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Hi Granettalia Couple of things that may or may not be relevant with your new ProQ from my experiences, almost any new smoker takes a few cooks to settle it down, seal the joints, doors etc with a mixture of heat/grease/soot/smoke/moisture known as seasoning where heat can escape, till a sufficient amount has built up inside and can help with heat retention I always found the ProQ pretty good at holding 225F on a windless warm day, but if the outside temp was cool or especially windy then the temps could become cooler than 225F, if you have a sheltered spot that can help maintain a steady temp in those sort of conditions. I used to use builders sand but things aren't so easy to find at the moment but some Argos stores have 15KG of play sand for £5 that you can pick up instore if you have a local one with stock? as a good alternative for now. As Ice as said give 4-5 cooks each with sand and water to compare, make notes on weather, any noticeable, temp fluctuations, fuel used, waterpan contents etc to give you an idea what works best for you. The positioning of vents can be very important and although once you find a good position for 225F for them and keep to it, you may need to change them if the weather is very different to a calm and sunny day. You'll get there and a method soon enough.

If anybody interested and looking for something like this? Looks quite good from early testing, I created 2 new categories Grill/Smoker and Dutch Oven, easy to do from settings and within them they already had the different sub categories for all types of meats, I will just add a couple of new sub categories for Rubs and Sauces etc in time. Displays the Sub Categories You have chosen, from clicking on the main category Imports the recipes in the most, with all the necessary info and ingredients by just copying and pasting the link from the recipe webpage and where it doesn't the link to the webpage is on the recipe page, when you click on it. (Also meant to be able to scan from hardback recipe books as well, but not tried that yet) For £6 pretty happy with it tbh p.s. there is more info on this page but can't print the screen past the display shown, but the bar on the side tabs down to display the rest of the page within the app iyswim

I have purchased Recipe Keeper Pro today for £5.99 after some research, as it seems a good one for Windows and I prefer the big screen on my laptop to my iphone for this sort of thing. It will also sync across apple and android devices with an extra licence as well, if needed. Seems to do exactly what the Paprika App does for a fifth of the price I will have a play with it over the coming days. There is also a 7 day free trial, if anybody wants to try it out?

Seconded for Gridiron, as Mick says helpful bloke and meat is of good quality. Comes well packaged and freezer packs round the meat. Delivered by DPD who are one of the more reliable couriers as well I find. Don't know where you are in the West Mids, but if close to Junction 9 of the M42 J.J. Timmins is a handy butchers, situated at the back of the farm shop is a restaurant/contract butcher normally, but sells to the public. Popped in there the weekend only one in there, as not really widely known as a public retail unit, ring first to let them know what you want too see if they have it in stock, picked up a full Pork belly and a couple of kgs of chicken wings. But have had loin, ribs (pork and beef) steak and other cuts from there in the past and all been good quality.

Thanks for the replies, will have a look at the suggestions in the coming days. Definitely need to get something organised for them all.

I currently bookmark all my recipes in a folder on my Browser toolbar, but it is now getting very large and unruly. I have looked around and there is an app that seems ideal called Paprika, but it is quite expensive for the Windows version, for what and how much I would use it for tbh. They do a cheaper iphone version app, but with my eyesight, the larger screen would suit me much better Anyone found a similar app or program that works on Windows that stores the URl's and titles to make them easy to organise and find as and when you need them This is how Paprika stores and displays them on your laptop for instance and something like this would be ideal for my needs

You should be able to fit a 5-6kg brisket in, one of the ways to do it is lay it over a stainless steel bowl (or even a foiled brick) etc placed on the top grate so it takes advantage of the dome lid and bends over the side of the ss bowl or whatever you have used. Once it has shrunk enough you can then just lay it flat on the grate and finish as normal. Just watch the ends of the brisket don't touch the walls of the WSM as they can get hotter than the rest of the WSM and burn the ends of your brisket.

Hi welcome Leggy, we'll have to wait to see what happens with the Midlands Tailgate and the government advice, but hopefully you can come along to one in the near future. I have found wrapping can be a confusing thing as well, I usually just go for when the meat has passed the stall now and wrap it after that, i always go by internal temp not timings, because as you say the weights can be so variable. Noticed a few new members talking about offsets on here lately, maybe @Smokin Monkey can set a dedicated sub section for them, like the Smokefire recently, so owners can create threads and offer advice in one easy to find area for them?

