Food Smokers and Smoking Tips/Tricks/Techniques

Last time we did them we smoked a brisket before hand, dough was prepped ahead of time and sitting waiting. Chopped up some of the brisket, I made a sauce that was half BBQ sauce half pizza sauce, put down a layer of sauce light layer of cheese, good layer of chopped brisket, more cheese so extra chopped brisket and some caramelized vidalia onions. Into the smoker till done. Took it out let it setup for a few mins then put it up. Also did a cheese pizza that day. Brisket Pizza was AWESOME.

I keep playing around with thinking about making a smoked ice cream. Have some ideas on how I want to do it just need to get the time and to did the ice cream maker out.

 

Too funny. I've seen deep fried ice cream before, so why not?! I did the mailbox mod to smoke cheese and things without the heat but it still gets warm in the smoker. I want to do something to keep the item to be smoked really cold (for safety), i.e. a longer smoke for a steak, so I'm toying around with the idea of using a dorm style refrigerator. I'd have the smoke tube in the mailbox, run dryer vent from it to the refer with a return vent line back to the mailbox. Maybe use a small computer mother board fan to circulate the cold air air. Unburned oxygen (fresh air) would still need to be introduced into the loop but I think with some tuning it would be doable.

I may have to try the brisket pizza. I'm having an end of summer BBQ in 2 weeks and will have a large brisket as well as 1/2 dozen rack of ribs, so there will likely be leftovers.

I'm making pellet dust out of hickory in prep for the party:

 

Pellet dust aka Texas bath salts.

 

The only real downside of pellet smokers (my opinion) is that they don't produce a lot of smoke (when compared to a stick burner). One of the ways guys add more smoke is with a smoke tube. You can see one in my cheeseburger pic above - it's a stainless steel perforated tube. You add pellets to the tube, hit it with a propane torch to get it burning then blow out the flame. It will smolder and produce extra smoke (see the 1st pic in my cheeseburger picture trilogy above for the amount of smoke).

The trick is to get the pellets smoldering but not go out. The pellet smoker creates positive pressure when it's burning by pulling air into the firepot for combustion using a fan, which pushes it up into the smokebox then out of the vent and any other openings. I believe this oxygen depleted air is the reason the smoke tube is difficult to keep lit but who knows. Anyway, to keep it going guys will layer an inch or two of pellets, then some dust, then some pellets, then more dust, etc... into the tube. The dust burns easier than the pellets so the tube stays lit. I can tell when the smolder hits the dust as there is a visible increase in smoke production.

 

Dorm fridge won't keep anything cold. it used a VERY weak compressor, not meant to run for long times. And it doesn't have the cooling ability to keep cool with a input airflow. Unless you are using cooler air to start, like 40f or so.

But, if you got one laying around free give it a try. Careful where you cut, the coils are usually buried in the sided etc.

 

I don't have one laying around but they are easy to find cheap. I thought cooling might be an issue but I figured if I circulated the air (fridge to smoke box to fridge & introduce a little fresh air) it would stay relatively cool. Or not! I know nothing of the capabilities of the refer - just spitballing ideas. My unfinished projects list is down to two pages and I get antsy when it's that short so I make up these things to add! Damned unfinished projects!

 

Getting smoke is the easy part, you have to watch you aren't filling it with white thick smoke which can be bitter. The bluish smoke has lots of flavor and less bitterness.

 

Yea, I learned about them from PC watercooling etc. Folks thought they could put a 500 watt PC in a fridge and it would stay cool. The dorm fridges pop up there as ideas every now and then.

 

All this talk about smoking things and the pizza made me hungry, so I picked up a Papa M's and smoked it for dinner. Mmmm Mm good.

 

Very nice

I need to try them on mine as I said before all the ones I have done have been on my friends. I think I will head over to Amazon and order the pan we got for his, has holes in the bottom to let some of the smoke in the bottom and let some of the moisture out of the dough.

This is the one we got (he has 2 now)

Eastman Outdoors BBQ Grill Pizza Pan

http://www.amazon.com/Eastman-Outdo...830&sr=1-1&keywords=90414+BBQ+Grill+Pizza+Pan

Man now I'm hungry lol

 

I may have to look into one of those. I bought 3 GrillGrates and they worked out, pun intended, grate for the pizza. I just left it on the paper tray, set it on the grate and it turned out perfect. The GrillGrates are definitely more $ than that pizza pan but they do steaks, burgers and chicken very well so you get a little more versatility out of them.

http://www.grillgrate.com

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-alias=lawngarden&field-keywords=Grillgrates

 

That's nice may have to check them out for a few things I want to do. We went with the pizza pans since we are using fresh dough and we didn't get enough cooking on a normal tray on the first one we did. These have worked great so far, need to smoke a couple pizza's in the next few weeks. May need to look into a way of keeping the rig warm since it's going to start getting cold out, I want to smoke a turkey for Thanksgiving. They make an insulated wrap for my smoker that's not horribly priced may need to look into that.

 

I've been looking into insulating the smoker as well. Did some research and wrapping it in a welding blanket seems popular. I found them at Harbor Freight for a decent price.

 

I'm teaching the girlfriend how to smoke. This will be her first go at it by herself (picking snd prepping the meat, and setting up the charcoal/wood)

 

Depending on the style/shape of smoker, I've also seen people build blinds to go around them out of plywood covered with foil insulation.

 

It's about ready to be pulled off the smoker soon and get put in a cooler.

 

Soaking my buck board bacon to get some salt out then a couple hours to dry - might not get time to smoke it until tomorrow.

 

So the batman mask is the key step.