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diehlr posted:Alright, so, right now I have a 7.8 lb pork shoulder and it's been going at around 225-250 for 7 hours. Bark is starting to get black. If I foil this thing in an hour or so, leave it foiled for a couple of hours in the smoker, what are the chances this thing will be done enough? Went ahead and moved it to the oven uncovered at 225 deg. Lesson learned on how long it takes to cook these things. Probably going to be done sometime in the middle of the night.
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Oct 13, 2012 02:07
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Got a couple of pork shoulders on the WSM with the "Renowned Mister Brown" rub, running ~243 degF at the grate. The WSM (22.5") has a full charcoal ring, and a full water pan. 2 chunks pecan, 3 chunks plum. Top vent is fully open, bottom vents are 1/4 open. Used the Minion lighting method with ~30 briquettes. From experience, the WSM should stay between 275 and 225 through the night, and can make it a full 14-16 hour cook without refueling, depending on the conditions.
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Oct 13, 2012 05:10
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cornface posted:Last night I tried out the pepper stout beef from this site. Highly recommend it. That looks awesome. Do you think that recipe would work for a couple of rump roasts? This weekend I have a 5lb butt and 2 2 lb rump roasts (all together about $12 bucks). Its gonna be fun on a bun.
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Oct 13, 2012 05:52
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So I am out of town and at the mercy of what my friend has in his house to cook 2 racks of STL ribs tomorrow. The good: We have all the seasonings to make a pretty good version of the AmazingRibs guy's Memphis Dust Rub. The bad: there's no smoke wood of any kind to be had. Unknown: We're gonna use a Traeger pellet smoker/grill whatever the gently caress it is. It's the top of the line version and based on the tri tips we made tonight its very easy to control temp, but I am a babe in the woods when it comes to pellet smokers. Any thoughts or suggestions?
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Oct 13, 2012 07:53
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coronaball posted:So I am out of town and at the mercy of what my friend has in his house to cook 2 racks of STL ribs tomorrow. An axe, a chisel and wikipedia?
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Oct 13, 2012 11:16
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Stringent posted:An axe, a chisel and wikipedia? Right. If you can get trees that produce fruit that you'd eat, you can chop a branch for wood. It'll be green wood and won't smoke as good, sure, but it'll get you by. Try to heat up the smoke wood while you're cooking and it'll be even better (ie. chunks by the side of your heat source, such that it'll get it pretty damned hot but not smoking or on fire.) That'll dry it up real nice and you can throw the chips on as necessary.
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Oct 13, 2012 13:10
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If you have time you could also put them into your oven for an hour or so at like 150 degrees.
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Oct 13, 2012 14:43
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Gravel Gravy posted:That looks awesome. Do you think that recipe would work for a couple of rump roasts? I think any big chunk of beef that is meant for braising will work fine. Doing my first rack of ribs right now. I cut them on half so they would fit so I guess I will have to eat them with my head hung in shame. I wish I had paid more attention to the wind when I set the smoker up, though. I just had to try and rotate the whole thing around because the gusts keep spiking the temp even with all the lower vents closed.
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Oct 13, 2012 19:18
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Settled on a Weber Smokey Mountain for a purchase, but was wondering about which size to select. We don't entertain often, but possibly will have around 10 people for Thanksgiving, and was wondering if the 18.5" model is big enough to handle a turkey around 18lbs or so. Seems like the size would, but I can't say I've measured myself, so not sure. That would be about the only application where the size would be cutting it close for us, so if that's good then I think the 18.5 should be fine.
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Oct 14, 2012 22:06
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Bob Mundon posted:Settled on a Weber Smokey Mountain for a purchase, but was wondering about which size to select. We don't entertain often, but possibly will have around 10 people for Thanksgiving, and was wondering if the 18.5" model is big enough to handle a turkey around 18lbs or so. Seems like the size would, but I can't say I've measured myself, so not sure. If you want to ever do whole racks of ribs, the 18.5 is not for you. I have the 22, and full racks of baby backs barely fit. I absolutely recommend you get the 22, as there are a ton of things that are made easier by it. Once a year, I cook for coworkers, and with the 22 I can get 2 briskets on one level, and 3 pork shoulders on the other. with the 18.5, I would only be able to get a single brisket on one level, and hopefully squeeze two shoulders on the other. You are going to get BBQ out of your WSM good enough that you will want to start sharing, a lot. Get the space now.
