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When you asked me a few years ago to define barbecue I would have probably answered 'To grill meat and vegetables whilst keep turning them and pray it's not scorched by the time the meat is done'. This year I came across indirect grilling while browsing on the internet and it was something I just had to try!

I could have taken the easy solution and just buy a Weber kettle style barbecue, but sometimes the word easy is missing in my dictionary. I've decided to built myself an Ugly Drum Smoker (UDS). As the name implies it's a barbecue built out of an oil drum meant for indirect grilling and smoking.




Now that I've built this thing I'm using it about 2 times a month, since building it I've made whole chickens, pork tenderloin, whole rib-eye, spareribs and more spareribs. The difference with a traditional style barbecue is the lack of charred meat, the addition of that 'smoke' flavor and the additional time it takes to prepare a dish.
For example, spareribs go in there for about 4 hours and then they look like this:



Or the more elegant beef roast, baked potato and a homemade mushroom sauce:




How often do you all use the barbecue (both traditional and indirect)? And what kind of food do you prepare? Did you ever tried indirect grilling?

I've only grilled direct once this year, indirect about 10 times since May. Indirect grilling is highly recommended! The smoke flavor that is added to the meat, vegetables and even complete stews or chili con carne is just lovely. The smoke flavor comes from the added wood, I've only used hickory so far but friday I'll try apple.

The grill I made is more specialized and only usable for indirect grilling, indirect grilling can also be done on a (weber) kettle style barbecue by placing the coals on one side and a dripping pan on the other side. The product is then placed above the dripping pan which can be filled with water, wine, beer, fruit juice for additional flavour.