Newspaper will light a chimney starter but things like the Twizlers wood shaving fire starters are much better I find

Enjoy, usually a learning curve with a new smoker. But all part of the fun

I use this recipe I adapted from one I found online, works well with chicken wings and thighs. This is usually enough for 1 - 1.5KG of wings or thighs, place mixture in a ziploc bag and leave to marinade in the fridge for between 4 hours to overnight. The lemon can be substituted for lime as well if you prefer that flavour profile. Mix well altogether in a bowl 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil 1 tablespoon honey 2 cloves of minced or chopped garlic 2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice 1 tablespoon lemon zest 2 teaspoons chilli powder 1 teaspoon ground cumin 1 teaspoon kosher salt 1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper 1/4 cup chopped fine fresh coriander leaves

Am I reading that graph right, the chicken cooked in just over 30 minutes, even with those variable temps. How did it taste, the skin still looked a little white?

Bought myself a small herb planter set up and some seeds, the herbs probably won't end up as abundant as in the picture. But it is even getting difficult to find fresh herbs in the shops now. Plants and stuff aren't really my thing. Hoping I can just plant them and leave them to do what they need to do themselves after that 😀

How you finding the ash at the bottom of yours, is there a big accumulation or is it going down the holes? I am getting loads of ash left inside and very little in the foil tray and drawer underneath. Finding it necessary to sweep it out every couple of cooks to manage it. Not a problem as such as used to doing it every cook with my old charcoal smoker, just thought it might work a bit better than it seems to be? This is after 2 cooks (whole chicken and beef short ribs) totalling nearly 11 hours, no drip pan used, grease not a problem at the bottom really, just the amount of ash surprises me?

In these different times, finding it difficult to get meat locally that used to be so readily available. So I was pleased to be able to get some Beef Short Ribs from my local supermarket delivery service. I was pleasantly surprised at the price and how little trimming and tidying up of the ribs were required and although singular ribs rather than a rack at £7 a kg were good value. After removing a little silverskin and the membrane, I added about a ½ tsp of kosher salt to each of them and left them in the fridge for 4 hours to draw some of the moisture out of them first . I then applied a simple rub mix of kosher salt and ground tellicherry pepper to them and heated the grill to 240F. I used one meat probe in the biggest rib and set it to 203F via the app. The cook took around 7½ hours to reach the 203F I set and except for opening the lid three times to spritz them with some kellio beef stock. That is all I had to do for the whole cook. When the probe in the rib reached 203F I checked all of them with a handheld temp probe and they all registered between 202-205F so they all cooked evenly and the probe just sank into them with no pressure. I then removed them and foiled them for 25 minutes before eating them. The smoke flavour and ring was there (Weber Grillmaster Blend Pellets ) and the ribs cooked beautifully. Very pleased with the final results and this cook is how I envisaged the Weber to work, set it and forget it.

Tbh I am hoping in time there will be a decent Windows version of it, don't really need it on my iphone unless out and about (and doesn't like we will be doing that anytime soon) so would rather control it from my laptop, found it much easier when I had a Smartfire controller that had a similar sort of app setup, which I hope Weber will emulate or beat in the coming months..

Looks good Brian, popped to that butchers by the campsite, where we are hoping to hold the Midland Tailgate, this morning, and picked up a pork belly. Was going to do some of my usual bacon with it, but decided to cure half of it and do American Bacon instead and do some Pork Belly burnt ends with the other half of it Monday or Tuesday.

Hi Jay123 and welcome to the forum and congrats on your purchase There are limited options on the Weber Connect App at the moment, I have used the Whole Chicken and Turkey cooking options so far, but the overall options on all the categories are still small, i.e. there was nothing for the Beef Short Rib I did yesterday under red meat. Every meat category does have at least a couple of meat/cooking options to choose from on my app, what version do you have installed on your phone? mine is currently 0.9.5 (231)

Did some beef short ribs, with a simple salt and telicherry pepper rub, they turned out nice and the Weber did what I bought it for today, set it at 240F and the probe for an internal temp for 204F. The only thing I had to go out for in the 7½ hours cooking time was to spritz it 3 times, the rest of the time it maintained temp and just got on with it.

