Indirect cooking
You’re probably already doing it on a regular basis: indirect cooking. It’s a method where you place a heat shield inside your Big Green Egg. This transforms the kamado into a convection oven – but one that adds delicious flavour to your ingredients and dishes. Below, we will explain how you can get the most out of this method.
What is indirect cooking?
Indirect cooking is often regarded as one of the barbecue cooking techniques, but it’s actually a method you can use with various cooking techniques – just like the direct method. With the indirect method, you place a heat shield in your kamado, which blocks the direct radiant heat from the charcoal reaching the food. The ingredient or dish cooks thanks to the airflow in the Big Green Egg and the heat reflected by the ceramic. This makes it very easy to cook dishes for longer periods at low or high temperatures and to prepare any oven dish in your kamado.
Indirect cooking: what do you need?
As an extra accessory, you’ll need the heat shield mentioned earlier to cook indirectly in your kamado. In addition, the basics are essential, of course. Here’s a brief list of what you’ll need:
- Kamado
- Charcoal
- Firelighters, twisters or a charcoal starter
- Heat shield
- Stainless steel grid (in most cases)
Placing the heat shield in your kamado
The Big Green Egg’s ceramic heat shield ‘protects’ your dish from the direct heat of the glowing charcoal, whilst ensuring that the heat can circulate freely through the kamado, so your ingredient or dish cooks evenly. Do you want to cook an ingredient or prepare a dish using a heat shield? Then follow the basic steps below:
Step 1: Light the charcoal in your Big Green Egg. Wait until the charcoal is glowing.
Step 2: Place the heat shield on top, with the stainless steel grid above it. If necessary, place a drip tray on the heat shield to catch any fat and juices that may be released. This will keep your heat shield clean. Close the lid of the EGG.
Step 3: Heat the Big Green Egg to the required temperature. This gives the ceramic time to heat up. If you’re switching from a direct to an indirect set-up and the ceramic of your Big Green Egg is heated up, you’ll notice that the temperature of your kamado will drop by about 50°C after placing the heat shield on top. This is because you’re placing a cold object inside the Big Green Egg.
Step 4: Has the kamado reached the right temperature? IIf so, you can start cooking. Try to open the lid of the Big Green Egg as little as possible while cooking to keep the temperature stable. If you have to open the lid, do this carefully in two motions, in order to prevent a backdraft.
Step 5: Check whether the dish is cooked properly. You can do this either by adhering to a specific cooking time – for example, as indicated in a recipe or based on your own experience – or by letting your senses guide you. Alternatively, you can measure the core temperature using a core thermometer.
Step 6: Once your ingredient or dish is ready, serve it up and enjoy!
The cooking techniques
We’ve now explained the basics of indirect cooking, but as mentioned, indirect cooking is a method you can combine with various cooking techniques. With some cooking techniques, direct cooking is essential, while with others, you can cook either indirectly or directly. Would you like to know more about these cooking techniques for the kamado? Check them out below:
Two zones in your kamado
Would you like to combine indirect and direct cooking? It’s very easy to create two zones in your kamado: a direct zone and an indirect zone. Simply place a half heat deflector instead of a full heat deflector. This is ideal when you want to combine different cooking techniques.
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