re: OT - Big Green Egg

quote:

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Just don't be a knucklehead and use lighter fluid in it, and pray the guy who owned it before you didn't either.

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I knew this but didn’t take into consideration the way the BGE is constructed.

My Step Dad gave me his large about 10 years ago. My mom bought it for a Christmas present in 1991 and they divorced a couple of years later. Had been cooked on maybe 10 times and stuck in the corner of the garage since.

I abandoned my charcoal grill and used it for everything over the next 7-8 months. One cold , damp night I was out of lump charcoal so I had the bright idea of using regular charcoal and fluid in my regular grill and shoveling it into the BGE once the fluid got hot. Got it up to 700 really quick and cooked some of the best steaks ever. The next morning I had spider Webb cracks everywhere.

I started reading and the consensus was that with the ceramic being porous, it would absorb water. Getting it to 700 so quickly caused the water to steam and cracked it. I rocked on another few years before they turned into breaks and I was out of commission.

We are going to get an XL soon for family events but it isn’t practical for the two of us as our regular grill. I looked into getting some refractory cement and repairing the old one still tucked away in the garage.

TL/DR; don’t get it too hot , too quickly when it’s cold and wet out.