I saw a kettle BBQ at B&Q for £10 a couple of months ago as they were packing all the BBQ stuff away so bought it, I thought I'd try to smoke using it the other day.
The only problem is that when you stack up the coals on one side of the coal grill, the grill upturns, so I drilled a hole and put a screw in the opposite side to keep it from tipping, then drilled a hole in the lid for my spare thermometer for my UDS.
I got the coals started on the chimney starter and chucked them on the BBQ and then threw a nice sirloin on there (and a slice of bacon, why not eh
) with a little salt and pepper for three minutes each side, let it rest for just over 10 minutes and it was fantastic, so I now have a new habit, whenever I'm doing a big smoke (or a little one now) I'll be doing a sirloin on top of the chimney starter and having a steak sandwich to commemorate the smoke 
Once the steak was taken off I put the lid on and closed the top and bottom vents and kept an eye on the temperature.Fiddling with the vents I couldn't get it to a good 120c like in the UDS but I could hold 140c.
Earlier in the day I had quartered and steamed a chicken and marinaded in Nando's stuff so this went on directly over the coals and offset I placed a lamb shoulder fillet (half rubbed with Ras el hanout), a crown of duck breast (half rubbed with chinese five spice) and a rainbow trout, (just put three slices of lemon in this one) and put the lid on but continbually monitored the BBQ temp.
It worked quite well:
The lamb - Remembering that one half was rubbed with Ras el hanout I chopped it in half and sliced it into approx 10mm slices, the lamb was great on initial bite but the fat running through the middle was still very much in tact so I might try this again when I've got the UDS going and I can leave it on for many hours. Having said that, the flavours were fantastic, the ras el hanout side was far superior to the non rubbed side and the medalions in the middle just melted in your mouth I will be doing this again but on the big smoker
The duck - Again, half rubbed with chinese five spice and half unrubbed, the breasts got removed from the carcass and sliced in about 10 mm slices again and both were rubbed and unrubbed were very nice but when we put them on a baked baguette, still hot and buttered (full fatty, salted lovely butter) and a little salt it was dynamite, this will be getting done again with out doubt
The fish - We both like fish but we don't eat alot of it, this worked very well. The skin could be pushed back easily with a fork and the flesh scraped from the bones. Infact, we pulled the meat off, flipped the fish over and was pretty much able to just pull the spines and bones out like a pulled pork.
We found very few bones left in the meat whilst eating it.
Basically I have learned a couple of things:
- I can still smoke smaller amounts quite well in the little BBQ so I don't always have to do a big expensive burn just to make it worth the effort
- I need to make a rack so I can get 2 or 3 racks of ribs under the lid but offset from the coals
- Meat is murder. Lovely, delicious, making me fat MURDER
