Food Smokers and Smoking Tips/Tricks/Techniques

Man all this smoker talk I'm smoking some salmon tonight

 

I've never tried a hot smoker. I need to build one. Like to tow behind my truck! Smoke a whole hog!

 

No one mentioned this, but I have a Traeger pellet smoker and I couldn't be happier. Super easy, set the temp., let it do it's thing. Holds temp perfect, and you can get different pellets (hickory, mesquite, etc) for different flavors.

 

My keg smoker is a vertical setup - heat below water pan below meat. I use it partly to keep the moisture level up, partly as a buffer from the direct heat of the fire an partly as a temperature stabilizer (the water adds mass that absorbs and retains heat).

 

Sub'd.

Man am I glad I found this thread. Smoking is one of my new hobbies/passions, so it's great to get other ideas and see some other smokes in here.

I use a Weber Smokey Mountain 18.5" for my first smoker. I got it because everything I read and everyone I talked to said they were about the most consistent, easy to use, quality smoker you could get at a good price. I LOVE this thing. Everything I've cooked so far has turned out absolutely awesome. I shoot for 235-255 when I smoke, depending on how much time I have, etc. I might bump it up to 275. I don't inject, only rub (old school that way I guess), and I try to only foil on things such as ribs that I don't necessarily want bark on. I never foil my pork shoulder.

*Ignore the terrible yard...previous owners didn't care at all*


My favorite BBQ is pulled pork and ribs, so that's what I've done the most. This is my first smoke ever...it was a pork picnic, which is the upper part of the shoulder muscle. I too use the mustard method as a base for my rub.

Pre-smoke:


This was about 6 hours in. I left it on the smoker for another 4.5 hours. I'm really surprised that you guys were saying you have dryness problems with your smoked pulled pork...so far I've never finished a pork in the oven and my pork has turned out awesome.


And here's that picnic after pulling. Got a good smoke ring, and the meat was super tender and delicious and had good color. The flash from the camera makes the meat look lighter than it really was...


And these are 2 8lb butts that I did a couple weeks ago before a big party. The bark turned out phenomenal on these, even, dark, and just the right texture. I was very proud of these 2!


These are some ribs I did that same day. Left them on probably about 45 minutes too long...


And FINALLY, this is my first brisket that I did yesterday, actually on my dad's smoker, which is an offset one like some have pictured as opposed to my vertical water smoker. We did put a foil pan with water underneath this brisket to help keep it moist. This was probably our best smoke yet...even though this picture is actually of leftovers (I totally forgot to take pics as we were cutting it), you can see the awesome smoke ring. This thing was great, and I don't even like brisket that much!


Looking forward to keeping up with this thread! I'm doing 3 slabs of pork spares Wednesday for a camping trip, I'll be sure to upload pics of the process!

 

Traegers are the shit.

 

Fuuu, I shouldn't have clicked in here, I gotta go see if some bbq place is open now. Looks awesome guys!

Has anyone tried smoking in a Weber kettle grill? I know they say you can, but typically smaller cuts of meat; any tips?

 

the easiest I have found to help with drying out is 1: ALWAYS cook fat side up, and 2: take a stack of paper towels (5 or 6) and soak them in either water, or your favorite liquid flavor (burbon works great!) and lay the stack of towels on top of the meat while cooking.

 

i have. i've done large racks of ribs. but honestly, i do 80% of the cooking in a braise, in the oven. then finish on the weber, with copious amounts of smoking wood. works GREAT! nice because the braising liquid gets cooked down into a thick BBQ sauce.

 

Here was my dinner last night and lunch for the next few days

I started with a brine of 1gal apple juice (Thanks Polymerhead for the apple juice idea it was awesome!), 1/2 cup brown sugar, 1 cup kosher salt 2 heads of garlic, 10 whole allspice berries, a table spoon of whole black pepper corns & half a white onion diced.


Then to the birds i cooled the brine to room temp and tossed them in the ice chest with about 12lbs of ice.



I let them set in the brine for about 10 hours and got them ready for the BBQ. I always stuff my birds with aromatics for these i went with 40 cloves of garlic and a 1/2 large shallot for each bird


Dressed up and ready for the party the rub i used was just a store bought spice mix my spice rack is a little low so i couldn't make my own


Time for the BBQ at the moment i have a modified Webber gas grill i use to smoke my birds B.A.M.F smoker needs to be done soon .
But for the most part the Webber does a awesome job and holding 250 or even lower with a little monitoring. they are smoked over a apple juice bath with a few cut lemons.



After about 3 hours smoking at 250 and about 30min at 350 here's what i get 2 perfectly done chickens. i pull my birds at 161 and let them carry over to about 167 then let them drop to about 155 and slice.



Nice and juicy





After I'm done slicing the meat off all my chickens go into the crock-pot for 10 hours on low to make the best chicken stock ever. I'm really over this batch because of the 80 garlic cloves that were in the birds smoking are in the stock as well.



Did I mention I love this thread

 

damn JL!! i bet the stock comes out amazing!!

 

Good stuff, anyone interested in getting into I would recommend the Weber WSM! Some dam fine BBQ. I started last summer, here are a few of my latest cooks

 

I'm buying a smoker. Now.

 

Duuude...nice work. Looks awesome!

 

Photos of yesterday's rib cook...

On the smoker, ready to go...2 racks in rib rack on top, one on grate below. The 2 top racks were wrapped in foil at 2.5 hours and by that point had shrunk enough to be laid on grates.



I did each of the 3 racks differently. In this picture, the top rack was foiled with a little apple juice, and the bottom was left open the entire 5.5 hours. Pretty big difference in color.



And this rack was wrapped in honey/margarine/brown sugar. Different color than the 2, was much sweeter, and had a nice "sticky" texture. These were my favorite...they were AWESOME.

 

Those ribs look amazing, man. Really nice work!

 

What he said!!!!! Holy smoke they look good............ surprisingly that was the first smoke reference in this thread

 

I just got 5 chicken quarters on the smoker for about an hour now. I think since this is the first time I used real wood charcoal and it got hotter then I thought it would that I wont leave them on that long..... maybe 3 hours total

They charcoal took for ever to light since the lighter shit out early and I had to keep it going with paper. But I let it go for almost an hour now and I checked the temp gauge and it said........ hot...... so I took the smoker off and added some more wet wood and poured some of the water on it. Does anyone know if the smoker gets hotter using real wood chunk charcoal?? Going to check on it again......... haha

 

If you decide you like lump, you should buy an $8 chimney starter. I crumple 2 pieces of newspaper, put it underneath and pour on about 2 tablespoons of cooking oil. Then the lump goes in the top and one match lights the paper. Let it burn for 15 minutes and then you can pour it in your smoker. The wood doesn't go out until it's gone.

I believe lump does get hotter than pressed charcoal - at least that's what the bag says.

http://www.amazon.com/BBQ-467637-CH...d=1342749443&sr=1-24&keywords=chimney+starter

 

I use the chimney, I just ran out of lighter. The cooking oil sounds like a good idea. I noticed the lump burns hotter.... of course I didnt read the bad. But I did use it to crumple up under the chimney