Standard BGE setup

For my 29th birthday my beautiful wife Sandy let me buy my first BGE. I got it at one of the Eggfests and it was one of the best purchases I've ever made. I'm still working on outfitting it with all the fun toys but so far this is what I have; 

1 - Large Big Green Egg

1 - BGE Plate setter

1 - BGE Large Pizza stone

Mostly I used the BGE as a smoker, so my standard setup is for smoking. 

First things first, I fill my Egg full of charcoal. The picture shows it full of wood chunks, but I learned I don't like that as much. The food tasted great but the temp was harder to control, I'm sure once I got used to the burn it wouldn't be so bad. I'll stick to charcoal and wood chips for the time being.

If you look closely at the fire you will see a white block, thats a Weber Lighter Cube. So far these are my first choice when starting the grill. They are quick, easy, and cheap. I've got an electric starter and a charcoal chimney, both are just annoying. Finding somewhere safe for the electric starter on my limited space until it cools down, and the chimney...well I have issues using them. 

Since I'm smoking, and the idea is to not have your food burn over an open flame I add my plate setter after the fire gets going. Once the plate setter is on the grate can go back on if you are using it, in the picture I was cooking a bone-in boston butt so I used my rack instead of the grate. 

The plate setting changes the airflow to the dome and lowers the temperature a lot. I've been able to hold temps as low as 165 degrees (jerky) or as hot as 350 degrees (turkey). Usually anything over 350 wont be on long so the plate setter isn't needed.

Now the Egg is ready to get up to temp. I turn my temp gauge so the desired temp is always pointing directly up, this makes it easy to take a quick peek out the window to see if I need to make any major adjustments. Once the Egg is up to temp I let it burn for a good 20 mintues or until the thick white smoke clears, I learned the hard way if you don't wait the food gets an overly smoked not very great flavor.

This is my standard setup, any variations will be listed with the specific blog post in regards to what changed.