Food Smokers and Smoking Tips/Tricks/Techniques

anyone seen steak knives on sale lately? also who ever recommended the vet discount on campchef ty just picked up a ftg600

 

700? thats my next purchase. getting rid of my mini traeger for that bad boy.

 

Yep, picked it up in November, after scoffing at pellet poopers forever, while babysitting my Weber Smoky Mountains for 15 years. I love it, and the set it and forget it convenience is huge. And WiFi!

Current status...

 

nice man my buddy and i have the same size smokers he just has the rectec and i've completely leaned that way after comparing them both. better build quality the whole works. awesome pellet pooper.

 

Yeah, I consulted with the esteemed and very quotable @Misplaced Nebraskan, with his Pitts n' Spits, and my neighbor, with his Rec Tec 700, and chose the latter, as I just thought it provided more bang for the buck. (and WiFi...)

Bought the Gold package, which is a nice discount over all the pieces bought separately.

 

What are thoughts on master built electric smokers? One just popped up on Facebook for 50 bucks and I’m tempted. I only have a charcoal barrel grill at the moment.

edit Facebook ad says it was used once and it actually does look really clean. I’m tempted because of the price point on it too.

 

i didn't know they had package deals, i will have to look that up. do you know if they did first responsder discounts and such. i was looking at the 700 with the front shelf and large shelf for the inside was like 1400. agree its a little smaller in space i believe than close sized traegers but i believe everything else is the same

 

Whoops, I misspoke. They had package deals right around Thanksgiving, (Cyberweekend), but now it's 20% off accessories. What I got for $1999 would cost approx. $2,112 with that 20% discount.

For $1999, I got:

RT-700
5 - 40 lb. bags of pellets
Cover
Front shelf
Interior Shelf
Sear Kit
Smokebox
Competition Cart

No first responder or military discounts, as a vet, I asked...

 

Grill cleaning day...

 

for $50, I’d say you can’t beat it. That was my first smoker and I learned a lot on it.

Having said that, you might be disappointed with smoke production vs what you are used to.

 

2 racks of Ribs. St. Louis dry rub and a whiskey black pepper rub.

 

I normally do Kings charcoal and Weber chips since I usually only do the chips for a few hours on something bigger like a butt. Once it’s in the stall I pop it in the oven. Tried it a few times works well. Not as much bark but honestly (controversially) I’m okay with that.

I’m thinking I’ll scrap together the 50 bucks and then if I end up not liking it for how cheap it is I can pitch it on Facebook next spring for 50 again.

or just keep using my barrel grill. I kind of want the electric for the control of it. My grill often creeps up to 300 and takes a lot of supervision.

 

What do you guys think about a little quarantine time cook-off? It'll be relatively low-key (those other contests take a bit of time and coordination to pull off), so just thinking about a very basic theme (enough to give some direction, but vague enough to make it easy to enter), open for submissions next weekend, then start voting that week. Maybe combine user votes with a judge's panel to determine the winners?

I'll provide some small prizes to the winner and maybe a runner-up or two.

Again, not quite as elaborate an affair as contests in the past, but still something to add a little extra fun and excitement to your sheltering in place.

If there's a handful of takers, then I'll start up a discussion thread this weekend and prep for a submission thread to open next weekend.

Random tags below off the top of my head to get a little traffic. If you see this and are interested, though, let me know!

@Kanyon71
@Bigdaddy4760
@Misplaced Nebraskan
@WBF610
@medic2230
@wilcam47
@itzyoboipaul
@yota243
@AugustaTaco
@DC 17_3
@JeffRoyJenkins
@RickS
@nDub
@12thmanhawkfan
@ctagz
@Cold Iron
@Kremtok

 

how do you do a virtual cook off? I’m intrigued.

 

I'm quarantined and I'm gonna cook and there is a camera on my phone and in a tw member so there is almost no extra effort on my part to do this....


What I mean to say is, sounds good to me

 

Here is one of the "big" ones that we've done:

https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads...y-closed-congrats-misplaced-nebraskan.612687/

This one would be less elaborate, but cut from the same cloth. I'd give a basic theme (say, pork) and pork would need to be incorporated in to the final submission somehow. You'd cook something, then post a picture in the submission thread with a name for the dish and whatever description you'd like to include. I consolidate all of the submissions (first pic and name of dish) in to a single post. We then let the people vote in a poll for the winner*. Obviously, we can't taste your dish, so we just have to use our imagination. Does it look/sound appealing? Well executed? Creative? Whatever quality it is that makes you look at a post about food and get hungry.

*For the next "big" contest, I'm wanting to incorporate a judging panel and think we could test it out here. Maybe 60% of the score comes from the user voting and 40% from the judging panel? Vice versa? Who knows. It won't be too formal and I'll probably screw something up, but it ought to be fun and gives everyone a chance to win a little prize .

 

Just gave it a spritz or two of apple juice. 8 hours in. Soon it’ll be time to add sides.

 

Simple beef short ribs

 

I’m in. Stores are starting to get the normal stocks back on line so with a few days notice I should be good. Especially if it’s pork

related to above, I made beef ribs a few weeks back. Did all the right steps and they were awesome, but I even still could only eat a few to enjoy. Beyond that it was like forcing myself. Not a big red meat kind of guy I guess, and my wife is a vegan so can’t really share the spoils with her. Unfortunately I made a decent size pot of pasta sauce so I’ll be eating that most of this week and won’t be smoking up a new batch for a while here. Especially if I can’t buy a ton of sausages and chicken and pork loin to load up the smoker with without feeling bad

 

I’m always in.