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Oct 15, 2012 01:19
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Doom Rooster posted:If you want to ever do whole racks of ribs, the 18.5 is not for you. I have the 22, and full racks of baby backs barely fit. Seconded. I dont have a WSM (yet) but my smoker is about 18.5 and I continually wish for just a little more space
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Oct 15, 2012 02:53
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vulturesrow posted:Seconded. I dont have a WSM (yet) but my smoker is about 18.5 and I continually wish for just a little more space
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Oct 15, 2012 06:41
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I have an 18" and I've had no issues. I've done 8 racks of ribs at once by cutting them in half and standing them up with some paper organizers. You can even do three at once with no stands by cutting them in half and arranging them in a triangle. You can fit whatever size turkey you want vertically on the bottom rack as well. The only limitation is what was said above, once you start entering the realm of multiple briskets or shoulders it gets really tight, really fast. Two is basically the max. If you have the the money, get the 22, but the 18 has been just as good for me with everything I've done so far. A decent size shoulder and 5 racks of ribs will feed a lot of people.
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Oct 15, 2012 11:51
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The 22 is great but for small cooks I wish I had the 18.5 just for the fuel savings. A 22 full ring is pretty much an entire 18 lb bag of charcoal, which is about 12 bucks around here. I've heard about people using the charcoal ring from a 18.5 in their 22 and it works fine for smaller cooks.
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Oct 15, 2012 12:17
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I did 8 full racks of ribs on my 18" WSM no problem. Could have probably done 10 or 12 if I had a second rib rack. I also have done it exactly once since I've had it. That many racks isn't cheap. Go for the bigger one if you want, but I am completely happy with the 18". If I was to ever upgrade it would be to a BGE.
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Oct 15, 2012 16:46
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Saw posted in Coupons & Deals, bringing it here: 30" Electric Master Built for $150 http://www.amazon.com/Masterbuilt-20070910-30-Inch-Electric-Smokehouse/dp/B00104WRCY/ref=cm_cmu_pg__header Have a crappy Weber from a sale last year that I barely use just for the amount of effort it takes to keep the temperature constant for large cuts. Very tempted to pick this up for the additional space + the freedom of not being attached to the smoker for 12+ hours every time I use it. Anyone own one and can weigh in?
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Oct 15, 2012 16:50
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Did some beef for chili, beef for sammiches, some pork country style ribs, tomaotoes/jalpenos/habeneros this weekend on the WSM in the cold, windy rain. Can't wait to do another smoke! Took about an hour to come up to temp and once the vents were adjusted, didn't have to touch the thing for 12 hours aside from adding more smoke wood during the first few hours.
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Oct 15, 2012 20:43
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zerox147o posted:Saw posted in Coupons & Deals, bringing it here: I bought one last week when it was $140. Never smoked before. So far I've done ribs and brats; both came out awesome.
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Oct 15, 2012 21:44
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coronaball posted:So I am out of town and at the mercy of what my friend has in his house to cook 2 racks of STL ribs tomorrow. This ended up quite interesting. Found one of those hickory smoking kits that people put inside of gas grills to do a half-rear end smoke and dumped the poo poo inside with the pellets. Everything was going great for about 3 or 3.5 hours but then we noticed that we'd ran out of pellets. when we reloaded the thing, the pellets somehow ran into the grill itself and caught on fire, belching out a thick white acrid smoke. We rescued the ribs and threw em in the oven at 220 for about 75 minutes. And despite all the craziness and with more dumb luck than anything, the finished ribs had like a competition BBQ texture to them, bite marks and everything. Every single rib was consumed. On a more disgusting topic: what does everyone do with the water bowl from their WSM after a cook? I've been dumping it in my sideyard but it's beginning to smell rather awful after a full summer of smoking stuff. The water evaporates but the fat and crap just kind of sits there, and it's still smelling weeks later.
