Fries and Thighs Fail

Thought it might be helpful to post a meal that didn’t turn out well. Sliced up potato into thinner fries, soaked in ice water for a while, then tossed with olive oil and into the basket for 40m at 400F. Mistake #1 was having too much oil on the fries, I should have coated more sparingly and slightly dried before spinning. The oil dropped into the coals, lots of white smoke. They turned out perfectly crispy, fluffy on the inside, but had an acrid, bitter after taste. While the fries spun, I had a soapstone under the basket to heat up. Mistake #2, I left the chicken thighs too long (~2-3m) on the soapstone as I needed to cook them in addition to searing, and ended up burning the skin. Had to pull a makeshift indirect to finish cooking them over the soapstone – drippings into it also resulted in white smoke, imparting a little burnt taste to the chicken as well. Not sure the lesson on the second one except to not try this combo of soapstone / Joetisserie, and to not leave them searing so long.