Food Smokers and Smoking Tips/Tricks/Techniques

good start!

 

I wouldn't sweat it if your smoker recovers quickly and if you don't obsess over visual progress reports .

I couldn't remember how much real estate I had left for more food, so I checked and snagged a progress pic, too.



35*, windy, and drizzling. What the hell?

 

Yeah. Mother nature is drunk... Low 30s with wind here. Guess I'll need that BGE XXL for the fuel capacity

 

Move it into living room

 

REALLY nice color going on. The guy I'm cooking for has Meat Massage on a few things he's providing, so the brisket is SPG for some contrasting in flavor, but it doesn't set up like that! It'll taste great, though, I'm sure. Peach and a touch of mesquite for this cook.

I'm ramping up to about 300*, now. The serving time stayed the same, but the delivery time got moved back. I need to get it in the resting stage after only about 8 hours of cook .

Our pork shoulder is along for the hotter ride, too.

 

It's not so bad. The only thing that changes is that last half hour when I'm trying to nail the tenderness. The window shuts much faster. I'm cruising along, though. About 160* internal, nice deep color on the outside. I'll be wrapping in butcher paper in the next hour or so.

 

When you cook on your UDS, do you use straight wood or do you use charcoal for heat and wood for flavor? I read part of a book yesterday that was quite uppity about the ‘correct’ way to cook in Texas being wood only, but that was on much larger smokers.

 

Like all of the other BBQ regions, we have our share of peckerheads that just know there is only one way to make real BBQ. In my drums, I use charcoal with a good bit of wood chunks mixed in. It is usually the big offset stickburner guys that go wood only out of necessity. They have to make a LOT of heat in the firebox to feed the cook chamber.

Even when I had a smaller offset, though, I still built a fire basket for it and did the charcoal/wood mixture and used the minion method to get a good 5-7 hours of burn from it before refueling.

 

Peckerheads always doing sumtin stupid

 

Smoking in the snow
At least I’m not up @Cold Iron ’s way lol

 

So I’ve been thinking about and looking at some pellet smokers recently. Anyone have any experience with the pit boss pellet grills? I’m looking at one of them and have zero knowledge about them

 

I've assembled quite a few of them, they are very well made of a pretty heavy gauge steel. They get good reviews on YouTube. BTW the XL is a pretty big grill/smoker.

 

That’s what I figured - on all counts.

 

I recently bought an 820d. First pellet smoker, second smoker overall. I love the set-and-forget nature of a pellet grill but it's definitely a lighter smoke profile (which works better for my family). I've cooked everything from tri-tip to ribs to bread to jerky on it so far. We're baking pizzas on it tomorrow.

Some have complained about temp swings and that's partially the nature of a pellet grill - as it feeds more pellets into the burn pot the temp goes up, then cools down over time. I upgraded my stock controller to a PID controller called Savannah Stoker (debate-able whether I actually needed it, but this hobby isn't about need) and have rock solid temps.

Lowes was selling the 820d for $499, on sale for $449. There's also a model called the Austin XL sold only at Wal-Mart that's bigger than the 820 for about the same price.

 

I looked at one at rural king today seems no one else has one in stock near me. I was impressed with the quality of them.

Sounds like the same things I smoke/cook I’ll have to check those stores also. The one I looked at was 700 sq inch which I think would be enough for me but bigger is always better

 

Just over 8 hours for this 16.x lb brisket and it's off to rest. How are you coming, @scottalot ?

 

Looks good. Finish temp?

 

Just rubbed down a tri-tip with Pitfaced. It’s going on in about an hour.

For tomorrow, I’ve got some beef short ribs being marinated in a Hawaiian fruit-based sauce. It’s going to be pretty fantastic!

 

Probably about 195-200? I don't really temp brisket at the finish. I do know it was nice and soft! Pulled
slightly earlier because it is going to have a longer rest.