Smoking Food Thread

leftcoastdeac said:

Weber Smokey Mountain users; talk to me about using a clay pot instead of water...

Do I just wrap the clay pot base in foil and set on the lip of an empty water pan? Should the clay pot actually fit inside the water pan? Does the clay pot completely replace the water pan, meaning I have to find one wide enough to sit on the water pan holders?

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Mine fits into the water pan. I generally put it into the pan and cover over the top with foil to catch the drippings. The water pan I use is actually a charcoal pan out of a Brinkman Charcoal smoker, which is a little bigger than the more rounded Weber water pan. I'm not sure if that would matter or not.
http://www.academy.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/Product_10151_10051_91711_-1?kwid=ps_pla

TheTwinAndreBen said:

Anyone here ever smoked Quail?

I smoked a bunch of them this past weekend. I did my standard bird song and dance with some BGE poultry rub, low and slow and sauce at the end.

I pulled the birds at like 155, pretty weak for poultry, but they were super done and more dry than I would have liked them. Do poultry rules not apply for smaller bird game? Im thinking maybe brining them first would help. I still have a bunch of birds that my dad killed.

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I've never smoked one, but had similar experiences baking them. We always brine ours now.

TheTwinAndreBen said:

I pulled the birds at like 155, pretty weak for poultry, but they were super done and more dry than I would have liked them. Do poultry rules not apply for smaller bird game? Im thinking maybe brining them first would help. I still have a bunch of birds that my dad killed.

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Things continue to cook from the outside in when you remove them from the heat. On something that small, you may have to remove at a much lower temp to get a final rested done temp in the range you want.

Also, I don't like low/slow on poultry. It's just more time on the fire to dry out the meat without any of the needed fat to break down and keep things moist. The purpose of low/slow is to break down fat, etc in tough, otherwise hard to eat pieces of meat like brisket, pork shoulder, ribs. Try bumping up your temps. I smoke poultry at 300-350 to limit the potential for over-drying and to get a crisper skin. You don't need the long exposure to heat on poultry like you do with traditional BBQ meats.

And yes, brining is an absolute requirement for poultry. The only exception to that rule is many of the store bought birds that essentially come pre-brined from the factory (I try to avoide those). Most of the poultry I cook these days is sourced locally and from heritage breeds, so the meat has a lot more flavor and doesn't come pre-processed, brined, etc. Heritage and wild poultry has even less fat than the already lean factory poultry, so brining is huge in keep things moist.

Pulled pork tacos for dinner tonight with the leftovers from the shoulder I did a couple weeks ago :drool:

Pics or it didn't happen.

haha I already ate them

just threw half a red bell pepper, half a green bell pepper and half an onion in a frying pan with a tiny bit of olive oil and some garlic powder/pepper, half-sauteed it then threw in the pork and through some bbq sauce on and kept on cooking until it was warm. Pretty basic.

JDawg said:

Pulled pork tacos for dinner tonight with the leftovers from the shoulder I did a couple weeks ago :drool:

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Weeks?

jhmd2000 said:

Weeks?

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yeah I've just had the pulled pork sitting on the cutting board since the end of March and just snack off it whenever I feel like it but today I actually made a meal out of it

JDawg said:

yeah I've just had the pulled pork sitting on the cutting board since the end of March and just snack off it whenever I feel like it but today I actually made a meal out of it

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well since you cooked it then thats not terrible.. shouldve killed some of the bacteria that have been chillen for a couple weeks..

Haven't had a chance to get some pics of my smoker because I'm getting ready for a conference at the end of the month. I did find this picture online of the interior of the smoker I have.

The "pan" to the right near the open door is the original "wood pan". It sits directly over the burner and has the vents in the bottom that allow the flame to reach the wood and catch fire. I put a 10" cast iron skillet on top of the pan like most people who have this unit recommended. My only issues now are that the cast iron pan seems to get too hot so next smoke I am going to make a buffer with balled up tin foil to have the wood chunks resting on, instead of the bottom of the pan. If that works, I will work on a more permanent modification.

The water pan is to the left and it slides in a rack just above the chip pan. The water pan is to small so I bought a large cake pan from A.C. Moore and have it sitting on the bottom cooking rack for now until I can modify the original water pan rack to accomodate the larger pan.

