Direct or Indirect

direct = nothing (besides the cooking grate) between your fire and your food

indirect = there is something to deflect the heat so it cooks almost like a convection oven

If you want to cook something really slowly (e.g. a pork butt, brisket, etc.) at a low temp, you could put something like a platesetter between your fire and your grate holding the food... google it if you don't know what one is) which heats up and deflects the heat around the food.

On the other hand, if you were cooking a steak (hot and fast), indirect would not make sense, so you'd go direct.

There are some foods that fall into the either/or category based on personal preference (e.g. chicken pieces, pork loins, etc.)

Hope that helps.

The platesetter leaves a gap of about 3 inches (guesstimate) all the way around between its edge and the edge of the egg. This allows the air to convect up and around. You don't want to totally block the heat, just make it take a path around the inner walls of the egg.

 
For the last while I have been cooking direct on most all cooks. I use a raised grid and low lump levels for the cook.

If I do a cook where I need a lot of lump then I cook indirect. The only time is use a ceramic barrier, plate setter or pizza stone and or both, is when I do an overnight cook or pizza.

Here is a picture where I wanted to cook chicken at a very low temperature, I wanted a long slow cook. Direct with very raised grid. 16.5" between the lump and grid.





Here is a chicken cooked at 500° direct.


The breast and thighs were just as moist as the picture above.

GG

Referencing the Weber Kettle grill, we would place the briquettes on the edges and place a drip pan between the two piles to create two heat zones. The heat flows directly from the briquettes out the top of your grill lid. If you were to evenly scatter the briquettes on the bottom of the Weber and place a large piece of meat (chicken, large roast), you'd end up cooking the first layer of meat and would not be able to cook the inner portion. In order to cook a large cut, we cook the meat by warming the entire grill rather than placing a heat source immediately beneath the meat.

With the BGE, this gets a little more complicated because we cannot simply divide the cooking area into zones as we could on the Weber. People often use plate setters to create a physical buffer between the heat and food. As noted above, people have also used a direct heat source with a raised grid in order to elevate the meat from the heat source.

Bacchus wrote:

There is nothing preventing one from cooking lo/slo direct.

Never said otherwise. My definition of an indirect cook was given in the top line.

Of course, low and slow cooks are neither a subset nor a superset of indirect cooks. I was just giving a possible example of an indirect cook.

 
Just realized I had a wrong picture above - fixed now.

I have found out with chicken, whole or spatchcocked, it is very simple to cook anywhere from 225° to 500° indirect. For me the cook time ranges from, on the low end 1.5 to 2 hrs to 50 minutes on the high end.

If I cook below 430° dome, at times, I will use the Maverick ET-73 until the bird temp gets close to done, then I verify with the thermapen.

Cooking at higher temperatures I go check at 45 minutes and then 'guess' until the next check time.

GG

With the BGE, this gets a little more complicated because we cannot simply divide the cooking area into zones as we could on the Weber.

The need to compartmentalize your fire seems complicated to me. I think that cooking with the Egg is less of a "project" than cooking on a kettle or a WSM. I talk to friends who use those and they freely admit that it's a more labor intensive process than the Egg- but they're used to it.

I tend to go indirect for anything I would roast or bake in the oven or for low and slo's. I know you can cook low and slow direct, but I just haven't tried it. I like to "set it and forget it".

You just need something below the chicken to deflect the radiative heat from the fire. This can be as simple as an aluminum drip pan. But you might wind up with the drippings from the chicken burning in the drip pan (which is now absorbing a lot of that direct heat), and imparting an unpleasant (to some people) taste. If you're concerned about that, get two drip pans, put one inside the other, with a few balls of aluminum foil keeping them separated.

Personally, I'd just cook the chicken direct...but then, that's how I normally do my chicken anyway.

don't forget that if the food can see the heat source, whether it is off to the side or not, then there is some direct cooking taking place. with an 18"weber, an "indirect" cook means a maximum of half the grid is useable. and even then, the edge facing the fire is still fairly direct.

not trying to bash the weber, just being clear that the differences are even greater. suddenly, it doesn;t seem so complicated inthe bge, especially when you get to use the entire grid.

an indirect set-up in the bge is truly indirect, and uses only air temp (well, plus maybe radiant heat from the dome) to cook.