Food Smokers and Smoking Tips/Tricks/Techniques

Stopped by a coworker/friends to drop some tickets off. Started taking smoking. He's says he just trimmed a few up and had some large branches laying around, I'll take em. Then he points and say I have to cut that whole tree down, I told him to let me know when, I'll bring the saw and help him. He was just going to use it as firewood..

 

He's going to be cutting down some oak, various hickory, maple, and











Cherry!

 

That's the way to do it. I used to live in an older neighborhood with a bunch of big ass trees. My neighbor asked me to help him cut and stack a bunch of huge pecan limbs he cut out of a tree in his back yard. I said I'd be happy to help as long as I could grab some for my smoker any time I wanted after it seasoned. If he hadn't bought a brinkman smoker a year later, I would've burned that whole pile myself.

 

He's a bit of a drive from me, so it isn't super convenient. I told himeto save any limbs from 2" up for me. I'll load my truck and trailer up as much as I can once or twice a year from him.

Anytime brother!

 

What do you guys use cherry on? I recently bought a bag, haven't used it yet.

 

Thinking about smoking a pork shoulder to do some tacos, like a smoked carnitas type of thing. Maybe rub the meat with some cumin, garlic, and chili powder and smoke it till it gets to about 180-190 or so IT. Then chop the meat and fry it in the dutch oven to crisp up the edges and finish it off. Serve it on tortillas with some sliced avocado and maybe some sliced onion or something.

Any thoughts/tips/concerns. Trying to give the wife some more options besides pulled pork/ribs/brisket/occasional bird that we normally do.

 

I use it as a mix Hickory/Maple/Cherry nice flavor for it. Cherry itself you can use for just about anything but I've used it on chicken in the past and it came out good.

 

Was telling my friend the other day I want to do some brisket tacos, make up a batch of chipotle BBQ, toss the brisket (chopped up) and some bbq sauce on the griddle and cook it up, put that on some corn tortillas, top it off with maybe some pickled or raw onion, little cilantro and top with some tomatillo sauce. Same general setup with pork would be freakin awesome also.

 

Well I got my charcoal at Home Depot and ended up buying another wsm 18 for clearance 179 plus addition $35 off for just asking lol. Time to flip it

 

I wonder why they are running all these WSM clearance sales, did Weber come out with an updated model or something? Seems like this would be their best time of the year to move them at full price.

 

Yes totally got me puzzled why they are on clearance when people are out buying smokers this time of the year. But I'm not complainting

Only thing I can think of is Weber is coming out with a new version

 

Ribs, shoulders, sausage, loin, tenderloin. Used it on brisket as well, was good. Normally mix apple and cherry, just got some hickory as well.

 

It's good. That's all I use to smoke pork!

 

Just apple, no coal?

 

I use lump for my heat.

 

That's burn shorter and hotter than charcoal, correct?

 

I believe so. I only use briquettes in my Weber for good old burgers, sausage, fish, etc. I like both types just for different applications.

 

When u fry the shreds add some onions to caramalize with em
Carnitas ftmfw

 

I'm not understanding the love for charcoal. One, it's expensive. Two, it's kind of non-descript as far as flavor. I use maple...it's easy to come by, dries well, splits nicely, puts out a good amount of btu's and makes for a tasty result.

I just take a short hunk or two of maple off of my woodpile, split it with a splitting hatchet into small strips about 1/2" to 1" in size, toss them in a bucket of water (or raw maple tree sap in season) and let them soak for at least a couple hours, overnight if I plan ahead. I also keep a pile of unsoaked maple pieces like this on hand. I start the fire with the dry pieces and then add the wet ones once the fire is hot and coals are established. I'll then use a mixture of dry and wet as the fire and temp dictate. The cost is the minimal amount that the chain saw uses to cut a couple pieces of wood, and my time and effort. The rewards are huge.

As a side note, I also grill with dry strips of maple like this. My steaks have never been better! That takes a little skill though, your window of opportunity of the bed of coals is much narrower than with Kingsford.

 

I use charcoal because it works for my WSM.

Also, I'm not about to start chopping away at my pecan tree.