SnS Grills Slow ’N Sear Charcoal Basket Insert for 18” Weber Kettles – Heavy Duty Stainless Steel Charcoal Basket – Two Zone Cooking System, Indirect Smoking & High Heat Searing – BBQ Grill Accessory

This is an excellent product. Can you do the same using the snake method around the base of the kettle? Yes, but it won't be as easy to set up and you won't have a water reservoir for keeping the chamber somewhat humid during the cook. I've smoked several briskets, pork bellies, and racks of ribs and this works perfectly every time. Each cook requires maybe two fill-ups of charcoal and wood chunks to get the job done, depending on the size/weight involved. Overall, it's a great add-on to a kettle that allows you to smoke meats with no headache/babysitting.

The Slow N Sear is amazing! I have the Slow N Sear Plus for a 22.5 Weber Kettle. I just completed my first BBQ using the Slow N Sear. I used kingsford blue bag and a few pieces of hickory and apple. I have never smoked a pork shoulder in my life on a BBQ Smoker or anything for that matter. However, I have been cooking on my Weber with indirect heat for things like beer can chicken, chicken thighs, chicken drums, chicken wings, brats, steaks, burgers and dogs. I followed Slow N Sears simple directions, that came in the box, on how to light the grill for a 225 cook. Next, I put the meat, a 7.78lb pork shoulder, on at 10:51pm. I set my digital thermometer to wake me up if the grill got anywhere above 290F or below 200F. It was a little windy and the air temp was 62F. I got the temp dialed in between 225F-230F and fell asleep around midnight. My low air temp alarm did not go off until 6:00am that morning. I brushed the ash out of the way, moved the remaining coals to one side, refilled the Slownsear back up with coals. I was just reversing the process. Cooked for 3.5 more hours before I had to open the lid again. My temps were dropping a little and I think it was because I needed to get some more of the ash out of the way and through the bottom of the grate. I think it was clogging the airflow. As soon as I made sure the the ash was cleared I closed the lid and I got it ack to temp around 245-250. I only had to open the lid twice during the entire 13.5 hour cook. I Cooked it until 12:23pm. I took the pork shoulder off the grill when it had an internal temperature of 203F. I never wrapped the Pork Shoulder for the entire cook so I could get a great bark. I also only filled the water pan once right at the beginning. The water ran out and I didn't need it after it emptied from the initial fill. I let the pork shoulder rest for 1.5 hours with a tinfoil tent over top. The bone pulled right out and I could shred it with my hands. The family loved it. My neighbors could smell it from blocks away. I had some friends stop by to try it after I sent them some pictures and they all loved it. It turned out amazing! It was so easy. Two friends stopped by, tried the pork and immediately went home and ordered the SlowNSear for their own Weber Kettles. The bark was delicious, I had a great smoke ring and the meat was moist. What more could I ask for? A side note, I called Adrenaline BBQ during the cook, left a message and a real human called me back to answer my question. They were so polite, very helpful and happy to hear my cook was going well. They seem like a great company located in NC. I paid full price for my Slow n Sear and I do not work for them in anyway. I am just a man trying to elevate my skills on my Weber Kettle. The Slow N Sear is worth every penny. I am so happy with the purchase.

Bought to use on my jumbo joe 18" portable grill, makes dual zone cooking very easy, good charcoal capacity, well constructed, good metal thickness... perfect fit height and lenght for my grill... great addition to my grill... 100% recommended

I had been grilling on a gas grill for the past few years, and it was getting boring. Somehow a Weber 22" kettle that I had given away years ago, ended up making its way back to me and restarted my passion back on on charcoal, wood grilling. And I had been looking around online for smoking and charcoal grilling recipes using the Weber kettle, and this "Slow 'N Sear" accessory came up a lot. I am so glad that I took the leap of faith and acquired it. After using it for a few months now, I have to say that this gadget is the single best upgrade/accessory one can get if you have a Weber 22" kettle. This "Slow 'N Sear" charcoal insert literally convert my kettle into a "smoker". I had used "the snake" method before, but I never had too good a result, and it took quite a bit of work to set that up correctly. But using this "Slow 'N Sear", my success rate is 100% start from my very first try; just put a starter at one corner, and fill up the rest of the container with charcoal, and just start the fire! With the "Slow 'N Sear", and just by controlling the air vents (air flow) from the bottom and the top, I am able to maintain stable cooking/smoking temperatures (which is a crucial thing for smoking success). One full fill of charcoals (started as mentioned above), can easily burn/smoke for 8 to 12 hours (depending on temperature). The "Slow 'N Sear" effectively split your kettle into 2 cooking zones: direct heat (searing) and indirect heat (convection); while concentrating your charcoals so that they burn hot, consistent and clean. Plus there is an integrated "water container" where you can add moisture to your cook (this helps those long smoke sessions. The end cook results are nothing short of epic (and versatile too); I can smoke for hours (16-hours texas style brisket @ 225F), or I can do reverse sear steaks (first indirect heat until the internal temperature is close to your doneness target, and then put them onto your sear zone for a quick high heat finish), or I can use high indirect heat to convection cook the perfect crispy chicken wings (with smoke). The possibility is endless! With this, there is really no need for a smoker (like a Traeger) or the other popular kettle accessory (the vortex). Right now, I am basically permanently set up my kettle to use the "Slow 'N Sear" (that is how much I love this gadget) and I tin-foiled the "indirect heat" area to funnel all the air to the bottom of the charcoal to support the burn. Get this, you won't regret it, and happy grilling/smoking! Smoked & charcoal grilled is hard to beat! My unit do become a little "wave-y" (near the water compartment) after a few high heat cooks, without having water in the water compartment, but it doesn't seems to affect the performance a bit, so I am not even going to ding them for any stars, the unit still works perfectly. Thank you for reading this review, I hoped that this review & the pictures are helpful to you in support of your purchase decision.

