Using a remote digital thermometer lets you keep track of your meat's internal temperature without lifting the Egg's lid and losing precious smoke.
I've got the medium-size Egg ($399 at Hearthsidedistributors.com), which has a 15-inch-wide grill that's big enough to handle a small turkey or a half dozen small fillets at once. The key to the Egg's operation is a finely tuned air-supply system that lets you tweak temperatures very precisely. I've cooked chickens for a couple of hours at as little as 250°F—enclosed in the ceramic cocoon, the meat cooks evenly from all sides and stays remarkably moist. And I must say, the Egg delivers the smoky drumbeat I was after, both immediately and after the fact: broth made from a chicken cooked in the Egg is remarkable for its smokiness.
While whole chickens cook best at slow speed, red meat benefits from a different approach. For example, I recently put a London broil on the grill directly over a bed of charcoal that was really crankinga, 700°F. (With its potential to be tough and dry or tender and tasty, I've long considered London broil the blind date of outdoor cookery.) I seared both sides, closed the lid, and dialed back the heat to 350° for about 12 minutes. Amazing! Moist, tender, and incredibly smoky, it was the perfect London broil. To see if I could duplicate this magic act, I tried another one a few days later. Well, moist and smoky are still two out of three...
