Looking for a grill

[skeeter182]

Hi everyone,

Man! It's great that I have stumbled across this fantastic site. Everyone seems so helpful, friendly and non judgmental. Nice to meet you all.

I live in London and am in a rather lucky position that I am moving house next week and an fortunate to be moving to place with a garden. As such I can finally go ahead and get grillin after 5 years in a flat.

To that end, I was after a little advice. I come from a weber kettle background and have done everything from pork butt, to ribs and lamb quite successfully. I really want to get more into smoking but I don't know if I should just go out and purchase a WSM I have been toying with the idea of an offset smoker

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/B00J9G0 ... X110_SY165

but upon further review, have only read negative things about them online.

Are they as bad as they have been made out to be?

Should I just get a 57 weber kettle instead and just smoke off of that? I won't be churning out large quantities of food on it on the reg as it will just be me and my wife. But when I did this previously I found you could only get a few slabs of ribs down on a standard kettle.

Essentially, I have a blank canvas to work with and I was looking for some advice on what to get.

Hope you can help!

[JEC]

Hello. These units can work if you're prepared to put in a bit of work and money with better gaskets and tuning plates. Still be cheaper than a WSM and a grill. Another option is a ProQ unit which can be used for grilling too if you put it in a table. Personally I'd go for the weber one touch and then think about getting a WSM if you find yourself needing more space regularly.

[skeeter182]

Thanks so much. That's what I will do. Will keep you posted with my progress. Paul

[Tiny]

Hi,
Personally offset smokers are a pain in the buttocks imho, it took less than a season before I wheeled my landmann Tennessee off the graveyard.

I have used my bargain OT a lot and it is splendid. Search the IKEA website for pot lid tidy, I use this as a rib rack and have done 5 racks on the kettle in a oner, so if you are dead set on smoking buy the WSM and then that will be you sorted for 10 years plus, but a weber kettle never wasted because if you buy and then upgrade to WSM then the weber kettle will still see use for grillsville,
Cheers
Tiny

[Dogmonkey]

I can't say I have a huge deal of experiene with equipment, but I'm having great results with my proQ frontier (it's the same as the Napoleon Bullet smokers in the US- there's a review on Amazingribs. Com ) holds temp really well and a lot cheaper than the WSM, though doesn't have the same warranty. Did get great customer service from Macs bbq and forfoodsmokers.com though.

[CHokKA]

Hello and welcome You'll find an absolute wealth of knowledge in the folks on this forum

I'll second the ProQs for smoking, but really, you've got to ask yourself one question: Will you be grilling or smoking more?

Once you've answered that question, you can then make an informed decision. If you're planning on smoking more than grilling, but want the option to grill every so often, then a ProQ Frontier or Excel is the perfect choice because you can use it for both, but the grilling is done with the bottom base and the lid, so as said you do need to put it on a table to have it at a decent grilling height. If you're definitely going to be grilling more whilst you then play around with smoking a bit more, then a OTP or MasterTouch would be the sensible choice because you can smoke on one with a little more effort, but obviously it is the grilling that will get the greatest benefit from one of these.

So, what do you think you'll be doing more of?