Cooking On The Bubba Keg

Well, I promised you guys some pictures and I put a couple up over the weekend. I'm sorry I didn't take more photos. They'll come in future cooks.

On Saturday I lit the fire in the Bubba Keg, oiled the grates and the dome's vents, burned off any miscellaneous packing materials and played with the fire. Dinner on Saturday was some chicken legs and grilled asparagus and Sunday was grilled rib eye with homemade potato au gratin.

Man, cooking on the Bubba Keg is intense. Cooking on this is very different from the other cookers I ever used. Here's some random thoughts...

• This thing is extremely effiecent with its use of fuel. A very small amount of lump provides a very hot fire. Two handfuls of lump maintained a 500 degree fire for over 2 hours. Three handfuls brought the temp to 800 degrees!
• Once this thing gets hot, it's almost impossible to cool it down. Opening the dome didn't seem to have much affect on the interior temperature. I had the cooker at 800 degrees and opened the dome for about 10 minutes. When I closed it, the dome temperature read 275, but returned to 750 degrees within one minute.
  
• I've got to close down the air dampers as soon as the cooker gets anywhere near the temperature I want. So far I haven't been able to get anywhere near the 225-275 degree temps I use for barbecue. I'll get there. I'm learning.
• The Bubba Keg is amazingly well insulated. Even with the fire raging at 800 degrees the outside of the cooker was still cool enough to touch. Yes, it was hot, but not hot enough to burn. At 500 degrees, it was completely cool.
• This thing is efficient! I lit the fire at 6:30 pm with three handfuls of lump and at 1:00am the interior temperature of the Bubba Keg still held at 250 degrees! Amazing.
• Living on a corner property on a well traveled street, the Bubba Keg attracted a lot of attention. I think I made a couple of sales over the weekend. Hmm, maybe I should become a distributor.

So, after playing with this puppy for a couple of days, I have to say I'm loving it! As a grill the Bubba Keg has been amazing. I've never cooked on any thing anywhere near as efficient. But now comes the fun part, mastering fire control on the Keg so that I'll be able to get into some low and slow barbeque. Stay tuned.

BTW - Just so everyone is clear, the people at Bubba Keg provided me and a bunch of other food bloggers with a free Bubba Keg for review, good or bad. I am not in any way affliated with the folks who manufacture, market or distribute the Bubba Keg.