Large Gasket Replacement - Winterizing the Big Green Egg
The gasket on my BGE has been shot for most of the life of my egg...hasn't seemed to make any difference. However, I took the day off and while thinking about meal planning for the weekend cooks, I was cleaning up around the egg and said, "heck, why not?" A couple/three hours later and one trip to the dealer and the job was done. Now I'm a captive of some low temperature cooks for a couple weekends in an attempt to not burn off this one right out of the box. No directions, just sharing my experience...would I do it again? Not if I can avoid it. Maybe it will help hold in the heat better during my snow cooking sessions...Keep On Eggin'
Definitely a pain in the a$$ getting the old one off, but worth the time IMO. Is that the Nomex replacement gasket or the normal one?
ReplyDeletePkg said high heat it was not the normal replacement gasket
ReplyDeleteI bought one of those Nomex gaskets like yours at Eggtoberfest and it is still in it's package (a month as of tomorrow). I guess I have to get around to installing it soon. Ugh.
ReplyDeleteFrankly, it was a MESS, if I had to do it over I wouldn't until the thing started burning lump like gasoline fast. Major Pain.
ReplyDeleteFor the first couple of years I had my egg the spring assist band mechanism was out of whack but I didn't know it. I was going through gaskets like crazy and almost gave up on trying to slow cook anything. One day I spent a good part of the afternoon trying to figure out what was going on and finally realized that the last thing I could try was replacing the bands. It worked, since then I've gone through gaskets but at a normal rate. If all you are doing is high temperature cooking the gaskets really don't matter much. But if you really want to cook low and slow they are a must. With a good gasket and good charcoal I get do an 18 hour pork shoulder and not have to worry about running out of coal.
ReplyDeleteIt still takes me a couple of hours to take everything apart, clean the old gasket off, replace and put back together. But while I'm doing it a take the whole inside of the egg apart and give it a good cleaning. The most important part I've found when putting everything back together is to keep the bands loose until the top and bottom are setting flush. Even if the bands do not look dead center it doesn't matter. If your top and bottom have any gaps you will burn up the gasket. The other thing that burns up gaskets is leaving your lid open for extended periods at high heat. I do find the high temp gaskets to last longer and are not much more more to put on.
There's a company out there called High-Que that I saw on the eggheadforum. They offer a Nomex gasket that's a lot easier to install (has adhesive tape backing). Having just installed one myself, I have to agree. Brilliant idea!
ReplyDelete