I'm about to commit BBQ heresy in this thread. STRAP IN.
I generally only ever use either the instant light bags of charcoal briquettes from the supermarket (or the bags of briquettes that are next to them, usually Zip brand) and I constantly find that they don't seem to actually "ash over" evenly and the cooking time certainly doesn't last as long as I think it probably should be (the instant light bag I used last weekend, for example, says "up to 2 hours" but I got barely 30 minutes out of it)
Much of this is almost certainly down to my technique, but presumably a lot of it will also just be the shitty fuel?
Here's another quick Q for the BBQ experts here. I get the idea of cooking direct vs. indirect, but I can never seem to get indirect to actually do anything. This is the BBQ I have:
I stack my briquettes on one side and spread them out a little bit, so I've got direct cooking on the one side and indirect on the other side - but it never seems to get anywhere near warm enough on the indirect side to do anything useful, as evidenced by me putting food there to cook and it just not cooking.
On the assumption I'm just being a colossal bellend, what should I be doing instead?