Food Smokers and Smoking Tips/Tricks/Techniques

First run on the Po'man....

 

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Holy crap. You hung a briskey. Do tell how that thing turned out. Ive seen some seriius throw down on those. Don't quote me, but I think weber 22.5 grates fit in those.

 

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I wish! It was just a tri tip. But now you got me wondering....

 

I was thinking if it was brisket it would eventually rip through when it was cooked properly...

 

This weekend was pork butt and a few sausages. For the rest phase on the pork shoulder, I added 1/2 cup of bourbon in a foil wrap. Gave a really nice flavor to the bark.

 

SJ - I noticed the angled chimney insert in your smoker and had not seen something like that before. I assume it is to force more smoke into the cooker before it exits the chimney. Does it have a negative impact on airflow and keeping the fire going?

 

I dont think it would be forced in as its not pressurized It just wouldnt flow as easy.

 

Force was a poor choice of words on my part. I assume by moving the chimney exit down to the grill level the smoke would have to fill the chamber first before exiting instead of just exiting at the higher default chimney level. More smoke would accumulate at the food level.

 

I would think the temp would be harder to control as you arent getting good air flow. I could be wrong though.

 

Smoked and sliced up my lasted batch of home cured bacon yesterday. My two teenage boys are very happy...

Thick sliced and ready to fry:


Plus all the ends get trimmed into fantastic bacon bits...

 

I really wanted to go two full weeks but I did end up rinsing them good last night and letting the pellicle form for about 20 hours in the fridge. They went on the smoker with cherry and hickory wood. The smoker likes to stabilize at about 190 on the low end, so that's what I'm running.

 

Was the angle of the dangle proportional to the heat of the meat?

 

Shakespeare reborn.

 

The chimney on my particular smoker (Oklahoma Joe Highland) exits pretty far up and my issues was that my cook surface beside the firebox and at the stack side would vary by up to 90 degrees. So I added a tuning plate of sorts to the firebox side and it got it pretty close but it was still significantly cooler on the stack side so I added the elbow to drop it down to the cook surface and that got it pretty dang close for a cheapo store bought smoker. If I ever get the spare cash to pick up a small welder I'm going permanently lower the stack, weld up some seams and open up the firebox door some. But for now it makes some pretty good Q.

 

D I Y!!

 

I'd love to build a big smoker some day but for now this little guy is doing the trick. We're looking to move into a more rural area in our county within the next 5 years so hopefully then I will be able to build a area devoted to smoking on the property. Nice little shelter with the smoker and wood pile!

 

What cooker you running? Nevermind just found answer.

 

With most of us on this site, we are all pretty much DIY type of guys. If some of you want to build a pretty formal cooker on the cheap. Look into ugly drum cookers. There's a few BBQ sites out there that has a wealth of info on how to build them.