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Oct 17, 2012 08:20
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coronaball posted:This ended up quite interesting. Found one of those hickory smoking kits that people put inside of gas grills to do a half-rear end smoke and dumped the poo poo inside with the pellets. Everything was going great for about 3 or 3.5 hours but then we noticed that we'd ran out of pellets. when we reloaded the thing, the pellets somehow ran into the grill itself and caught on fire, belching out a thick white acrid smoke. We rescued the ribs and threw em in the oven at 220 for about 75 minutes. And despite all the craziness and with more dumb luck than anything, the finished ribs had like a competition BBQ texture to them, bite marks and everything. Every single rib was consumed. You should line the water pan with aluminum foil. That way, after your cooks, you can just lift it up out of the water bowl and wrap up all the oil or dump the cooled oil into an old milk jug or something to that effect. Be careful not to puncture the foil though, because the capillary effect will draw water up over the edge and make it drip onto your coals. You can also go waterless, with a big foiled terracotta plate, sand, or rocks. Mach420 fucked around with this message at 13:24 on Oct 17, 2012 |
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Oct 17, 2012 13:22
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A place at Amazon Marketplace has the 18.5 WSM for $242 +35 shipping. I reported it as a lower price, how often do they actually adjust their pricing to match? If they do, everyone get on that and report away. http://www.amazon.com/Weber-721001-...smokey+mountain Drillspot has the lower price, URL for it is http://www.drillspot.com/products/577210/weber_721001_185_inch_smokey_mountain_cooker_smoker Bob Mundon fucked around with this message at 14:17 on Oct 17, 2012 |
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Oct 17, 2012 14:13
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coronaball posted:On a more disgusting topic: what does everyone do with the water bowl from their WSM after a cook? I've been dumping it in my sideyard but it's beginning to smell rather awful after a full summer of smoking stuff. The water evaporates but the fat and crap just kind of sits there, and it's still smelling weeks later. I've just been letting it cool down, skimming the fat off the top with a cup, and then dumping the remainder down the drain. Other people have recommended foiling, which seems like more trouble than it is worth, or letting the ashes cool down, double garbage bagging them, and then dumping the water bowl into the ash bag.
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Oct 17, 2012 14:52
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Foiling takes 5 minutes and is a nice way to pass the time while the charcoal starter does it's thing. Also with the 18.5" one you can get an 18" wide roll of foil which makes it very easy
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Oct 17, 2012 22:22
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BraveUlysses posted:Tritip really is a hot and fast kind of cook but tell us how it turns out. I'd generally agree with you. But one weekend about nine years ago I was camping on the beach and, lacking a grill, buried my tritips in a pit with a bunch of hot coals for four hours or so. I had no idea if it would work out and still have no idea what I managed to do, but it was the most loving delicious and tender meat I've ever managed to produce. I've tried the same trick at my house a few times and have never managed to reproduce it properly. I was hoping maybe a really slow cook in the smoker would get me something similar. So how'd it turn out? Okay. Not spectacular though. The meat got up to 130° in just over an hour so it actually wasn't in there for very long. It was wonderfully evenly-cooked, but the outside surface was just too soggy and unimpressive (not that my pit-cooked tritips had any kind of bark either, but they were awesome enough that this was irrelevant). In hindsight I probably should have cooked it a tiny bit less in the smoker and then seared it really quick on the grill.  My veggies - bell pepper, onion, and cheese-stuffed pasilla pepper (okay, peppers are fruits but whatever) - came out good, though the cheese I stuffed the pasillas with was too mild. The smoked onion came out remarkably sweet, and the bell pepper really had a lot of smoke flavor.  But the best thing came the next day at lunch when I chopped up all the leftovers, sautéed them just a little bit, and made some tacos. Sweet onion; smoky peppers; juicy meat. It was perfect! (If not pretty  ) I'm going to try another experiment tomorrow, with two more tritips. These are a lot bigger so they should take longer; hopefully they'll at least absorb more smoky flavor. I'm going to try cooking one to 150° and the other to 205° (like a brisket, I guess, though I haven't tried brisket yet). And I'll sear both. Now, one thing I still have big questions about. I did an experiment with short ribs and decided I prefer cooking them to 200° (150° was definitely juicier but way more stringy). However, compared with short ribs I've gotten at BBQ joints mine seem to come out relatively dry and not as tender. I tried a second batch over the weekend that I mopped every 45 minutes or so, and that didn't seem to affect the dryness (or even the flavor much that I could tell). What am I doing wrong? Should I cook them to more than 200°? (I've seen 210° mentioned some places.) Less? Lots of water in the water pan? Choadmaster fucked around with this message at 09:06 on Oct 18, 2012 |
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Oct 18, 2012 09:03
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If the weather is decent this weekend I am going to try to do a brisket using the high heat method. I picked up a ~10 lb packer last night. Any pointers or suggestions for rub/sauce recipes would be great. I think my main concern right now is being able to keep the temp in the WSM up that high.
