Gravy's Cooking Thread

Got a lamb roast from Costco at a good price point. $35 for like 5lbs of lamb roast. Boneless leg cut.

Normally I never get lamb because my wife and kids don't really like lamb for whatever dumb reason. But I did and put it together the other day.

It occurred to me that I have never smoked lamb roast before just followed this using some brisket rub I had laying around.


Turned out excellent and only took 3 hours to cook. Kids loved it and it took in a lot of smokiness despite the short time. Highly recommend.

Dr.Retarded said:

Oil frying is still superior, but I've been getting good results for some things with the little Cuisinart I got for free. I've got a propane fish fryer for serious stuff and if I'm cooking for a bunch of people, but if it's just the wife and I during the week, a shallow fry on the stove or the air fryer does the job.

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Oil frying tends to be a pain in the ass is my biggest say against it. Air fryer is really damn easy to set up and use and has better results than baking on a lot of things. On top of that, there's plenty of times a second oven comes rather in handy. I use my air fryer almost every day, will never go back.

Dr.Retarded said:

Yeah that's pretty much my thought on it. I find it really handy for reheating things that have some sort of crisp exterior already. I like it for resting some vegetables while I'm cooking whatever else are doing something like a baked potato.

The other benefit is I'm not turning the big oven on and heating up the house during the middle of summer.

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Air fryer is god tier for reheating pizza. That alone justifies the price.

Want to start doing some outdoor grilling now that I'm in a place with more room. Had a BBQ steak recently and it was amazing, better than the steaks I cook at home. I thought I was doing a good job with those, but now they're not good enough. The friend that cooked said BBQ is going to show me how he did it one of these weeks. In the meantime I'm trying to set something up, and did some practicing with a grill this week.

Any suggestions on successful grilling/BBQing? I'm starting from scratch. Outside of working with a grill this week (to mixed results), I haven't done any BBQing since about 2011 and it wasn't much back then.

Not messing with gas, it's charcoal all the way for me, I know that much.

Lighter fluid or get the special charcoal that doesn't require it? Should I bother with wood chips? All I have so far is some standard charcoal briquets. I clear out the grate, put the charcoal in a pyramid, doused them in fluid, and got them going with a long match.

Basically, I'll take any advice for someone who doesn't know what the hell they're doing yet; my main goal starting out here is to not set myself on fire like Kane at King of the Ring 98. I know not to use lighter fluid on an already-raging fire, or get any on food. Secondary goal is to actually fix something that's significantly better than what I can fix in a pan.

Obviously trying to do this as cheaply as possible. Would I be fine with a basic $40 grill like this? Do I need a chimney? Not going to be having any big parties any time soon so it just needs to be big enough for 1-2 people's dinner.


This is a bit more, but I like that it has side-tables, which is incredibly convenient and eliminates the need to have a table next to it for staging things. I got very used to having side-tables while grilling this week:


This one is just classy as hell:


They're probably all good. The first one is the cheapest/simplest so I'll probably go with that, but again...how important is the chimney?

What's the secret to having the smokiest flavor?

I spent the last few years gitting gud at cooking steaks in a pan, so I think I can git gud at this too.

I'll listen to any advice, even though I realize this post will get me... roasted.