Frequently Asked Question

Your Weber Q is an incredibly versatile barbecue.  Using Weber’s cooking system, you can cook perfect steaks, chops and sausages.  It is more than just a barbecue though, by using a roasting trivet and convection tray, you can turn your Weber Q into oven and cook magnificent barbecued roasts, pizzas, cakes and desserts.  Add a hotplate or breakfast plate and you can cook eggs, pancakes and onion rings.

We don’t recommend that you use a baking dish in your Weber Q. Apart from the fact that you’ll have healthier, better tasting roasts if you use a roasting trivet instead, you’ll also help to keep your Weber Q clean and tidy. 

When using a baking dish, fats and juices collect and boil inside the barbecue. This spits fat and grease all over the inside of your Weber Q. The next time you heat up your barbecue, you may find fat and grease dribbling from the edge of your lid onto the floor or other parts of your Weber Q. To avoid this, always roast on a roasting trivet as described in the handbook that came with your Weber Q. 

You should never line the inside of your Weber Q with aluminium foil.  Using aluminium foil can prevent fats and juices from running down into the disposable drip pan.  If fat pools in pockets created by the aluminium foil, it can catch alight and cause a fat fire.  Lining your Weber Q with aluminium foil can also interfere with the ventilation of the barbecue.  Without proper ventilation, your Weber Q may not operate properly. 

For over 50 years, Weber has been engineering barbecues with remarkable cooking systems.  The Weber Q is no different.  The Weber Q cooking system has been specifically designed to work with the lid closed.  By using the barbecue with the lid closed you can achieve a unique barbecued flavour you can’t get any other way.  You’ll also save gas and money because your Weber Q will be more efficient and you’ll keep your barbecue area clean. 

By cooking with the lid closed, you’ll find you get amazing flavour in your food.  With the lid closed, barbecue smoke created by fats and juices vaporising on the hot grill bars or hotplate will circulate the food and give it a unique, smokey barbecue flavour.  Cooking with the lid open lets all that delicious smoky flavour escape straight into the atmosphere.  By cooking with the lid closed your barbecued food will have that famous Weber flavour that you just can’t get with the lid open. 

Because the cooking system in your Weber Q is specifically designed to be used with the lid closed, it’s extremely gas efficient, using less than half the gas of a traditional four burner barbecue.  You might hear some people say that a barbecue needs a high gas output to sear a great steak or cook an Aussie barbecue.  That just isn’t true.  More often than not, higher gas output is required to compensate for a poorly designed, inefficient cooking system.  With the lid down on your Weber Q, you’ll find your barbecue hot enough to sear a great steak, your food will cook more quickly and more evenly and you’ll save gas and money. 

Cooking with the lid closed will also help keep your barbecue area clean.  Because any fats or juices that spit from food are trapped inside the lid, you won’t have fat splattering all over your deck or veranda. 

For over 50 years, Weber has been engineering barbecues with remarkable cooking systems.  The Weber Q is no different.  The Weber Q cooking system has been specifically designed to work with the lid closed.  By using the barbecue with the lid closed you can achieve a unique barbecued flavour you can’t get any other way.  You’ll also save gas and money because your Weber Q will be more efficient and you’ll keep your barbecue area clean. 

To clean the grill of your Weber kettle, we recommend that you use a steel brush to scrape food remnants into the bottom of the bowl.  If you have a One-Touch cleaning system, you can then use the lever to sweep the contents of the bowl into the ash catcher.  After every 5 or 6 cooks, remove the cooking grill, soak in hot soapy water and clean with a nylon scourer. 

To clean the porcelain enamel parts of your barbecue, use Weber’s All-Purpose Cleaner and a nylon scourer.  The barbecue should be cleaned regularly to prevent large amounts of grease from building up.  And remember, prevention is better than cure: always remember to use a drip pan in your kettle when roasting meat and cook foods with high fat content (like lamb chops and sausages) on a hotplate to help keep the barbecue clean. 

Don’t worry, it’s not paint. All Weber Kettle lids are made of porcelain enamel coated steel, which will not peel. While the inside of a Weber Q is not coated at all. What you’re seeing is actually a build-up of carbon that has collected on the inside of your lid. It’s a normal bi-product of the cooking process. After building up, the carbon will start to peel – normally from the centre of the lid outwards. It will look a lot like paint, peeling off in small sheets with one dull side and one shiny side. This build up can be removed by using hot soapy water and a nylon scourer. To prevent the build up, use a piece of paper towel to wipe the inside of the lid after each cook while the lid is still warm (NOT HOT). 

For day-to-day cleaning of the grill, the best method is to use a Weber grill brush and scraper. 

