Food Smokers and Smoking Tips/Tricks/Techniques

Ya the plugging it in thing can be a pita. Mine has the nice wheels on it so it gets rolled back into the garage after I'm done. If I had to leave it out I would have bought the cover for it. I also bought the thermal blanket for it so I can smoke outside in the winter, worked really well last year. Will get it's workout again this winter lol.

This weekend between my smoker and my friends we did 3 briskets, a bunch of brat's, 4 smoked pizzas (two cheese and two with brisket, one we also added bacon and sausage to it). Then yesterday had some family over and I did about a 20-30 min smoke on some porterhouse steaks then cranked it up to do the actual cooking. Don't have any pictures from the smoke fest weekend but lot's of happy people.

Next weekend will most likely end up with a couple of fattie's being smoked.

 

And if you handled it correctly, significantly less chance of gross microorganisms on it

 

not really a problem with fresh game meat IMO...

 

recipe?

 

I slice,dredge in flour, fry in butter, sprinkle on salt

 

Fat cap up or down?

 

Anyone big on smoking cheese? It's been something I have wanted to try for awhile but have been to lazy to build a cardboard box to hold the smoke from the WSM.

 

I ended up brining it for 5 hours and cooked it until it reach 165 internal. Actually was really moist and delicious. I've cooked a few wild birds, and this one turned out the best. Usually I stick it in the crock pot but I wanted to try it on my Kamado Akorn grill. A lot of times I'll follow Steve Rinella's turkey schnitzel style recipe with lemon. Usually I breast them out but next time I am going to smoke the bird whole.

 

This is my thoughts exactly. I worry about bacteria in a commercial processing plant. But that's just me.

The best wild turkey I've ever done was cut into large cubes, place in large zip lock bag pour in entire bottle of zesty Italian dressing, let sit in fridge over night at least. Wrap said cubes with bacon and grill. Good stuff!!!

 

Finally got myself a smoker and definitely got a lot of use out of it this weekend. I've done ABTs, ribs, brisket, and pork butt on my webber kettle in the past and it came out great. I stopped doing it since it took a lot of babysitting to get the temp to hold well in the kettle. I ran across the clearance char-broil large offset smoker for $70 and ended up buying it.



That night, I wiped down the inside of the smoker with some olive oil and fired her up to season it. I didn't want to waste the smoke so we made some ABTs and threw it on there. Saturday, we grabbed some pork ribs and threw them on. The meat on the top shelf was regular and chorizo spam (we were hungry and figured why not try it out) and reheated some of the leftover ABTs on the smoker




Didn't get any finished pictures but the st louis ribs came out nice and juicy. The larger spare ribs were a bit dry. I did the 3-2-1 method and made sure to spray it with apple juice about every hour. I'll get the hang of it after a few more smokes.

Then yesterday, we were having some friends over so I grabbed a pork butt and tried to do some pulled pork. I fired up the coals around 1am sunday night and threw the pork butt on the smoker at about 2am. I haven't had a chance to mod the smoker yet (need to make a charcoal basket, seal up the lids, add dryer vent tubing to connect to the chimney, etc) so was having trouble keeping the temp to hold steady for longer than 45 min - hour without needing to adjust the vents / add coal or wood / etc. It was a 7.8lb bone in butt and I couldn't get it past 185 internal. Eventually pulled it off 13 hours later after it just stalled at 185 for over an hour and foiled it / put it in a cooler for an hour to rest. The meat wasn't as tender as I wanted it but it still came out real good. Meat was on the verge of being dry but I guess I pulled it in time. I ended up slicing it. I'm going to attribute this to being impatient and not having done pork butts in a while but overall I was happy with the end result.


(took this picture around 8am so bacon was for breakfast)

I didn't take enough pictures, especially at the end of the smokes but definitely enjoyed the results and got my money's worth out of the smoker so far.

 

Homemade is awesome! But for quick easy and very tasty, try some of the new Cracker Barrel Mac. There are a few varieties, the chedder Havarti does not suck.

 

Kraft Dinner Ftmfw

Also gouda havarti cheddar are all nice......and velveeta lol

Depends on the mood I guess

 

Up. Point furthest from heat source , in your case, I would put the point to the edge instead of center

 

Thanks. You think in a 18.5 WSM that the edges are cooler than center? I would have thought the edges would be hotter because of the lid.

 

Try the Cracker Barrel.

 

This for the stovetop only version.

http://sayyes.com/2013/04/10-minute-homemmade-mac-and-cheese.html

 

What size box of pasta? And is 5 ounces evaporated milk correct?

 

Never thought of this.. I'm sure someone with a WSM here will chime in

 

You might get good results, and certainly others on here have, but I invested a lot of time and money when I tried and was disappointed with the results. Did a big batch with hickory and another with apple. 5 or 6 different kinds of cheese for each wood. About 2 hours on hickory, 2 1/2 hours for the apple. Vac sealed for about 2 months. Didn't like the taste of any of them, with the exception of gouda/hickory.

If you try it I recommend starting small. Maybe a few types of cheese and pull some off after 1 hour, then a little more after 1 1/2 hours then the last of it after 2 hours or so.

 

A regular size box of pasta? I used a box of shell pasta...whatever the size. It's usually 16oz. A can of evap milk, 12oz. You can use just regular milk if you so choose. I think evap milk makes it creamier.