Food Smokers and Smoking Tips/Tricks/Techniques

I'm late to the game here and don't feel like reading through 600+ posts, so forgive me if this has already been discussed.

My father gave me about 6 venison roasts. My wife does not like venison, so I thought about making it into jerky. I don't have a food dryer but I do have propane smoker.

Can the smoker be used, and how?

 

Look a couple pages back and jerky is discussed. Cliff notes: Low temp, few hours.

 

It can be, but space is often a limiter. Also, your oven on the lowest setting (175 or so) with a wooden spoon propped in the door to keep it open a crack works really well.

 

Anything over 180* and your cooking it not making jerky. I have 5 pounds of eye of round sliced 1/8" thick on the Weber Smoker right now at 160*. I use pizza screens and red oak wood rod cut into 1" high sections to stack them on. For a cure if you have a fleet farm or farm and fleet Backwoods makes prepacked kits for venison that are pretty decent. Or you can make your own. Keep it simple to start if you do your own though don't want to ruin a big batch of venison out of the gate.

Food for the week done. Inch and half thick pork loin chops cut up and marinated in salt brine and brown sugar for an hour and a half. Couple of Onions and a squash. King Hawaiian marinade with bacon. All on a stick.



Still have 11.5 pounds of pork belly to cure. And jerky on the WSM but think it is time for a nap first this heat is kicking my ass.

 

My neighbor is moving and had this propane smoker. I know nothing about these and have minimal hopes for it but I figured it might work for hanging jerky. I have a pretty good size venison roast I need to use so I figure I'll try it on this. Anyone use one of these things before?

 

had a neighbor give me something similar, i haven't messed with it yet. I'll likely make it a lump smoker, using the smokey joe or make a fire box for it myself

dunno yet

Neighbor said he couldn't control the heat on it, was always too hot

 

Cold smoked with cherry and apple.

 

Ribeye steak with @bvbull200 rub!

 

I'm friggin hungry. That rib eye looks amazing.

 

Not as classy as ribeye, but:

Marinating:

Resting after grilling:

Toasting tortillas:

Result!

 

ok, apparently i am "fire challenged" WTF do you all use to start the chimney ?

i've used wadded up wrapping paper, news print, parts of the charcoal bag itself, 1 out of 4 tries i have succeeded on the first attempt. Lump seems to be more challenging than briquettes to get burning.

WTF am i doing wrong ?

 

I roll my newsprint long ways and wrap it in a circle under the chimney. 2 sheets to each roll. I use two rolls.

Or, I sit the chimney over the side burner and light it like that.

 

Paper towels soaked in vegetable oil. It leaves no ash. A lot of people use newspaper, but that ashes really bad.

 

Damn that looks good!!!!

I use one of these (not mine pictured):



That'll have me dumping hot coals in less than 5 minutes.

The newspaper methods ought to work just fine, though you might have to give it closer to 15 minutes to be ready.

 

This is what a friend of mine uses to light his charcoal grill.

 

Yeah I used newspapers for a long time but always hated the ash.

Last few years I use the Weber starter cubes on both the smoker and kettle. No fuss no mess and work every time, they are paraffin. No chimney on the WSM I just pile 5 or 6 briquettes around the cube light it and wait for about a dozen briquettes to catch and then put it together.

According to Amazon started using them in Feb. of 2015. All of .16 cents each

Weber fire starters.

 

I recently switched from newspaper to the little fire starter cubes. No ash and they burn hot. I won't go back to newspaper.

 

This.

 

Ghetto smoking tonight. Didn't want to fire up the big one.

 

I grabbed a paper towel cardboard roll out of the recycling for my cook this evening. Flattened it, sprayed it with some cooking oil, rolled it up like a cinnamon roll and lit it under the chimney starter. Worked great.