Food Smokers and Smoking Tips/Tricks/Techniques

Butcher paper is better!

 

It was from the video. I don’t use either 90% of the time.

 

So was his comment

Possibly...

 

Oops

 

Haha yeah I was just quoting the video!

 

You guys are killing me with all that good food! Motivated me to run to the grocery and get a beautiful ribeye, some corn on the cob and potatoes. My new favorite way to prepare a steak is over charcoal with a lump of mesquite under the steak providing smoke. Turns out really tasty. Got my dinner prep drink (the Oban) going and grill fired up. My gf is having stomach jitters and is on a bland diet, so I'm making her some chicken soup.

 

You had me at ribeye, then you had me again at Oban .

 

Almost learned a pretty valuable lesson cooking in the dark .

We have a pot luck today at the office. Naturally, I skipped the Crock-Pot meatballs or whatever people normally bring and decided to smoke a brisket.

Small, Choice packer. Sorry no prep pics, but I'll try to get something when I serve it.

Anyways, it's been on since about 10 last night. I just went out to add two beautiful fatties to the smoker. I'm doing this in the very dark. I did some finagling of the grates (I cook on drums with Weber grates) when I wrapped the brisket and checked the water pan. I then put the first fatty on next to the brisket. I went to put the second on and was feeling around for the grate to know when I was low enough. I felt it with one hand, then started to let go of the fatty and the damn thing nearly fell through to the water pan. The hinged side of the grate was flipped up and I couldn't see it. I barely caught the fatty with minimal damage to the bacon blanket, so all is well. Disaster averted. .

I need a low light solution. It's next to my bedroom, so I don't want a flood of lights. Maybe something with red lights? That's what we use when we get the telescopes out so you can read without losing your "night eyes".

I'll have a progress pic of the fatties in an hour or so. The brisket is in butcher paper.

 

Also... Great save!

 

Ever feel like you're wasting your time smoking meat because Arby's exists?
On a serious note, the local grocer was having a little bit of a sale on pork yesterday so a good portion of my weekend will be spent smoking pork due to it being a deal I couldn't pass up and the freezer being full.

 

I have a small basket next to the sliding glass door going out to the deck. In it are fire starter cubes, lighters, thermometers, and headlamp.

I also have the Home Depot Rigid panel LED light. Already had the tool set with 3 batteries so made sense for me. And a photographers light stand to mount it on. I have an extension cord on the deck and often run it off the cord instead of the battery. And take all of my batteries and the light\stand with me when I go camping. It is adjustable so can turn it down until you only have as much light as you need. On full it puts out an amazing amount of light. They also sell it as a complete kit with their own stand and for what you get it is very reasonable IMO.

I used it last night and took a picture of it and some apple wood smoke blowing into it for some reason.



There is a deck light alongside the house but about all it does when grilling\smoking is create shadows and dark spots.

 

Something like that might be the ticket. I don't mind lighting it up from, say, 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. Most stuff after that, it'd be nice to have just enough light to do what you need to do.

For a bright light setup, that's pretty nice!

 

Progress pic of the fatties. The one that stared death in the face and lived to tell about it is the one in the upper left. The brisket is going soooo slooooowww, hence the foil over the butcher paper. I normally just get it done, then rest for however long, but this is already getting a 5 hour rest regardless because of when I have to get to the office and when the potluck starts, so I was trying to get it just right.

It'll still knock their socks off .

https://i.imgur.com/zU83OTC.jpg

 

I used to love pot luck where I used to work. I had a lot of people of Indian descent that worked for me and man would they bring in some awesome stuff. One year for our department Christmas party I introduced many of them to Brisket. Went over REALLY well for all of the ones who ate meat. One of my main managers under me tore it up and asked if I would be willing to do one for him in trade for some food he made that I really liked. Was a good trade lol.

 

Should get you some surplus night vision goggles. Then you can be a Special Ops BBQ team

 

I’m going to cook a fatty this weekend. My first so I want to keep it simple.

I was thinking:
1# bacon for the weave (enough?)
1/2# ground beef
1/2# ground sausage
Cream cheese, pepper jack, diced green bell pepper for the filling.

Smoke for a couple of hours or until 165F.

Any recommendations or suggestions?

Ultimately I’m going to cook one and some pork ribs for a dinner party we’re having next month. So I thought I’d get some practice.

 

Sounds like a winning recipe to me! I try to wrap mine up nice and tight in parchment paper or foil, then leave in the fridge overnight, if possible. If not, I try to do the same, but put in the freezer for an hour or two. It helps a little with keeping shape.

A pound of bacon is usually enough for a weave, so long as it isn't thick cut. I personally avoid thick cut for bacon-wrapped anything, though.

 

Sounds good to me. You can also put your favorite rub on it if you like. As @bvbull200 said do it up in layers and let them setup each layer. I do mine with cling wrap and roll it nice and tight. In the fridge while I lay out my weave (which I do on top of more cling wrap, roll it all up again and then in the fridge over night like he said to help it all keep shape. Also as he stated don't use thick cut. Outside of that experiment for your next ones. They are addictive and very filling.

 

Pretty much what he said


Pro tip... or presentation tip rather...

rotate bacon weave 45° then roll up diagonally. have to trim so excess weave at the ends, you'll see if you do it.






man am I overdue for a fatty... been too long. need to rectify this...

 

Counterpoint: Leave the excess bacon on and have bacon explosion end pieces .