Waxing Nostalgic at the End of Summer BBQ
Today is the last holiday of the summer season, so I have the BBQ Pit fired up and am doing the obligatory Baby Backs.
That got me to thinking about all the BBQs I've owned and which one I liked the best. I started BBQing just over 30 years ago. My first BBQ was a little $4.00 Hibach which I used to do Country Syle Ribs and Baked Potatoes. After awhile I graduated to a Weber Smokey Joe and after I bought my first house I bought a 24" Weber Kettle at Builders Emporium for $39.00. I have been using that same Q for 26 years, and it is still going strong. I bought a MECO Water Smoker some place along the way, but that was just to cumbersome to use, so that unit mostly sat. About 20 years ago a friend bought a 35 gallon Drum BBQ for me down on Century Blvd in LA. I made some really great Q on that one, eventually the bottom rusted out of it and when I moved to LV it wound up in the trash. The major drawback to that unit was it was a direct fire unit. I put the fire at one end of the unit and the meat on the other. I used that Drum Q for 13 years until I bought a New Braunfels Bandera in 2001, which had the firebox on the side and had a vertical smoking chamber which made it look like a filing cabinet. The major drawback to the Bandera was that the gauge of the metal was thin, so it was harder to keep the a constant temperature and it used quiet abit of fuel to keep it going, I sold that one about 3 weeks ago. The water pan at the bottom of the smoke chamber helped to keep the temperature constant. After I moved to LV, I bought a Big Green Egg, I had always been curious about those units so I gave one a try. They are a bit unwieldly to use as a Grill..hard to beat a Weber for ease of use. As a roasting unit for chicken or beef roasts the Egg is hard to beat, and there are other things to cook on it like pizza. Capacity of the Egg is a bit limited. That finally brings me to the David Klose of Houston BBQ Pit which I bought in late 2005. It is a Drum Style unit with firebox on the side, made out of 1/4" steel plate with the firebox at 1/2" steel plate, the thing weighs over 600 lb. However for using hardwood logs and maintaining constant temperature it really can't be beat. It is a real proffessional BBQers unit which turns out uniformily great product. Of all the units I have owned the Klose is the best for smoking and the Weber is best for grilling, with the Egg being someplace in between.
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