Hank Shaw spent a day this week with my father and me, showing us how to smoke ribs on my kettle grill. As worried as I was that the ribs were going to end up dry, they weren’t, and they were the some of the best I’ve ever had. Here’s the process from Hank. ~Elise

Barbecue can be a serious business. Hard-core ‘cue mavens buy or build special smokers with custom-made rotisseries and fireboxes in order to precisely control the level of heat and smoke needed for each type of meat or fish. Most of us aren’t ready to drop several hundred – even several thousand – dollars on a special smoker. But you can ‘cue at home, even with that simplest of grills – the “egg” or kettle grill Weber made famous in the 1950s.

No, you will not get competition-class barbecue every time, because you cannot control your temperature with a kettle grill as well as you can with the expensive smokers. But you can still easily achieve the proper “slow and low” cooking so critical for barbecue.

Continue reading "How to Turn Your Kettle Grill into a Smoker" »