For Easter I wanted to smoke a brisket on my Weber kettle grill. To do this I needed a basket to hold the coals away from said meat. Weber makes a charcoal basket just for this purpose and the cost is about $15, but look at how crappy they're made (shown left). So I embarked on yet another DIY project in order to improve a mass produced peice of junk. I started looking at Lowes at the junk from Weber, they weren't big enough and very shallow. So I looked to the shelf just below and found the replacement grates that go in the bottom of the grill to support the charcoal for normal grilling. I picked up one of these for $10 and it's made from very heavy steel. I then strolled across the store to the hardware section where they keep the steel for small projects. Here I found a peice of expanded sheet metal 12"x24"...Perfect $10. At this point I'm leaving Lowes after only spending 19 bucks...don't worry your math is correct, I used my 10% military discount. Back at the house I measured the grill a couple of times and decided on the dimenisons I was looking for. My idea was to use the replacement grate as the bottom of the basket and the expanded sheet as the walls. After measuring I knew that I wanted it to be a little smaller than half the size of the grill bottom and wanted the sides right up to the bottom of the cooking grill. I used a pair of metal shears and cut the expanded sheet in half long ways, two 6"x24" strips now. I clamped one of the strips on the outside curved edge of the replacement grate with small vise-grips and started tack welding it in place. I started welding on one side and worked my way around the curve moving the clamp as I went. This one strip worked out to be the perfect length to span a little less than half the way around. Then I marked the points on the replacement grate where I wanted to cut and made the cuts with an angle grinder w/ cut-off wheel. Now all I needed to do was weld on the other strip to complete the flat wall. At this point I have a complete basket with 6" tall walls, this is too tall. So I put it in the grill and measure up to the bottom of the cooking grate, then marked the side of the basket. I again used the metal shears and trimmed down the sides to the new height. Now all I needed was to wait for Easter the next day.
I started early Easter morning and filled the basket about 2/3 with charcoal out of the bag and the smoking wood which I'd been soaking in water since the day before. I used my charcoal chimney and started enough coals to fill the basket to the top. When they were white hot I poured them right on top of the wood and fresh charcoal mix, added the cooking grate and brisket. I used a themometer stuck through the air port in the lid to monitor the temp. I was looking for a temp around 225-250 degrees for 7-8 hours. Now I was very surprised with the performance of my handy work, it maintained 250 degrees to entire day with little effort. I added new smoking wood to the basket throughout the day and about a dozen fresh started coals from the chimney after about five hours. With saying that I probably didn't even need to add more coals because they cooked down very little over the 7 hour period and was still maintaining the heat well into the evening after the meat was done.BTW, the brisket was delicous.
