Braai (Barby) cheat starter

[Paul Jones]

I agree that wood smoked flavor is the best for BBQ. I cook almost every night on our natural gas fired BBQ grill that I modified in 1997 to allow wood chunks to be added to the the right-side gas burners. In the lower right side, I removed a small section of the cast iron grill to allow up to 2.75" (70 mm) wide chunks of wood to be added for heating and smoking.



I use all sorts of woods but prefer using mesquite wood I buy in small chunks from the local hardware store. The three burner natural gas grill is a grill made by FireMagic with black porcelainized steel which is old fashion by today's standard of stainless steel grills but the all-black color hides years of smoke cooking by the BBQ. Except for the grills, the interior burners and the lower grills are all stainless steel and have been been replaced a few times since 1997. I also increase the natural gas burners BTU by increasing the hole diameters in the brass orifices by a few thousands of an inch. It doesn't take much to significantly increase the BTUs per burner but be conservative on the hole diameters or you will melt down your BBQ. There are some great websites showing how to do this and what orifice diameter to use.

Regards,

Paul Jones