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Oct 18, 2012 15:10
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Choadmaster posted:I'd generally agree with you. But one weekend about nine years ago I was camping on the beach and, lacking a grill, buried my tritips in a pit with a bunch of hot coals for four hours or so. I had no idea if it would work out and still have no idea what I managed to do, but it was the most loving delicious and tender meat I've ever managed to produce. I've tried the same trick at my house a few times and have never managed to reproduce it properly. I was hoping maybe a really slow cook in the smoker would get me something similar. Not bad but looks like it needs some sear on it. Here's the recipe I use for tri tip: http://eggsbythebay.com/Recipes.html Someone's pics of this recipe: http://eggheadforum.com/discussion/1117388/morro-bay-richs-santa-maria-style-tri-tip
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Oct 18, 2012 15:29
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Choadmaster posted:Now, one thing I still have big questions about. I did an experiment with short ribs and decided I prefer cooking them to 200° (150° was definitely juicier but way more stringy). However, compared with short ribs I've gotten at BBQ joints mine seem to come out relatively dry and not as tender. I tried a second batch over the weekend that I mopped every 45 minutes or so, and that didn't seem to affect the dryness (or even the flavor much that I could tell). 200 degrees? Yikes! Try about 175. 155-160 is usually the safe temperature so be careful! There's so much more to smoking ribs than internal temperature. How long did you smoke them for? What temperature? How much did they weigh? How many times did you open the top (this reduces the heat)?
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Oct 18, 2012 17:30
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I smoke short ribs regularly, and I always take them up to 190. I cook them at 225 for 5-6 hours to get to this point. If I'm in a hurry, I'll foil them halfway to cut the time down. I almost never add anything to them other than salt/pepper. They always come out perfectly.
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Oct 18, 2012 18:37
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cornface posted:If the weather is decent this weekend I am going to try to do a brisket using the high heat method. I picked up a ~10 lb packer last night. Just as mentioned is pretty good, but if you go with the #5 sauce, definitely add the drippings, and add hot sauce to taste. High heat briskets have always worked well for me, regardless of rub or sauce. I've had some temperature issues with my XL Masterbuilt but they are largely solved by adding more meat or a pan of beans. More ballast keeps it even. It also got a bit better once it started to get seasoned in a bit, which is par for the course for anything. The biggest issue here in Vegas with everything is the wind, and my barbecue Guru helps with that a lot on my Weber.
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Oct 18, 2012 19:58
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Everyone seems to have a different temperature they like! I've tried cooking them to 150ish and I don't like how that turned out. I'll try 175 next time. Or better yet, I could get six or so short ribs and pull each one out in increments of 5 degrees and see which works best. I think I'll do that. FWIW, to get to 200, I had the ribs in there for about 6 hours. BraveUlysses posted:Here's the recipe I use for tri tip: At 400 degrees? I have no trouble grilling myself a delicious tritip in the usual way; I was just hoping to recapture that unique ultra-tenderness I got when I pit-cooked them once by slow-cooking some at a lower temp in the smoker. Maybe it isn't going to work, but I still intend to give it a good try! Choadmaster fucked around with this message at 21:40 on Oct 18, 2012 |
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Oct 18, 2012 21:35
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AxeBreaker posted:Just as mentioned is pretty good, but if you go with the #5 sauce, definitely add the drippings, and add hot sauce to taste. High heat briskets have always worked well for me, regardless of rub or sauce. Thanks for the info. I was planning on adding some extra chipotle to the rub and usually use cayenne in sauces and gravy because it has a more neutral flavor and blends well. This will be the first cook I've done without water in the bowl so I figure I'm either going to have a roaring inferno or spend the day chasing the temperature until I get the hang of it, but learning is half the fun. The lid/door seals on the WSM have definitely tightened up after the first few tries. I heard a lot of horror stories about out of round lids and stuff, but I think I got lucky.
