's....then another set or two of same that have come w/ recent kettles.....
But the baskets are the stainless 'walled' type, the newer ones, I assume.....the wire or rail style baskets seem interesting too......
I've only used them 6~7 times, but I can see a difference in how the heat disperses, it's more directionalized than just dumping a pile on one side of the kettle, against the wall or piling in the middle.....
I've variously moved the thing (used one by itself several times, I see people do that for certain type cooks here) out in the middle to create a small, tight searing area, over to the side to do regular offset hi/low stuff, tried Minion w/ wood chunks buried & over on the side with raging lump to see if I could get a "hot strip" of air to flow to the opposite side, directly across from the basket......not sure on that one yet, more experiments......