Hey everyone, please know I did a thorough search of the board before posting yet another vortex thread. But my wings are coming out too dry for my taste. And without much taste. It could be that I'm just cooking them too long, but the time they're on has been right in line with what most people are saying it should take, somewhere between 40 minutes to an hour. Here's what I do:
1. Dump a full chimney full of lit charcoals into the Vortex and add a piece of wood over the middle (medium vortex, 22 in. weber kettle.).
2. Set the lower vent to a quarter open, top vent wide open.
3. Coat my wings with a dry rub (last cook was lemon pepper)
4. Put the wings on around the perimeter and let them go, rotating the lid every 15 minutes.
This last time I left them on about and hour. I checked one a bit before that and while the wing was tender and juicy, the skin wasn't "crispy". So I left it on a bit longer.
When I took them off the skin was crispy but the meat seemed dried out to me. Not only that but the seasoning just didn't have much taste, like it was "cooked away" or something. I thought the same thing even when I checked them the first time. They definitely didn't taste like Lemon Pepper.
This is my 3rd or 4th try, and so far I haven't produced dry-rib wings near as good as what I produce on my Weber Spirit, believe it or not. Wings done on the gas grill are super flavorful, moist and delicious; but not quite as crispy as wings with this vortex. And, of course, no smoke flavor.
I keep trying because I want to have all the flavor and get from the gas grill wings plus some nice smoke flavor and crispier skin. If you guys see anything I might need to change in my process let me know. Otherwise I'm leaning toward going back to the good old-fashioned banked coals method to smoke them and then crisping them up on the gas grill (or over the banked coals).