I have created a blog on here Titled My Trials & Tribulations Along The Way With The Weber Smokefire EX4 (And A Few Successful Cooks As Well) Hopefully! My latest entry is about my experiences with a few different poultry cooks and an attempt at a full Sunday Dinner Steve

I used the poultry roaster yesterday and done a write up on my blog on here about it, but have to say the chicken turned out truly amazing, never cooked a better in my life, honestly. Vegetables were a bit al dente though😀 But it is all a learning curve at thew moment. I do think the pellet consumption, has took me a little by surprise. I looked at it as comparable to the cost of Weber briquettes at around £1.50 a kg, but whereas I might get 16-20 hours cooking time out of a bag of Weber Briquettes, I would be very surprised if I could get more than 10-12 hours from the pellets at the moment, the rate I am going through them. I haven't really seen any decent offers on pellets that bring the price down to around £1-1.20 at the moment but if I do. I think I will risk trying another brand to see how they perform. But if everybody else's are around the £1.50kg mark, then I will stick with the Weber for now.

Welcome to the forum DeanH and thanks to you and all your colleagues for all the sterling work you are doing at this difficult time. Never used a BBQ like that before, but I know Aldi are selling something similar at the moment, so maybe some hints and tips on how to use one like this will start appearing over the net in the coming weeks and months.

