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Cooling down the egg

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dcdave
dcdave Posts: 8
edited November -1 in EggHead Forum
Hi all. I'm new to the forum and the BGE. I've had one since last fall. We've grilled a lot on the BGE and I've smoked ribs once. Smoking at 225 was much easier than I thought it would be. Last night we planked salmon with a miso glaze. The problem I had was getting the egg down to 350/400. I light the grill with a BGE fire starter, wait about 45 minutes with the draft door open and the top off. At that point, the grill is around 700. I closed the draft door and closed the dual function top. It took about 25 minutes for the egg to come down to temperature. Is there a better process for getting the egg to 350? The salmon was fantastic by the way. We will definitely be doing that more often. I'm also looking forward to my first pork butt smoke at some point this summer.

Thanks,

Dave
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Comments

  • The Naked Whiz
    The Naked Whiz Posts: 7,777
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    Er, why don't you just bring the Egg up to 350 rather than taking it to 700 and bringing it back down? Let the Egg come up in temp, and when you start getting close, start closing down the vents more and more as you approach your target. Even if for some reason you really want to go to 700 and bring it back down (which I can't imagine at this point), if you take it to 700 and immediately close the vents, you'll be back down to 350 within 5-8 minutes.
    The Naked Whiz
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  • civil eggineer
    civil eggineer Posts: 1,547
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    Don't allow it to overshoot your planned cooking temperature. As it approaches the planned cooking temp start closing the air vents until you adjust it to fit your target temp. It can easily takes hours for the egg to cool back down wants it is warmed up.
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  • dcdave
    dcdave Posts: 8
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    aha - why didn't I think of that :) thank you.

    Dave
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  • Aron
    Aron Posts: 170
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    I also light with a starter cube and find that my lump is usually up to 350/400 within 20 minutes after I light the cube. Once the initial temp spike from the cube has passed, the egg takes a bit to get above 200 and then rises slowly at first. Once it hits in the 250-300 range though, I find it tends to heat up very quickly with the vent and top wide open. An extra 5 minutes of not monitoring the egg can find you going from 300 to 700 very easily. It's not too much of a problem to cool it down quickly by shutting vents if it hasn't been sitting at 700 for a long time. But if it's been left unchecked for 45 minutes, it may have been at 700 for a good 20 minutes or longer and the ceramic will take a significant time to cool down at that point. So like the others are saying, just try to watch your egg closer at the beginning of the cook. When you're nearing your target temperature, start to shut down the vents. It's easier to raise temp later by opening vents than doing the reverse.
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