Big Green Egg; Huh?

I have had a few people respond to the passing mentions of the Big Green Egg with “What the hell is that? How big? huh?”. So, a Review, if you will. (The pizza peel in the photo was made by Andrew Stone as a wedding gift. Beautiful woodwork!)

I first ran into a Big Green Egg in Atlanta when I was working for Netsurfer (back when writing GIF89a decoders was a money earner). Impressive device. The BGE is a large ceramic egg. Inside, there is a firebox in the bottom, a vent on the front, and a ceramic coated grilling grid. The rather heavy lid has a large, chimney-like, hole at the top and included is a cast iron cap with an adjustable vent.

Recently, my wife bought (Christine Rocks!) me a large BGE out of the blue. The BGE comes in a number of different sizes; ranging from mini to large. I received the large along with the Egg Table on Wheels. The damned thing is heavy;

The BGE isn’t made of just plain old ceramic. It is constructed of a high-tech ceramic that maintains an incredible stable and even heat within the cooking chamber. Furthermore, the ceramic is maintains thermal stability to the point that blasting a BGE with water when it is at full heat will cause no damage.

Between the adjustable vents at top and front, the BGE can be set to maintain a temperature from less than 150 degrees to over 600 degrees fahrenheit. By adjusting the events at top and bottom accordingly, it is possible control both the temperature and the amount of smoke retained within the cooking chamber. In other words, the device can be used for anything from nearly cold smoking to quick searing of meats to baking of bread.

I have long been a fan of grilling and the BGE changes the equation entirely. The ability to control the temperature so precisely while still cooking over a fire is unique. The key is to only ever open the BGE when the contents truly need to be moved/basted/turned/removed. This maintains both the heat and humidity levels quite precisely and with few abrupt transitions.

So far, I have done chicken and salmon on the BGE that were mind blowingly good. I have also done burgers and a beef roast that were both great, but suffered from over cooking. Purely my fault — the key with the BGE is to have remote probe based thermometers such that you can monitor internal temperatures without opening the lid. Now that I have several such devices, I’m going to go after another roast and I’m betting it will be the Best. Beef. Ever.

Tonight we did Pizzas in the BGE. The results were almost excellent. The key flaw was that the crust was a bit burnt on the bottom. It is hard to tell if I had the BGE too hot or if I simply screwed up the cooking. The problem is that I don’t have a probe style thermometer that can handle temperatures over 400 degrees fahrenheit.

Frankly, it is looking like I’m going to have to crack out the bucks for a couple of probe style kiln thermometers to be able to properly master high heat cooking.

In any case, ceramic open fire cooking is just awesome.

The BGE is not the only ceramic cooker. There is also the Kamado. Beautiful design. I have no idea as to the performance of said device. It looks to be a very impressive piece of equipment. Beyond impressive, actually — there seems to be some equally as serious, but quite different, engineering finesse within the kamado. I can’t see picking one up now that I have a BGE, but if someone wants to send me one, I’d be happy to compare and contrast the two in painstaking detail.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 3rd, 2006 at 1:06 am and is filed under Big Green Egg, Entertainment, Food. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.