6 Mistakes Beginner BBQers Make (And How to Fix Them)

Rushing the setup

Far too many people start with a time to eat, then work back from that exactly, this adds pressure when things take more time than you expected and also can leave you no time to rest your meat!

The Fix:
When it comes to BBQ, plan to be ready an hour (or 2) before you eat, and then rest or hold your meat until you want to serve. This will give you some extra time if things are cooking slower than you expected.

Let the fire breathe

Lighting a fire and getting the food on can seem urgent, but when it comes down to it and you've dumped your hot coals from your chimney into the charcoal basket for the minion method, you need to give the fire time to catch properly. Closing up the smoker too soon will starve the fire of much needed oxygen, and it will take even longer to get to your desired cook temp. 

The Fix: Make sure your chimney is properly lit, and give it at least 10 minutes before you close up your smoker and dial in your vents.

Too much smoke!

When we start out, we all want to get that perfect smokey flavour but more wood does not equal more flavour! Over smoking can give you acrid/bitter flavours that can spoil the results.

The Fix:
Start with a good quality charcoal or Briquette (obligatory ProQ Cocoshell Plug) and make sure your fire is burning nice and clean, then add 1-2 good quality smoking wood chunks. You should be aiming for light or thin blue/white smoke, no billowing clouds coming out of all the sides of the smoker. 

Looking instead of cooking!

Opening the smoker every 10 minutes to see the food is going to slow your cook times significantly, disrupt your airflow and give you all sorts of problems with your cooking temperature.

The Fix:
Trust the process. Checking on your food is FINE, but try to limit yourself to set times; for smaller cuts, this might be every 20 minutes, but for a brisket try every hour, then check more regularly closer to the end.

Not using the waterpan correctly

This applies to all offset cooking methods really, but the waterpan is the crux of the issue here, if you're not using it at all, you're not getting the most out of your smoker.

The Fix:
Decide what temperature you want to cook at and follow our waterpan guide to achieve it, more heat means a faster cook, but also less moisture. Don't worry if you're a few degrees higher or lower, close enough is good enough and as the saying goes "it's ready when it's ready".

Time to rest

Pulling meat off the smoker when everyone is hungry means you end up slicing and serving immediately, but you'll also lose a lot of the moisture you worked so hard to build. 

The Fix:
As we said above, give yourself some extra time and rest your meat for at least 30-60 mins. Wrap it in kitchen foil, then a towel an pop it in a cooler box or your oven (turned off).