Cooking with the Oil Drum BBQ

Pursuant to the last post, we used our oil drum BBQ for the first time this past weekend with great success! The recipes we used are hyperlinked throughout the page.

First, we lit a big hot fire to burn off the enamel. This worked well though the environment did not thank us. An alternative option, and what we will absolutely do next time should we build more of these, is to take the drum to a sandblasting facility once the door is cut off. This will also allow all the interior hardware to be welded, rather an riveted, on. It might also allow the drum to be painted in heat refractory paint (though I'm not sure there is a paint in existence that can tolerate the heat that ours generated!)

The oil drum after a raging fire.

We used the drum as a smoker for this cook. To do this, we removed the grill on the vented side and built a small hardwood fire there. We cooked side ribs prepped first with a dry brine and then rubbed with a homemade Memphis Dust. We placed them on the other side of the Q from the flame, keeping the temperature on that side a cool smoky 250-275F. 

We drilled a hole in the door on the cooking side just above the meat and used a dial thermometer to keep track of the temperature. A digital one is better according to the professional meat grillers out there. 

There was a learning curve involved in getting the drum to keep an even temperature but we eventually got the hang of it. There is a fair amount of tending required though when cooking for such extended periods.

We slow smoked the meat for 3.5 hours at this temperature until the racks had a gentle flex to them  when picked up with tongs. Then we glazed them in a homemade Kansas style BBQ sauce and moved the grill directly over the flames. This allowed the glaze to caramelize over the course of a couple minutes, flipping the meat mid way through.

We also slow roasted potatoes coated in olive oil, salt, and pepper on the upper grill. The temperature here on the far side of the grill was in the 350-400F range. The temp above the flames was over 600F!

For desert we grilled fresh peaches from our tree glazed in an amaretto butter and served over vanilla ice cream.

DELICIOUS!

Over all we are incredibly pleased with how our BBQ performed and we can't wait to try other styles of grilling on it over the following months. 

The square tube handle stayed pleasantly cool allowing us to touch it throughout all phases of the cook without oven mitts. 

The vents worked well in allowing us to keep an even temperature throughout the cook. 

The smoke was spectacular and every time we opened the door we had to wait a moment for it to clear to be able to see where the meat was!

The Oil Drum BBQ

We were recently inspired by a home made oil drum BBQ owned and operated by our very close and wildly talented friends. Seeing as how we do so much of our summer cooking outdoors in our various earthen ovens, we decided that we absolutely needed to add one of these beasts to our yard kitchen arsenal.

Below is how we built ours. Hopefully you go on to build one of your own.

First and foremost. Be absolutely sure you know what was originally stored in the oil drum you rustle up for this project. We STRONGLY recommend AGAINST using any drum that contained volatile (read: explosive) materials such as gasoline. We chose a food grade drum that stored vegetable oil in its previous life. While not explosive, we don't recommend this option either as no amount of hot water and soap was able to degrease the oil out of it. Messy messy messy!

We cut the door to a size that seemed good using a plasma cutter. An angle grinder would work just fine too.

Jen plasma cutting the door.

Then we reattached it by welding it back on with hinges.

We only used two hinges to attach the door, one on each side.

We marked out the holes where we would put our cold air intake and the chimney and cut those out with the plasma cutter too. In ours we decided to put both the intake and the chimney on the same side of the drum. This allows us to keeps a fire on one side and use the other side as a cool smoke chamber. As we understand it, putting the chimney across from the intake makes for a hotter cooking box as all the smoke and heat crosses the drum from the hottest part of the fire to the chimney. We'll have to wait and see if this works out.

We used 1.5" curved steel pipe for the intake and chimney and welded them on to the drum.

We fashioned cute little adjustable vent flaps using 1/4" threaded rod, discs of scrap sheet metal, and a couple of wing nuts. They can be swiveled between wide open and sealed shut to control air flow. Both the intake and chimney were fitted with one of these.

Both the intake and chimney were fitted with these vent flaps.

The grills are supported by 1" angle iron riveted on to the drum. These could just as easily have been welded in to place but we couldn't be bothered with stripping the remarkably strong inner enamel off and couldn't get welds to hold with it in place. Hopefully the raging hot flames take care of that enamel  for us.

The angle iron is set just proud of the lower edge of the door opening. This allows it to act a stop, preventing inversion of the door.

The grill is stainless expanded sheet metal. Stainless seemed worth the expense since we will be eating food off of this metal. We had to install it as two separate sheets that sit side by side to get it through the opening.

Hard to tell but this is two pieces of sheet set side by side.

We put an upper grill in place too.

                            

And made a handle out of scrap pieces of metal that we welded on to the door. We used a long length of square tube welded on via two stalks of round bar. 

                            

We haven't yet fired it but hope to this weekend. Our plan is to first burn a hot fire to blast off the inner enamel before we put food in there to cook. Hopefully with the adjustable air flow we will be able to run a full blast flame or choke it down to a slow smoker and everything in between.

We will update the blog with the outcome of how it works. 

Always feel free to post any comments or ask any questions about any of the posts on this blog. 

Thanks for reading!