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Pile charcoal around the outside. Fill your charcoal basket with four kilograms of charcoal in the shape of a doughnut Place thirteen to fifteen lit pieces of charcoal in the middle Place fist-sized pieces of wood for smoking on the top.
No need for constant adjustments or messy refueling unless you are doing an extra long cook.
The minion method charcoal. In essence the concept behind the Minion Method is to place a small number of hot coals on top of a charcoal chamber of unlit charcoal briquettes. The intake damper is then adjusted in order to control the amount of oxygen entering the smoker and subsequently maintaining low and slow barbecue temperatures 225 F - 250 F. The Minion Method is a clever technique of setting up and lighting a fire for the long-burn cooking and smoking of barbecue meats.
Although it was first used in a Weber Smokey Mountain Cooker WSM it works on any smoker or larger charcoal grill. Most people use charcoal briquettes for the heat and chunks of dry wood for the smoke. The Minion method works like this.
Add a load of unlit charcoal to the grill Fire up a load of charcoal in a chimney starter Add the lit charcoal to the unlit charcoal. The Minion method is a fire building approach where hot coals slowly ignite unlit coals resulting in a long and stable burn that is perfect for smoking meat low n slow. However theres more to it.
In this guide Ill show you the basics of setting up the Minion Method. The minion method is an overhaul of the conventional style of barbecue or smoking. It involves lighting lump or briquette charcoals at the smokers top or a grill pit to produce a more extended consistent and even burn making it ideal for slow and low cooking.
Fill the firebox with charcoal all the way to the lip of the opening between the firebox and the cooking chamber then hollow out ever so slightly about an inch or so just enough to make the pile slightly concave a small area in the middle by pushing the charcoal up around the sides a little. To summarize fill the charcoal chamber with unlit charcoal then place a small bit of lit charcoal on top of the unlit charcoal. The idea is that the lit charcoal will maintain a consistent heat and slowly light the charcoal on the bottom over the course of several hours giving you a long consistent burn time.
The Minion Method Pros Cons Fill The Charcoal Chamber Light A Few Briquettes Spread The Lit Coals Assemble The Cooker It Keeps Going And Going And Going. The benefit of the Minion Method is that it allows you to quickly fire up your smoker and get it burning low and slow. Using this simple technique allows you to almost set and forget your charcoal smoker.
No need for constant adjustments or messy refueling unless you are doing an extra long cook. Take the fire ring out of the wsm and put it into the kettle. Pile charcoal around the outside.
Leave an 8 gap in the charcoal and light one end of it. Itll burn around the race track. Never tried it myself.
A buddy down south says he does it. This video shows how to use the Minion Method to start up a Weber Smokey Mountain smoker. This method is also effective for Ugly Drum Smokers and any other t.
Your Minion Method offset smoker basics are. Fill your charcoal basket with four kilograms of charcoal in the shape of a doughnut Place thirteen to fifteen lit pieces of charcoal in the middle Place fist-sized pieces of wood for smoking on the top. The Minion method has been around for a while so if youve been grilling for some time you might know a thing or two about it.
But whether you do or dont heres a quick run through to get you up to speed. The core concept is simple. Light a handful of charcoal or.
The Minion Method works in a similar manner to the Snake Method which we have covered previously where lit fuel slowly ignites unlit fuel via combustion allowing you to slowly control temps. The difference with Minion is you use a large pile of unlit fuel rather than the long fuse of the snake. I have always used the tin can minion method and have been using an ATC for my WSM 18 for a while now.
It has always worked okay though I never really liked the ATC blower air going in through one of the daisy wheel holes because they are located above the charcoal grate. As a result the fire would tend to burn unevenly across the fire ring.