Food Smokers and Smoking Tips/Tricks/Techniques

Made 25# of snack sticks for hunting season from last years deer.

 

Last weekend was 20# of Garlic pepper jerky.

 

Those were my first two products in my new smoker. Gotta love those old industrial freezers.

 

Installed it in its own little home in the back yard. Full blow meat shack.

 

Nothing fancy. Couple of chops with reg Pitfaced, a couple with Unicorn and some bacon wrapped corn hiding in the foil.

 

I saw Alton Brown make a smoker out of a cardboard box lined with foil once lol I’ll try to dig it up

 

Something like this https://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-Make-a-Cardboard-Smoker/

 

PF ribs ftw!



Could have used another 30mins but no one complained...

 

There is a whole thread on Virtual Weber BB on the tamale pot mini WSM going back more than 10 years. https://tvwbb.com/forumdisplay.php?74-Smokey-Joe-Mini-WSM-Project

And the readers digest version https://virtualweberbullet.com/miniwsm.html

Back when the 18" was the smallest WSM you could get made sense. But now that Weber offers a 14" I'd just go for the Weber 14" WSM. Here is a comparison of the size of the 2.

I also use a Jumbo Joe for camping.



You can use pizza screens for more smoking surface area, the thickness of the spacers would depend on what your smoking of course.



Obviously you can only stack a few screens on a JJ compared to a WSM. But the JJ allows you to grill and also cook with indirect heat. And smoke. If I had to take only one cooking system with me for a couple of months (heaven forbid) it would be the Jumbo Joe.

Cajun Bandit even makes a rotisserie that fits both the JJ and WSM.



You don't have to find a tree to plug it into, it will also run on batteries.

And at home I use the Jumbo Joe as much as any of my other grills.

 

Started a new experiment today with some chicken thighs


Made a marinade loosely based on some random recipe I found online that is Greek yogurt and a bunch of seasonings.


So basically the idea was to create a base with an onion and stack the flattened out thighs on top of each other and then top off with a half a lime.





The original idea from the recipe was to put in a 400 degree oven for an hour ... But I chose to try the easy bake oven to add some smokey flavor.
With the stiff wind today, I was only able to manage about 310 degrees, which was fine by me. After my tower of chicken flopped over a couple of times I had to prop it up with some additional skewers.


After 2 hours the IT was only like 125 so I stopped taking pictures and fired up the gas grill and dug out all the parts to the rotisserie thing I bought a couple of years ago. I ditched the onion and slid the whole stack on the rotisserie skewer and let it go about 35 minutes and pulled it at 165 IT.

Sliced up the thighs to eat throughout the next few work days and made some tacos with a couple of them for dinner tonight.

 

Man those look really good. @Misplaced Nebraskan is supposed to making some up so I can buy some from him. My friend and I are doing a smoker from an old commercial fridge. Going to be propane based but electronically controlled. I have the electronics put together I just have to finish soldering the last of it up and then get some wiring run so I can install the needed software. Looking forward to messing with it once we have it all together.

 

was supposed to make some salamis today... will shoot for this weekend

 

Please be wary of the foamed insulation some manufacturers used on those units. Some does not take kindly to heat without gettin’ toxic or flammable as hell.

 

Yes sir, we actually have two of them and one is like
That. It’s already being stripped and will
Have the insulation replaced and new stainless steel insides put in place. Friend is a firefighter so he is super careful about that stuff.

 

Just giving ya crap man.

 

you?! say it ain't so!

 

I would NEVER do that. You have no proof to the contrary either.

 

not sure what you mean?!

 

There are other people with lasers that may know of you bun days???