When I designed and built our new house I made sure to have ample room to set up my arsenal of cooking equipment. We have a 1000 square foot covered patio with electrical outlets everywhere and hard-piped gas drops in several locations. At present I'm running 6 different cookers of various types: A 42" built-in Lynx Professional propane grill, a 30" Dynasty propane grill (had for over 20 years and an absolute work horse!!), a 60" offset smoker, two BGE's (Mini-Max and an XL), and just added a big turkey fryer for Dutch oven cooking (this has been amazing!!). A couple weeks ago we decided it was time to do another brisket so we invited a bunch of friends over and the plan was in place for BBQ today. This was before we knew there was a Polar Vortex coming. Forecasted temps as of yesterday were low 20's this morning but in actuality it got colder than that. When I put the brisket on at 3:00 this morning it was 16 degrees. I know there are a lot of places in the country that are colder than that but for Central Texas that's COLD!! I've never done a brisket on anything but my smoker before but also have never run the smoker in temps this low. High 20's to low 30's is about the coldest I've ever used it. Concerned about possible issues, I didn't want to take a chance ruining the meat so decided to use the XL BGE. I've never used anything but oak lump charcoal in that unit so I loaded it up, lit the fire starters, and headed inside to season the brisket (trimmed it last night). The Egg came up to temp immediately and since getting it dialed in the thing has not wavered. I've always been a proponent of these things as being unbelievably well engineered, extremely versatile, and built of outstanding quality. Today has proven in no uncertain terms that the Egg is one of the best cooking devices on the market and will work well in any climate. If I could only have one cooker, it would be the BGE.....and that's saying a LOT for the Egg. Being that I've never done a brisket on the Egg and I'm 5 1/2 hours into the cook all I can do at this point is hope that it comes out good :-)
Smoking in Lago Vista,
Robert
Smoking in Lago Vista,
Robert
