Food Smokers and Smoking Tips/Tricks/Techniques

Fires stable, pork butts are on! Only got two
Gonna be a fun night of tending the fire.
Is it wierd i feel like a kid before christmas?

 

Oh boy! Staying up all night is hard! I just keep telling myself the pork induced coma will be worth it. Cook all night sleep all day!

Ill take pics next time i put a log on. Im already drooling and im only two hours into the smoke! haha

 

I don’t know if it’s the same as cryovac but I’ve had pork go bad in the shrink wrap packaging

 

Excuse my ignorance but what exatly is cryovaced? Just a regular vacume seal at below -40 or something??

 

The butts! Trying to have them done by 12-1pm tomorrow and have a good pull. Lookin good so far. Keeping it around 225-250 and spritsing them with applejuice every hour. We're using hickory if i remember right. Ill ask my brother when he gets up for his turn.

 

I did a lot of reading on it before I did mine and a common theme is to baste with a liquid to keep them from drying out. I wanted to duplicate one of those $80 honey baked hams, with my less than $20 10 pounder. Think it actually came out better than one of those. Using pear juice in the mix seems to common although you can use apple juice instead. You find pear juice in the baby food isle it was called pear nectar here.

I modified several different recipes as usual With the brown sugar coating many have a mix of Natural Sugar in the Raw mixed with it. It helps create the crust it is much dryer than brown sugar. I put this in my google docs here are my notes:

Recipe for the Honey Glaze: do 1st
1 cup Orange Juice
1 cup Pear juice (babyfood isle), Apple Juice if can't get pear
1/2 cup Brown Sugar
1/2 cup Honey
Bring to boil whisking and turn off heat stirring constantly.
Baste ham leaving some for smoking. When it starts to dry out when smoking baste again. Basted 3X when smoking 3.5 hours at 260* 10 pound ham.

Top coat with Sugar Blend. Pack it on the surface after coating well with honey glaze
½ cup Brown Sugar
½ cup Natural Sugar in the Raw (Turbinado Sugar)
½ tea Ground Ginger
½ tea Cinnamon
½ tea Fresh Ground Nutmeg
½ tea smoked Paprika
Put on smoker at ~275 for 2.5-3 hours. 4 chunks applewood could have used 3 instead.
Easy on the smoke it has already been smoked
Do not let internal temps go above 140. Did 130 was fine.

Have 3 gallon ziplocks full of ham. 1 with the shank bone and a lot of meat still attached that wasn't well sliced. Will cube and use for soups etc. and bone for stock. 1 bag thick cut for ham steaks. And another with thin sliced for sandwiches etc.

Made this ham sauce this morning it is perfect.
20 oz. can crushed pineapple and juice
1 cup brown sugar, packed
1 tablespoon cornstarch
1⁄4 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1⁄2-1 tablespoon honey mustard
1 tablespoon of worchestire sauce
Bring to boil whisking and turn off heat stirring

Cooked the bacon that I seasoned the beans with and then warmed up 2 thick ham steaks in the bacon grease.

Breakfast. Probably cost me less than $2 and tasted like a million bucks.

 

Had to call the gas company today to do a free emergency gas leak check. It smelled like gas when I went to the garage to take the truck out.

Good news: no gas leak

Gas company employee did notice something and said “well no gas leak but I do see a lot of charcoal bags that could give off a little smell”

Never had this issue before. Maybe my smell is just extra sensitive today.

 

I store mine in the shed, and have never noticed any smell, aside from the actual gas I keep in there!!!!

 

They were fresh and I let them sit out and get to room temp before hitting the smoker/cooker. Not sure if that's the difference, but I've had the same problems with dry NYs until now

 

Apple smoked then seared it... Spicy chicken Tocino.

 

Trying out the new rotisserie today with a test bird.

 

Jelly...want one so bad and a pizza kettle lol

 

Here is my humble set up. All covered up but you get the idea. WSM 22 and a Weber Genesis Silver B that is close to 18 years old but works well.

 

I think this Thanksgiving sounds like a good time to experiment. I'm thinking a dry brine on just a turkey breast. I'm removing the skin and replacing it with bacon. Then I'm going to do some sort of brown sugar crust on the bacon kinda like honey baked ham. I'll probably have to add that later in the cooking process to allow the bacon to cook and the sugar to not burn. Also definitely spatchcocking the bird.

 

Keep the skin on and rub butter between the skin and the breast. You can put rub up in there also. As long as you do not go above 275° the brown sugar will not carmalize.

 

If you don't go above 275, the skin will be rubber. The idea was to replace the skin with bacon. Like a bacon tuxedo.

 

So my first turkey smoke came out great. Smoked for 10 hours, at 235-250°F, 12.17lb turkey, internal temp 183°F. Defrosted it in the brine for a few days. Rubbed it with 2 sticks of butter and rubbed on some mixed seasoning from a local BBQ joint. Came it better than I could have hoped for.

 

Thanks for all yall's input!

 

It looks good. Take a close look at a AMAZN smoke maze or tube. It will carry your MES to a whole new level. The chip tray on these is just kinda hokey. My chips would just turn to charcoal, not ash. I even did a few mods that I read about on Smokingmeatforums.com

 

Just a regular vacuum seal, Cryovac is the name of the manufacturer of the machine, here is a picture of what I'm used to. Seal bar is on the left of each platform. Someone else has already put the meat in the bag and the operator transfers the bag to the platform and lays the edge of the bag over the seal bar. It's become like Kleenex as a term.