Food Smokers and Smoking Tips/Tricks/Techniques

Pumpkin Spice Ribs because I’m a lawless menace to society

 

Well?

 

My thoughts exactly

 

You can (spend 750$ or so to...) get a chamber vac sealer that can actually vac seal liquids, too. I am really wanting one, but it's hard to justify for how often I "need" to vac seal jars or liquids. Even though the bags are more expensive, it's a long ways off breaking even. I think. I'll have to actually math it out.

Sliced, 3 hours? Hot damn! I do 8oz bricks (the common "let me just get a block of cheese at the store" size), 2 hours. Let them rest for 2 weeks. I haven't done slices before, but 3 hours seems like a LOT for that surface area/volume ratio. You could probably cold smoke slices in 20 minutes, but I haven't tried that before.





Edit - I've done some math, because I'm bored. I have a 35$ cheapo one, and I looked at replacing it with a 115$ "nice" "traditional" vacuum sealer, or a 350$ Vevor Chamber. There's also a go-to decent chamber, the vacmaster.

Comparing my cheap one (35) to the nice (850) one, the bags are cheaper, but it takes 15,436 bags to break even. Comparing the nice traditional to the cheap chamber, it's 4450 bags to break even. In the years that I've had my vacuum sealer, a shade over 4 years on the nose, I've burned through about 400 bags (and that's a high estimate).

If you want to vac seal liquids, what I do is put them in the bag, then freeze them in the freezer. Then vacuum seal the frozen bags. THEN you can defrost them, and refreeze them. I've done sauces, soups, broths, etc this way and it's been good. Now that I do out the math, it'll take me about 40 years to break even on a chamber vac, AND they're way bigger/bulkier to deal with....

 

Sounds like a yes to me.

 

I have a 35$ external (I think that's the term for it) sealer from Amazon, I THOUGHT it was nearing it's end of life, the heater wire burned a hole in the teflon tape. Turns out it's like 3$ for a roll of that stuff, I'll be replacing it tonight and probably keep 'er running! I was trying to justify a chamber vac (to myself and my wife....), I don't think I can though.

 

Sunday rack of ribs. No sauce, just rub.

 

Yeah, I have replaced both the wire and the teflon tape on mine with no worries.

 

First cool dip of the season in t-4 hours. 52 lbs. of cheese prepped and ready!

The first batch is always my attempt to get ahead of popular orders: sharp cheddar, Pepperjack, Gouda, and Muenster.

 

52lbs dang is all I can say and that's cause it was auto corrected.

 

I usually usually sell 500 lbs. per season, weather permitting. When it gets below 40° F, the pit has all kinds of stupid stuff on it.

 

I need a new job apparently

 

Oh don’t quit your day job. I don’t sleep much, just use my ‘leftover’ time for productive stuffs. Lawd knows I wasted plenty of time already.

 

I'm half way to the grave, right there with ya.

 

We need to get you some Cougar Gold to smoke

 

My parents are doing a bacon roast at their house this weekend and all of the family is coming over. I plan on firing up the smoker to make something simple that won't take all day, street corn dip.

 

It's canned...? Interesting.


I thought I smoked a lot of cheese this year with something like 18 8oz bricks. Reminds me I gotta shove those to the freezer now that they've settled.

 

Yup! Developed in the 30's and 40's as a solution for storing and shipping cheeses for war. Wax and plastic storage would crack and spoil, and up until this point any tinned cheese would off gas and explode. WSU created a canned version that wouldn't ferment further and create more gasses, thus not explode. Dr. Golding was the one who created the variety that finally worked, hence Cougar Gold. It's expensive AF but really, really good. It's all made by students at WSU 100% with milk from cows in Pullman and Moscow (WSU and UofI), then aged for a year before being sold. They have some softer white cheese varieties that are only aged for a few months, too.

https://creamery.wsu.edu/about-us/history/
https://creamery.wsu.edu/cougar-cheese/flavors/
https://seattle.eater.com/2023/7/12/23791818/cougar-gold-cheese-in-a-can-washington-state-university
https://www.bonappetit.com/story/cougar-gold-cheddar-cheese

 

If you cut those 8oz bricks in half lengthwise - you increase the surface area - just a thought