The Grilling Web

Briquette Conversion For The Virco Classic

I have been wanting to post the information on this site regarding the briquette conversion. I haven't had the chance to put the kit together yet to sell it, but have had many requests on this issue, so I will lay out the basics here for all to use if they like.

Basically it is nothing more than removing the flame tamer plates, installing some ss all threads across those existing slots that held in the flame tamers with some ss flat washers, an ss nut, ss lock washer and finally an ss nut again to lock the position. You repeat this on both ends of all six rods. Be careful not to over tighten the nuts against the front and back of the slots, this will tend to "squeeze" the grill together and make it tough to get the grates in and out. Then I had some expanded metal cut to size (about 14" X 28") to put on top of the rods to support the briquettes. Once that was done, I used about 100 or so of the standard square ceramic briquettes made by Charbroil and placed them directly on top of the expanded metal grate. For my Virco, it took almost two boxes.

The nice thing about this conversion is that I believe the grill cooks more evenly and you get about 1/2" - 3/4" more clearance below the cooking grid, giving just enough room to throw nicely soaked large chunks of wood on top of the briquettes. I also think that the food tastes much better than being cooked over steel plates. I know the industry has all but abandoned the briquettes and lava rocks in favor of ceramic or steel flame tamers. The reason I believe, is for no reason except for flame control (consumer appeal), not flavor. I believe you lose a lot in terms of flavor, with the steel plates. When you cook with the plates, the only smoke that is emitted back into the food is from the drippings that occur from the food your cooking right then. So, if you are cooking lean meat or other items with a low fat content, there is very little, if any smoke. This is not the case with other mediums that are used such as lava rocks or ceramic briquettes because these items tend to absorb drippings from every thing that is cooked and will emit this wonderful flavor into every thing that is cooked after it. With the steel plates, I also found that even with burning everything off, you still tend to get an occasional flare up because of the low angle "V" shape that these plates have, grease and drippings tend to collect in the lower part of this area and then flame up, so I haven't found the SS tamer plates to be "flare proof" anyway.

I mention this because that is one trade off you do get with the ceramic briquettes is an occasional flare up, simply because it is more like cooking over a charcoal fire in terms of the grease potentially hitting the open flame, but I believe this trade off is WELL worth it as the increased flavor is much more like a traditional grilling type flavor, especially with being able to toss the wood in there for extra flavor. I just keep a spray bottle full of water under the grill for those occasional issues, which only seem to occur when I am cooking something really fatty and turn it over, or after I have cooked something on low heat for a while like chicken wings, and then use a high setting on my next grill session.

I think that the entire plate issue is really consumer and market driven anyways as all the grill makers want to try and compete with the "no flare-up" design of other grill makers like Weber, more as a matter of "convenience of cooking" rather than actual flavor. I think the entire design of the flame tamer is to simply make grilling more appealing to those who haven't done a lot of grilling traditionally or don't want to have to monitor their grill as much as the "grills of yesterday", but there are still plenty of grill makers that use lava rocks and briquettes for a heat medium such as Sunshine, Aussie and others. When you have cooked over both and tasted the difference, I think the choice is clear, but that is just my opinion.

This is something that anyone can do, but I did spend quite a bit of time searching for all of the correct pieces and stuff locally. To help anyone else that does not care to spend all of this time hunting the parts down, I will be offering this complete kit (Plug and Play) for sale on my web site, just to make it easier for anyone who doesn't have the time to track down all of the components, cut the expanded metal to size, etc.... I hope this helps, good luck.

Regards,

Bsbbq

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