Food Smokers and Smoking Tips/Tricks/Techniques

@scottalot sells charcoals

 

Anyone?

 

I figure at least an hour and a half but 2 hours what be the shortest I shoot for. Depends what is in them. And 4 hours is even better if you add a lot to them. That is at 250° in a shallow casserole pan on the lower grate of a WSM. I precook the sausage and partial cook the bacon I add to them. And saute the onions in the bacon grease.

 

Somebody on this thread had a great (looking) recipe for baked beans, haven't tried it myself. Maybe somebody will remember who that was, a quick search didn't turn it up.

 

You really can't trust the thermometer on the lid of the kettle. And grate temp is much more important IMO. Once you know what the lid thermometer reads at a certain grate temp you can use it as a reference however. After you get a remote read thermometer you can use it for smoking on the kettle also. 2 that I have for the kettles are- Smoke and Maverick

Chicken quarters I'm assuming skin on and for that I prefer doing directly over coals unless you have a highly flammable marinade. Being able to hold the temperature is important for directly grilling chicken. The fat dripping and burning on the hot coals is what gives it the taste I like the most. I put almost a full chimney in and let it burn evenly then throttle down the intake vents to control the temperature. Once I can hold my hand about 6" over the coals for at least 5 seconds is when I start to think about putting the chicken on.

Nothing wrong with indirect heat either though. And I like the grillgrates especially if they are marinated and dripping. One of my favorite ways to do chicken on the kettle is with the rotisserie and that is indirect but meat spinning on a stick takes it up a notch IME. And the drippings...



For searing steaks I use a second charcoal grate sitting on Weber charcoal rails and dump the coals on that so they are directly below the meat. I mean touching the grate. That will get er done.

 

On a WSM. Very nice.

 

These are my go to

https://www.smokingmeatforums.com/threads/dutchs-wicked-baked-beans.50945/

Delicious

 

Here’s what I did last time: https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads...cks-techniques.229517/page-1119#post-17660635

 

NO NO @scottalot ACQUIRES charcoal.

 

The reason I do them on the bottom rack is I usually have something dripping into the beans from the top rack. Ribs, pork belly, ham, or something wrapped in bacon. Works well for mac n cheese too. Or both.

 

^^THIS!

Have made a few couple times......

 

Some wait and plan for Black Friday. You're all about the Kingsford sales days.

 

Kettle is here, burn in done, hot dogs cooked. They tasted like ... hot dogs. Assembly was a PITA.

 

My red kettle should be here tomorrow. My OTG is ~10 years old and wanted to do what may be the last cook in it, not sure yet what I am going to do with it. So carefully used the plastic putty scrapper to clean out old grease and cleaned it up. Then did some wings. Normally the Costco wings that come in a 6 pack half of it will fill it right up to the Vortex. But not tonight must have needed to get rid of some small chicken parts.



With Cherry wood for smoke. And turned out awesome as usual. Just didn't get to eat as many as I expected but it was enough.

 

Not fried but q'ed

 

Also check out Skybell HD. We went with that vs Ring due to no monthly fees. That and it'll integrate with our Honeywell alarm system.

 

Nest also has a new one, reviews on it so far are pretty good. Looks a little smaller than my Ring Pro also, when we move I may give it a try.

 

Not to go all tinfoil hat, but with Nest owned by Google, its probably not my first choice. .

 

Eh I don't really worry too much about it. Not a whole lot they are going to get from me that they don't already know. lol

 

No grilling or smoking today

But we are doing crawfish boil. I forgot the damn corn