Chicken is one of my favourite things to cook outdoors and one of the main reasons I got the Smokefire as for my own personal taste, I have never thought my old bullet smoker cooked chicken very well, due to its limitations of cooking at much higher than 275F even with all vents open and an empty waterpan. I think chicken cooks best at 350F and higher to get the crispy skin and I have been hoping this is where the Smokefire will shine and for the most part it has, from my early attempts. The first thing I cooked was a 3kg turkey crown, that had been sitting in my freezer since Xmas and taking up a lot of space. So thought it would be a good idea to try that first. Anyway I brined it first in 1/2 cup of Kosher Salt + 1/2 cup of Granulated Sugar, which I dissolved in a jug of boiling water thoroughly and then topped up with cold water to room temperature and put the bird in the solution fully covered in it, with a lid on top for 24 hours in the fridge. After the 24 hours I washed it thoroughly in the sink, put it on a rack and patted it dry. I put some room temperature butter inside the skin all the way round and added a simple rub of salt ,ground tellicherry pepper, garlic powder and smoked paprika to the skin. I put the Turkey Crown over a drip pan placed over the flavouriser bars as I was a bit worried about the grease flaring up, but needn't have worried and have cooked other chicken dishes with no problems so far since without a drip pan. I set an initial temperature of 275F for the first 2¾ hours and the final hour at 350F, hoping it would crisp the skin up. The skin certainly wasn't as crispy as I would like, but certainly wasn't rubbery as my usual attempts on my old bullet smoker, used to be. I would probably have done the final 15 minutes at 400-450F next time to see if that had any better results, with the skin. Overall the finished result was excellent for a full Sunday meal and cold with chips and a stew for the following couple of days, the smoke flavour although not strong was noticeable and added something to the final taste of the meat, which was extremely juicy when sliced. I used the Weber Championship Blend Pellets on this cook Chicken Wings This was my first ever attempt at cooking chicken wings, but certainly won't be my last, cheap , cheerful and so tasty. Due to the situation in the world at the moment, I am finding it very difficult to find fresh ingredients in the shop for marinades so had to cheat and use a shop bought Pataks Lemon and Coriander packet. But was really pleasantly surprised with the finished flavour it produced with the finished wings and have added a couple of packets to the cupboard for future cooks. I bought 2 kg of chicken wings, which weren't the biggest, I've ever seen so I just used the fatter bottom part and cut off and discarded most of the tips. I added them to a ziploc bag and added the marinade and gave it a good mix around so they were thoroughly coated and left them in the fridge for 4 hours I then cooked them on the Smokefire for 1 hour @ 225F and just over 35 minutes @ 375F turning once, I used Weber apple pellets in the hopper. As others have said the Smokefire ran a little hotter on the right hand side, but I will know how to compensate for it next time, using the warming rack above and doing a bit of shuffling about, during the cook. This up till then was by far the best thing I had cooked on the Smokefire and so very tasty. Between us we wolfed them all down with a smile on our face, they had a crispy slightly charred skin in places , juicy white meat and lovely flavour from the marinade. Definite winner. A Full Sunday Chicken Dinner I am starting to feel a bit braver now and thought I would try a full Sunday dinner on it, with all the trimmings using the free gift Weber Poultry Roaster for the first time that I got for purchasing my EX4. It is an interesting addition to have and I can see how it should work, but it is going to take a few more goes for me to understand how to cook the potatoes and vegetables perfectly alongside the chicken, but overall I feel it has real potential as a handy device to use with the Smokefire. As in self isolation at the moment I had to rely on a home delivery chicken from the supermarket and although I ordered a large 2 kg+ one, I got a 1.6kg rather small bird. I would normally brine my chicken first but because it turned up on the day I was cooking it and it was so small I didn't bother this time, but it certainly didn't affect how the finished bird turned out. I just added sea salt to the skin for this and nothing else. I was hoping by adding a lot of flavours to the cup part of the poultry roaster , that the bird sat on and putting a lemon inside the cavity to stop the steam escaping, whilst it was cooking. It would add all the flavour that was needed and it certainly did. We both have never tasted such a juicy finished chicken EVER, it was stunning. As I said the prep of the bird was simple but I added to the cup the bird sat on about 150ml of fresh apple juice, with some fresh basil, dried sage and thyme and 3 smashed garlic cloves. I then sat the bird on top of the cup and placed a whole lemon cut into 4 quarters in the cavity at the top to stop the steam escaping. I added raw potatoes cut lengthways in half , along with carrots and parsnips cut the same and an onion cut into quarters. I added some sliced Cabbage after about 30 minutes into the roaster. The theory behind the Weber roaster, is as it cooks the chicken the juices from it go over the vegetables and cook them with the juices adding extra flavour to them. I thought the chicken may take 90-100 minutes to cook at 375F but it did it in around 75 minutes, due to the size of it, which meant the vegetables were still a little raw and due to the size of the chicken not a lot of juice went over the vegetables and I never got to turn it up to 450F to crisp the skin up. The vegetables were a little Al dente, but edible. I think next time I will parboil the vegetable and potatoes for 10-15 minutes before adding them to the roaster, I think and hope that may help with the finished result of them, going forward, we'll see. I also did a small bowl of stuffing for 45 minutes on the grill and some yorkshire puddings to go with it for a little over 10 minutes, the only part of the meal I didn't do was the gravy, but if I get a suitable cast iron pot going forward, I will do that also. The chicken meat though was absolutely amazing, cooked to an internal temp of 168F and rested for 15 minutes, as I said earlier it was the juiciest chicken I have ever cooked in my life. I have a large chopping board and it flooded it, luckily there is grooves round the side of it, otherwise the worktop would have been covered in it. The flavours, moistness and a bit of smoke flavour from the Championship Pellets were just great. I sliced the back bone off and turned the chicken over and both breasts had fallen off from the breast bone cleanly and completely themselves. As a side note to do as much as I could on the Smokefire, I cooked a shop bought jam sponge in it for 30 minutes at 380F, whilst we were eating the chicken and a slightly crispy smoky sponge works quite well tbh If you have got this far down the page, thanks for reading and giving me your time.

As this thread is getting very large at the moment and a lot of pages to go through if looking for answers to problems maybe you are experiencing with your Smokefire. Wondering if people would find a seperate thread just for hardware/software problems people are experiencing and any resolutions or discussions you have had with Weber etc. Maybe it would useful guide for any old or new users to reference this sort of thing in a seperate thread and easier to find answers possibly along with if any new firmware/software updates becoming available etc in a smaller thread than this. Then keep this thread for general discussion and cooks etc. What do you think? If it seems like a good idea, I will create one later and go through this thread and transfer any known problems and solutions etc, that have been discussed to it.

It will be all about how crispy the skin turns out for me. I was super impressed with the chicken wings I did over a week ago. Probably more down to my poor cooking skills on charcoal. But there is know way I could have got the skin cooked liked that on charcoal that i did on the smokefire. Cooked whole chickens on charcoal before and they always taste super juicy and nice, but the skin always came out rubbery. With the ease of upping the temp on the smokefire, hoping to be able to get crispy skin with it now. We shall see.😀