Food Smokers and Smoking Tips/Tricks/Techniques

Great 2nd smoke today! Dino ribs turned out good. Ended up going 9hrs and wrapping at 160°. Think I may have slightly over cooked them but still juicy and tender with good flavor! Had some bread and cheesy scalloped potatoes as sides for dinner.


The pork butt came out even better. Took a little taste after shredding it and its quite juicy with lots of flavor. Gonna vacuum seal and freeze some of it for lunches over the next 2 or 3 weeks.Ended up around 10hrs Wrapped at 7 hrs 160° and pulled at 203°.


Temp fluctuations were pretty big so we'll work on fixing that to get it to hold temps better. I'm going with the wind(definitely not my dog Teq) caused it to fall off a table onto the ground and the doors pretty bent up now.

 

It was posted earlier!

 

Soooo... I upgraded my vacuum sealer today. I had a Vacmaster VP112s that was adequate, but it has its limitations and was starting to really annoy me.

Enter the Facebook marketplace find of the week. A mvs-31x commercial machine that I got for $150. It doesn't really look like it's been used much, but it was pretty dirty. Most of the plastic film was still on the stainless and had turned into a sticky goo. I spent about an hour getting it cleaned up and this thing is a beast. The pump needs an oil change, but after that I'm set for a while.

 

Great find

 

That's a great score!!

 

Fuck yeah! I'm happy for sure.

I do sous vide quite often so it will get some use. We also buy chicken breast in 40lb boxes to seal and freeze.

This thing is FAST! That was the one gripe I had with the Vacmaster. It worked fine, but it was pretty slow and after about 20 bags at full vacuum it needed to cool down for a few minutes. This thing will go all day with no issues.

 

time to eat.

 

Dang!! Jealous! But I do use the heck out of my little food saver vacuum sealer.. though I haven't invested in a sous vide yet.. it's totally on the list.

Looks good!

 

Honestly, there's not much to invest for sous vide. I'm still using the $40 unit I got at TJ-Max and it works perfectly well for me. I put steaks in at 128F for a few hours, then finish in a cast iron pan on the grill set to inferno. Can't beat it.

 

I've got ground beef in the fridge for a meatloaf tomorrow night!

 

Looks good

 

I definitely need to get one on the next sale I see.
What cut of steak are you using? I'm a ribeye guy but that might not work so well in the sous vide.

 

I like a good prime rib...

 

Ribeye is fantastic sous vide. Just need the temp a bit higher to render the internal fat.

 

The Pit Boss Charcoal pellets I ran today not only burned at a higher rate than I have experienced with their other pellets, but it also created about twice as much ash. This is the most ash I've ever had in the bottom... And this was from 12 hours.. I've had briskets on for almost 16 hours and not produced this much.

That's my experience.. yours will vary.

 

Deer + smoker = happy stomach

 

Last I did were ribeye, but I'm partial to chuck steaks (roasts as they are typically sold). Chuck is typically fattier and has more waste, but the flavor is fantastic. What are typically sold as roasts here ~2-3" thick I consider steaks. Those are perfect for sous vide because cooking traditionally they end up dead. 3-4 hrs sous vide at 128F, then 2-5 minutes per side in the cast iron pan on the grill set to inferno and they come out perfect.

 

I only use pitboss pellets and just cleaned mine before using it. I must have done a couple smokes because it was worse than that.