• After pre-heating your barbecue on high for 10mins, while the grill is very hot, brush along the grill bars where food residue remains, alternately you can clean your grill this way while it is still on after cooking. 
• Every few uses, remove the grills and scrape down any buildup of carbon and grease into the disposable drip tray. Replace tray when a thick layer of buildup occurs. 
• For a deep clean, we recommend Weber’s Q Cleaner. First remove the grills and give the inside of the BBQ a generous spray coat. Let this coat sink in over 3-4 hours and proceed to wipe down the BBQ with BBQ wipes. 
• Try to keep the grill protected from the elements with a grill cover, particularly if you live near the sea or have a pool. Salt from the ocean and chlorine in the air can contribute to corrosion. 

For over 50 years, Weber has been engineering barbecues with remarkable cooking systems. Weber premium gas barbecues are no different. The Weber gas barbecue cooking system has been specifically designed to work best with the lid closed. By using the barbecue with the lid closed you can achieve a unique barbecued flavour you can’t get any other way. You’ll also save gas and money because your barbecue will be more efficient and you’ll keep your barbecue area clean. 

By cooking with the lid closed, you’ll find you get amazing flavour in your food. With the lid closed, barbecue smoke created by fats and juices vaporising on the Flavorizer bars below the grill will circulate the food and give it a unique, smokey barbecue flavour. Weber gas barbecue lids are designed to circulate this barbecue smoke around your food before venting. Cooking with the lid open lets all that delicious smokey flavour escape straight into the atmosphere. By cooking with the lid closed your barbecued food will have that famous Weber flavour that you just can’t get with the lid open. 

Because the cooking system in your Weber gas barbecue is specifically designed to be used with the lid closed, it’s very gas efficient, using less gas than a traditional four burner barbecue. You might hear some people say that a barbecue needs a high gas output to sear a great steak or cook an Aussie barbecue. That just isn’t true. More often than not, higher gas output is to compensate for a poorly designed, inefficient cooking system. With the lid down on your Weber gas barbecue, you’ll find your barbecue hot enough to sear a great steak, your food will cook more quickly and more evenly and you’ll save gas and money. 

Cooking with the lid closed will also help keep your barbecue area clean. Because any fats or juices that spit from food are trapped inside the lid, you won’t have fat splattering all over your deck or veranda. 

Definitely not. If preheated and used correctly, your Weber gas barbecue will cook beautifully seared steaks, perfect lamb chops and grilled chicken breasts. Because of the patented Flavorizer bar system, you’re able to cook nearly everything straight on the grill, leaving fat and oil to fall away from the meat instead of boiling around the food like on a traditional flat-plate barbecue. 

The Flavorizer bar system in your Weber gas barbecue prevents fat from dropping into the burners and causing a flare up. Instead, the fat either vaporises on the bars or drops past the burners into the slide out grease tray of the barbecue. From there it runs into the hole in the bottom of the tray and collects in the disposable drip pan beneath. 

Flavorizer bars are a patented invention that reduce the chances of flare ups and fat fires and create the barbecue flavour that makes Weber gas barbecues so unique.  The specially angled Flavorizer bars form a roof over the gas burner tubes so that no meat juice or fat comes in contact with the gas flame.  Meat juices sizzle and smoke on the hot bars, yet excess fats fall harmlessly into the disposable drip tray below.  With the lid closed, the smoke created circulates the food and imparts a unique, smokey barbecue flavour.

The Weber Kettle is extremely versatile and by using both the direct and indirect cooking methods, you can cook a huge variety of food on your kettle.  Anything from delicious outdoor roasts, barbecued chops, sausages and steaks, smoked fish and poultry and even pizzas, desserts and bread.  The Complete Australian Barbecue Kettle Cookbook is a great comprehensive guide and will teach you how to use your kettle to cook all these things and more. 

When cooking on your Weber Kettle you should always have the vents open.  By closing the vents, you starve the fire of oxygen, slowing the rate of burning and ultimately putting the fire out.  Your vents should only be closed when you’re trying to extinguish the fire.

There are a number of different fuels available for kettle barbecues in New Zealand and, in our experience, some are easier to use than others. We recommend that you use Weber Barbecue Briquettes. They are long burning and consistent so you can cook a whole turkey or Christmas ham without having to replenish the fuel. Try to stay away from self-lighting fuels; we’ve found they can leave your food with a strange taste. 

Hot smoking food adds a beautiful flavour and aroma to your food.  A normal indirect fire can be transformed into a hot smoking fire by adding one or two chunks of hickory wood (or other smoking wood) to the coals on either side of the barbecue.  The more smoke flavour you want, the more hickory chunks you add.  We recommend wood chunks rather than chips or sawdust when using a Weber Kettle – the chunks smoke for longer and require less attention.  If you are going to use wood chips, make sure you soak them in water for about an hour before you put them on.