Review: Cooking with the Woo2 Raised Grid

My only complaint with the Big Green Egg ceramic cooker is that grilling directly over the lump can be a little challenging. The standard direct setup puts the cooking grid right on top of the hot coals. The heat can get plenty intense and the angle makes it hard to get at the food to move it off of the hot spots. After losing a prime ribeye to immolation after a sear-gone-wild, I decided to investigate some options for remedying this shortcoming.

Woo2

The Woo2 (now Woo3) from The Ceramic Grill Store is a stainless extender that solves these problems by raising the cooking grid. The grid is moved up about 4 inches so it’s almost level with the bottom edge of the cooker, creating 8 inches of clearance above the firebox. This makes handling food a lot easier and gives you much better temperature control.

Woo2

It can also be set up with a second grid at the fire ring so that you can sear right on top of the fire and then move the meat up to finish the cook. You can still cook pretty hot and fast, but the odds of accidentally incinerating some tasty tidbit go way down. The Woo2 even comes with crossbars so you can slip a drip pan in to quickly convert over to an indirect cook if need be.

Woo2

I tried the Woo2 out on some boneless, skinless chicken breasts at 350°F. I like the hot, grilled taste that you get over direct heat, but have always had a problem with the the edges of the breasts burning before the center was cooked through. This time the extra airspace that the extender creates really helped to even out the cooking temperatures. It took 45 minutes for the breasts to hit 170°F internal, and they were nice and brown without being overdone around the edges. Very nice.

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