I am also going to build a dolly to mount the smoker on so I can roll it around the deck and it will raise the cooker up a foot or two. Attached is a pic of someone who built one for theirs and I plan on duplicating their design, but making it wider to the right side so my propane tank can set on the dolly also.

Racer and/or tsy: Was thinking of putting a handful of lava rocks in the bottom of the cast iron pan as my permanent solution to getting the wood chunks off the bottom of the cast iron. Do you think that would work or would I have similar issue?

deacfan78 said:

Racer and/or tsy: Was thinking of putting a handful of lava rocks in the bottom of the cast iron pan as my permanent solution to getting the wood chunks off the bottom of the cast iron. Do you think that would work or would I have similar issue?

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Sounds like a good idea to me.

I know the tin foil balls would probably be fine, but I can be OCD about certain things and thought the lava rocks would look good. The main reason I bought the Masterbuilt XL instead of the regular sized version was so I could fit a whole rack of ribs without having to cut them in half. They wouldn't taste any different, I just couldn't stand the thought of cutting them in half before cooking them.

Also, tell me more about a dry heat sink versus the water pan...I think I have seen were some people used a piece of stoneware in place of the water pan to distribute heat and keep temps down.

Forgot to post...but Saturday was brisket day.

Had a 9 lb one, but due to issues I couldn't quite figure out (outside temps? winds? air flow?) I was either sitting at the low end of 200 degrees or it was dipping even lower and I just couldn't quite get the smoker's temperature up to a satisfying level. After about ten hours of this I figured that I needed to speed things up so I wrapped the brisket in foil and finished it in the oven at 300 degrees. I was really worried that it wouldn't be good....but damn it was still really, really delicious. My friend's still gave a ton of props and I had an extra sandwich that ended up putting me on the couch that night instead of going to the bars with everybody else. But I think I'm done with the more intensive meats for a while due to both effort and time constraints, hitting my busy season soon.

OriginalAdmiral said:

Didn't really get any pictures of the big trailer. It was pretty cool though. I did get one picture of one of his smaller trailers. I'll email it over.

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Here are the pics in case anyone else is interested. OA, I'm seriously thinking about taking this course, but having a basic working knowledge of smoking will it be worthwhile? Did most of the people in the class have any prior smoking experience?








The trailer in the background is my ideal competition/catering trailer.

JDawg said:

Forgot to post...but Saturday was brisket day.

Had a 9 lb one, but due to issues I couldn't quite figure out (outside temps? winds? air flow?) I was either sitting at the low end of 200 degrees or it was dipping even lower and I just couldn't quite get the smoker's temperature up to a satisfying level. After about ten hours of this I figured that I needed to speed things up so I wrapped the brisket in foil and finished it in the oven at 300 degrees. I was really worried that it wouldn't be good....but damn it was still really, really delicious. My friend's still gave a ton of props and I had an extra sandwich that ended up putting me on the couch that night instead of going to the bars with everybody else. But I think I'm done with the more intensive meats for a while due to both effort and time constraints, hitting my busy season soon.

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With a sufficient fuel load, unless its in the teens or below, the temp or wind shouldnt make such a drastic difference. Were you getting good airflow to the coals? Most of the issues with vertical smokers is insufficient air to the fire.

I thought it was fine when I looked at it, and even when I gave up the coals looked plenty hot (there was a sizeable visible flame) yet couldn't get it over like 170. I was baffled since everything seemed consistent with when I did pork shoulder a couple weeks ago and had no problem keeping it at a consistent 250.

Did you go solely by the thermometer on the smoker or did you test it with another cooking thermometer? The standard thermometers are cheap and highly unreliable, so if you had the proper fuel load and had a hot fire, it may be possible that your temps were good, but your thermometer was off. Just throwing that out there.

I have one of these types (not this exact one) inserted through a hole slightly below where the meat sits as well as your standard "cold/ideal/hot" thermometer at the top that's kinda useless

I need to read this thread again tonight. I'm going to do the smokey Joe modification to my brinkmann smoker. And do two pork butts for graduation. I'm going to go ahead and do them on Friday and reheat the next day so that I'm not in danger of not finishing.