Helena’s favourite gin is Nordes, you need to try it.

 

Firstly make sure all the ash has been knocked off any old charcoal.

• Top up the Egg with new charcoal to just above the line where the fire bowl and the fire ring meet.
• Create a small indentation in the centre of the charcoal and put in just one lit fire starter.
• Cover very loosely the fire starter with a few pieces of charcoal, you need to allow a good airflow.
• Leave the lid open and open the bottom draft door. Leave your Egg for 10 minutes to allow the middle of the charcoal to get going.
• After 10 minutes, close the Egg lid and open the cast iron top fully. Remember to position the screw towards you.
• Leave the Egg closed for about 5 minutes until it hits 180°C and has started warming the dome.
• You can now adjust your Egg to the temperature you want to cook at. See my temperature guide.

Do take a look at the Big Green Egg Tips Series. This video covers lighting your Egg,

The following chart shows meat cooking temperatures depending on your cut of meat and your preferred level of cook:

Setting the temperature on your Egg will vary slightly from Egg to Egg. However for a large Big Green Egg the settings are roughly as per the guide I have put together.

The most used method of cooking pork ribs is the 3-2-1 method where the ribs are rubbed with a BBQ rub and then cooked as follows:

• 3 hours indirect
• 2 hours indirect but wrapped in foil with a small spritz of apple juice (1 tbsp per pack)
• 1 hour indirect

During the last 30 minutes you can then apply BBQ sauce.

The rack of ribs should bend when they are cooked but not fall apart. The meat should pull from the bone but not fall off the bone.

If you’re cooking baby back ribs (the much smaller ones) you might want to reduce the timing to 2-1.5-1.

Try some of the rubs from Angus and Oink, their Sweet Bones and Butts rub mixed with their Porky White Chick is a great combo for ribs.

My recipe is here.

If you’d like to make your own charcuterie or smoked salmon then you can use the Egg to smoke meat using a ProQ Cold Smoke Generator.

 

This will allow you to smoke meats for up to 10 hours per fill. You can use different wood dusts and I find the ones from HotSmoked.co.uk to be the best. You can even try discount code MP10 to get 10% off.

To cure salmon I use a 50/50 mix of sugar and salt for between 4 and 6 hours on the salmon. The recipe is here.

To get into curing meats there are a number of books. I started after reading Tim Haywards book, Food DIY.

HotSmoaked.co.uk also sell bacon cures. Making your own bacon is really easy, give it a go.

If you want to score your pork skin for crackling then the best tool to do this with is a retractable blade stanley knife. You can adjust how much of the blade is sticking out to adjust how deep you cut. 

Always cut away from you. You might find it easier to cut from the centre of the skin to the edge. You can then turn the pork 180° and then score from the middle to the opposite edge. 

Different charcoals will product different flavours. Some Eggers find the Big Green Egg charcoal quite smokey.

The Green Olive Firewood Company do charcoal that has a much milder smokey flavour, It’s made from SheOak. You need their restaurant grade lump wood charcoal.

Stag Charcoal also produce some great stuff in Hertfordshire. Look for their single species Ash or Birch for a less smokey cook.

When you really get into BBQ then look at some of the excellent charcoal from the Oxford Charcoal company. They have a very good reputation for their single species charcoals. They have a great chart on matching wood to meats and fish.

Personally I don’t believe in soaking chips and chunks. Wood doesn’t really soak up water, if it did we would never have made boats from it.

Meat takes on smoke much better when it is cool and wet. Therefore you want to be generating smoke at the beginning of your cook. Since the charcoal in your Egg will be burning from the middle outwards, you need to place the smoking chips or chunks towards to middle of your Egg.

You don’t need too much wood to smoke with. I therefore recommend you just use a small handful for your first cooks and then build up on future cooks until you find the right level that works for you with that particular dish.

Pepper if subjected to a high heat will burn and turn quite bitter. The melting point of piperine, the compound responsible for the pungency of black pepper , is 130 degrees celsius, therefore anything above this heat will start to reduce the pepper flavour.

I recommend you apply pepper to your cooks only if they are indirect.

Marinading meats and fish is a great way to get additional flavour into your cooks. However, you do need to be careful that they don’t contain too much sugar if you don’t want them to burn.

Try and avoid tomato based sauces for hot and fast cooks as the sugars in the tomatoes will burn easily. I therefore apply BBQ sauces which tend to be tomato based at the very end of a cook to avoid over cooking them. Any marinated meats from a butcher will likely have tomato on and therefore burn easily.

The Egg makes some of the best baked potatoes but you need to give it time. The key is to cook them indirect at about 180°C for 1.5 hours and then smother them with olive or rapeseed oil and sprinkle them with sea salt. This will then crisp them up nicely.

We talked about how the tougher cuts of meat will go into a stall at around 65°C when they are cooked. This occurs as the outer layers of the meat dry out and form a bark.

The best resource on this is at AmazingRibs.com. Give it and the other articles a read. It’s a superb site.

Always remember to rest your meat after cooking it. This gives the meat structure time to relax and reabsorb moisture. It will make your meat taste far more tender and juicy.

There is a great article discussing whether this is a myth but I still like to rest my meat: http://amazingribs.com/tips_and_technique/mythbusting_resting_meat.html

A great technique for prologing the life of your planks is to soak them overnight, in lieu of them being soaked in just water, add flavourings to the water. Great flavourings are:

• Lemon and lime – lovely citrus flavours go well with fish
• Beer, cider or lager

Now instead of using the planks directly over the charcoal, use your ConvEGGtor (plate setter) feet up with the stainless steel grid and place the planks onto the stainless grid. You’ll still get the wood flavouring but it won’t burn your planks away.

Remember always place your planks on to a heat resistant surface when you take them off the Egg.

A cool box makes a brilliant tool to store your meat while it’s resting. It will keep it hot for longer periods too. I’ve kept 13kg of pork piping hot for over 10 hours using a cool box.

Once your meat is cooked, wrap it in several layers of aluminium foil and place it into your cool box. Then cover with bath towels and shut the lid. Make sure you use old towels as you’ll never get the smell of BBQ out of them!

The Egg doesn’t need to be cleaned that often but it is essential. If you ever notice your Egg isn’t heating up properly it’s likely to need a good clean.

Clean the ash from your Egg every five or so cooks. Use the ash tool to do this.

Every 12-15 cooks take the whole of the inside of your Egg out and brush down with the dustpan and brush. Some people hoover out their Eggs but if you do this make sure it is cold, I had a customer set her Henry on fire.

Any cast iron product benefits from being treated to a little oil and then heated so the oil smokes and burns off. I tend to just use olive oil. I wipe down my dual function metal top (daisy wheel) with paper towel that is dipped in olive oil and then put it into a hot Egg when it’s been turned off. This will be enough to prevent rust.

You’ll need to repeat this process a couple of times a year.

While working at Big Green Egg I put together the tips series. They’re really worth a look.

The Tips Series.