Food Smokers and Smoking Tips/Tricks/Techniques

Looks good, nice work

 

Consider using a "clearance" slab of granite or quartz if you can find one, with a wood frame.

 

Where's the bottle opener?

other than that... Looks great!

 

^^ This!

 

Anyone used the Lavalock

Well done, sir!
I will have to investigate something like this for my Weber Kettle, with the work surface being useful for my Akorn Jr as well.

 

Thanks for the heads up on the killer weber charcoal pricing! I picked up a dozen today. It was tempting to take the whole stinkin pallet but I know that wouldn't have gone down well at home. They also had Kingsford professional for the same price - $3.97 or something like that. Didn't get any though.

 

According to Weber, Home Depot will not carry the Weber charcoal anymore which is why they are now on clearance. Kinda freaking out because I think they are great charcoal.
Now, I wouldn't pay full asking $19 but will definitely buy the at $10 or less for a 20lb bag.
$3.90 a bag, I'm buying as much as I can store.

Also, one of the Home Depot manager told a customer that after Jan 16th (tomorrow), whatever weber charcoal is left will be going to the dumpster

 

Get it out of the dumpster??

 

Gotta find a store that still has weber charcoal right before they close today hahahah

 

Seriously! The one I was at still had a good 20 bags left. A drive to the back of Home Depot tomorrow afternoon might be worth the gas.

 

This is all I did tonight on topic.... installed the bottom gasket to the WSM body. I will let it dry till tomorrow after work, then flip it over and do the top. I am likely going to get the Lavalock door upgrade for it, found here-
https://bbqsmokermods.com/lavalockr...-smokey-mountain-or-55-gallon-uds-smoker.html

 

Do it !! Let us know how it goes

 

Well, I had a nice break in the rain so I smoked up my first bacon attempt:

Getting started. Used the Weber charcoal I just got. Used hickory and apple:

An hour in:


Done, after 5 hours:


Fried up:


My verdict, it was ok.... not great. There was bacon flavor but it was on the mild side, but not a ham flavor. There was smokey flavor. Since the pieces were small to begin with, I could only cut them a bit thicker than I wanted. There was also alot of meat and not as much fat as store bought. Definitely not salty. I have three more pieces about the same size in the freezer, so I am open to suggestions on things I can do differently, or how they look???? It was good enough to keep trying!

RiskDude

 

Looks damn good to me! That is a lot of meat to fat compared to the bellies Costco sells here, or any other place I have sourced them. Those would make some awesome marinated kebabs or even pork belly burnt ends.

I break it down to 2 different flavor profiles, savory and sweet. Both have sugar in them. Too much sugar and they will burn easily however. The flavor profiles are personal preference of course.

For both I use Bay, thyme, and black pepper. For savory I add in brown sugar, paprika, onion and garlic. For sweet I add in maple sugar to the base ingredients. Use what flavors you like in your bacon. Lately been hitting the savory bacon heavy with course ground black pepper after curing but before smoking. Will be making a BLT for lunch today with some of it. The last of it unfortunately.

Curing dry you don't want any liquids so maple syrup will not work. Which is OK because maple syrup doesn't seem to penetrate the pork belly well even with a wet cure. It is because of bacon that I got into maple sugar, now I can't imagine not using it for several things including marinades. It isn't cheap and used to get it at the food co-op in town but they stopped carrying it. Found it on Amazon

$79 Nova Maple Sugar - Pure Grade-A Maple Sugar (6 Pounds)

even cheaper though. They sell it in various sizes you don't have to get 6 lbs. of it at once. But not like it will go to waste at least not with me

 

Agreed! that is a lot of meat on them! excellent score.

 

Well this isn't smoking, but does anyone have a good recipe for naan? I am cooking tika masala tomorrow night and the girl wants naan to go along with it. I figured I'd go ahead and make it tonight, as it requires a couple hours for the dough to rise.

EDIT: this is likely to get the nod unless anyone has a better idea: https://www.allrecipes.com/video/33...el&referringId=702&referringContentType=Video

 

i have one also hang on

 

I was going to look for it but I didnt write the address. This worked really good.

 

Outstanding. Seems very similar to the link I posted. I have never tried this, but will precook it for a date tomorrow night.

 

Man I so wish I wasn't the only one who likes Indian food in my house.