Webber One Touch or Smokey Mountain?

[lowki1]

Hi Everyone,
First post and really new to real BBQ. Just wanted to find out peoples thoughts on which I should purchase first. Is it likely I will learn more starting with the one touch or is there more value in getting the mountain. Much thanks for any feed back.

[JEC]

Hello welcome to the forum. It depends on what you want to cook, if it's a mixture of traditional british BBQ aka grilling (sausages, burgers, steak and chicken) with occasional ribs thrown in then go for the One Touch, if you only want to cook with smoke at low temps then get the WSM, most people will have just a kettle/grill or both I'm not aware of any with just the WSM. Personally I'd get the One Touch in 57cm with the ash catcher, buy a couple of firebricks from a good hardware store or eBay and use that to begin with, once you've mastered direct and indirect cooking there isn't any BBQ food that can't be cooked on a kettle it may just take a bit more attention. Once you know if it's your thing and you've run out of space or want easy hassle free long cooks then buy the WSM.

[luis]

hey there.
I have a proq excel 20 (similar to WSM) and a 57cm one touch premium.
In my opinion they are quite different beasts.
If you want to cook low and slow then its the wsm or excel 20 all the way.
For more traditional grilling bbq then I use the one touch.
You can cook low and slow in the one touch but its a little more tricky and doesn't have the capacity of the smoker.
You can however use the excel 20 just like the one touch by removing the stacks, it then becomes a more traditional bbq for grilling on so you get the best of both worlds.
Both are very easy to use and whatever you decide get yourself a weber starter chimney to get your coals going, possibly the best bbq tool ever invented and cheap too!
Ultimately decide whats good for you and what you want to cook, i would deffo recommend the excel 20 though if you want the best of both worlds and its good value too.

[Swindon_Ed]

As others have said before It does depend on what you're wanting to cook but if this is going to be your first time trying low and slow, i'd recomend getting a One Touch as you can get them really cheap off ebay and then if you're still loving it after 6 months upgrade to a WSM or ProQ otherwise you it could end up in the old toy pile that all of us have of things we liked at the time but soon got bored of.