“The mysterious egg was at first intimidating as there are a few more components than a traditional BBQ grill. But once I had made a few attempts at getting the heat to 250c and letting the grill get down to an optimal low and slow temperature of 120c, I thought I had control of this powerful machine. I wanted to christen The Bastard with a 3kg brisket for my first cook, no mean feat. The plan was to wake up at 7 a.m. on a Saturday, prep the fire, then trim and rub the brisket. And let me tell you, nothing puts me into a panic more than having a plan and making the rookie mistake of putting too much coal in the grill and having to force the fire to burn super hot for 120 minutes to get the coals at the right temperature so that the meat could be in the fire by 9:00 am sharp. But I got there in the end, temp came down at around 9:30. I cooked the brisket a little on the hot side towards the end as bringing up the temp to around 130c-140c proved a bit difficult with guests arrived and a 34c ambient outside temperature.
I can wholeheartedly recommend this size BBQ for a cut of Brisket this size. Anything larger might be difficult to fit on the grill, as you will see in the pics I've added. I also wanted to smoke ribs, but real estate was a bit tight and I didn't have anything to prop them up, so I slow-cooked them in the oven, swimming in Bone Sucking Sauce and did a high temp flame cook at the end to give the ribs a bit of a burn (No pics of that process though).”