LOVE this thing! I honestly wanted one for years but never bought one until recently when it was time to replace our rusted old Weber kettle with a new one. I used the snake method with coals for years but this makes it a lot easier since you don’t need to periodically move what you’re cooking to get it away from the hot zone. So far I’ve done prime rib, pastrami, various types of chicken, and yellowfin tuna. Everything came out great and made it much easier to maintain a constant temp. Holds more than enough fuel and hasn’t warped at all.

I bought the SnS basket to try and up my kettle game. I like it well enough. For cooking offset items like grilled chicken or a rack of ribs, this works great. For smoking a Boston Butt, it's okay. They tout it to last for an 8 hour cook. I've been using this for the past month quite extensively and I'd say it's good for about 6 hours solid. If I want to get to 8 hours of cooking then I'm definitely adding more fuel. All that being said, I'd still recommend it. All the food ice made using it has turned out excellent. My wife has informed me that I need to add the BBQ chicken into our bi-weekly rotation, and I have to agree with her suggestion. If you get this I would also suggest getting the SnS grill grate. Using it makes it much easier to add fuel to the slow-n-sear basket.

I bought the Slow 'N Sear Plus several weeks ago from Amazon.com. I cannot yet comment on longevity, but the build quality of the product looks very good. It is made from heavy gauge stainless steal, fits my kettle grill perfectly and has not warped over several cooks (including hot sears). I have cooked on it five times now, and have smoked ribs and chicken, and slow roasted steak (with a very hot sear to finish). The results of using the Slow 'N Sear Plus have been excellent. I followed the instructions provided (even though I was initially concerned about having a lot of unlit briquettes), and it has worked very well. I measure the temperature of my cooks using a ThermaQ k-type thermocouple, which is a reasonably high precision device (+/- 1F), and I am easily able to maintain temperature between 220F and 235F over several hours (I have only cooked up to 5 hours thus far, but do not doubt the 8 hour claims at this point given the amount of leftover coals). Smoke levels are easily controlled by the addition of appropriate amounts of wood chunks (I have used 8 oz for ribs, 2 oz for chicken and 1 oz for steak). The food itself has come out great every time, and I look forward to my future cooks. Before I bought the Slow 'N Sear Plus, I had considered buying a dedicated smoker. However, this proves to be a much, much cheaper alternative for a high quality product, and I believe that the results will be as good. The only reason I may still get a dedicated smoker in the future is that the cooking capacity of a kettle grill is insufficient for large groups of people. One area where I think this could be improved slightly, is that I think the holes in the bottom could be, perhaps, 1/8th or 1/12th of an inch wider, to give a slightly better rate of ash falling through. This is obviously a balancing act between keeping the lit coals in place and not obstructing airflow with ash, and without experimentation it would be difficult to know what is optimal. However, I have not seen any ill effect of the current design in terms of temperature stability. TL;DR: If you want to do indirect cooking on a kettle grill, buy this product. It's great.

I was gifted this for my birthday and I've loved using it from day one. My family loves all things BBQ, and when I mentioned I wanted BBQ toys this was one that I was excited to try. After unboxing I went to their site and read/watched all about the SNS to better acquaint myself with how to use it. Build quality - Very well made, 16 gauge steel that has held up to several 8+hour smokes and a few high heat sear sessions for my Father's Day Rib Eyes. Ease of use - Watch the videos on ABC BBQ's site and they will show you exactly how to use it and what to pay attention to. Most importantly is just doing it yourself, trying it and seeing how quickly you can set up a full smoke session for some ribs. (Pics attached) Clean up - Very easy to clean as the ash just falls through the bottom slots and into your kettle's ash catcher. Tips - I didn't need the griddle part as I have a Blackstone griddle. While it looks nice you can replicate what it does by simply wrapping the lower grate in foil, and inserting a foil wrapped aluminum pan (fits perfectly next to the SNS) and achieve the same results. This helps direct the incoming cool air directly to the bottom of the SNS and away from your food atop the grate. When doing pork belly, this is essential due to how much fat renders out of the cubes. In conclusion, this is an accessory - not a magic wand. You get what you give, and in this case I feel from my personal experience that it's easy to get great BBQ from it the first time and every time. I've watched the videos where people call it out as a joke, even going as far as throwing it away in the trash because they managed to get an extra hour out of the snake method? I mean everyone wants to be famous, and if that's their only way then let them have their 5 minutes of fame. #whysosalty Is the SNS better than Weber Char-Baskets / snake method + water pan? You can get great results no matter what you use, and I choose the SNS!