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Oct 18, 2012 21:43
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Choadmaster posted:Everyone seems to have a different temperature they like! I've tried cooking them to 150ish and I don't like how that turned out. I'll try 175 next time. Or better yet, I could get six or so short ribs and pull each one out in increments of 5 degrees and see which works best. I think I'll do that. Gotcha... Maybe you could smoke it for a while and sear it at the end? It's always been tender for me as long as I monitor the internal temperature
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Oct 18, 2012 23:08
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So to the people with the 22.5" WSM, I've read some people have trouble running out of fuel on long smokes where the 18.5" won't. Are they just mismanaging their fuel, or is it tougher for 10-12hr smokes, etc? And on that note how much charcoal do you usually use. It seems like a standard load for a 18.5 is 2 chimneys of charcoal, 3 for the 22? I think I may be leaning toward the 22.5 after thinking that I could probably smoke up a lot and freeze what we don't immediately eat. What do people find is the best way to store and then reheat everything?
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Oct 20, 2012 15:23
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I have the 22.5, and never have any issues with running out of fuel with the minion method. That being said, unless you have an absolutely massive chimney, I put in way more charcoal than 2 loads. I generally pour up to just over the top of the ring itself, and then toss a full hot chimney on top of that to get it going.
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Oct 20, 2012 17:11
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Bob Mundon posted:So to the people with the 22.5" WSM, I've read some people have trouble running out of fuel on long smokes where the 18.5" won't. Are they just mismanaging their fuel, or is it tougher for 10-12hr smokes, etc? And on that note how much charcoal do you usually use. It seems like a standard load for a 18.5 is 2 chimneys of charcoal, 3 for the 22? I have the 18 and do basically what Doom Rooster said, except only start with about 15 lit so it comes up to temperature slower. For freezing, the easiest thing is to get a vacuum sealer that lets you use the ziploc style bags. The roll style ones are a pain in the rear end if you have something with any liquid in it. When you want to reheat, just throw the bag into a pot of boiling water. I am still new at this, though. Got my first brisket chugging away right now.
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Oct 20, 2012 18:28
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Read this thread and got pretty excited since I have a smoker in the basement. Decided to drag it out and realized its a Meco Charcoal Water Smoker, which doesn't seem to have good reviews online. I'm willing to experiment with it at least once but it seems like the manual is gone. Does anyone know of a guide on how to use it?
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Oct 20, 2012 22:57
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Baby backs coming off soon!
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Oct 20, 2012 23:01
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Hit the Bbq store that's annoyingly far away and just acquired orange tree wood, black walnut, ton of maple, and finally pimento wood for that authentic jerk flavor. Now to figure out what to do with that orange and walnut wood...
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Oct 21, 2012 03:44
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So, my tritip experiment has ended in great success. I had two tritips. I bought them both untrimmed, but trimmed most of the fat off the smaller of the two. The larger, untrimmed one (which was 5 lb) was the one I intended to bring up to 200° like a brisket. I was hoping the fat would keep it juicy. The smaller one (3 lb after trimming) was the one I was going to take to 150°.  I set the smoker to 210° rather than the usual 225°, in the hopes that the smaller tritip would be able to stay in longer to absorb more smoke flavor (my first attempt, which I took up to 135°, was done in barely over an hour!). As a little bonus, I threw in a red onion, a sweet onion, pasilla, serrano, bell, and habanero peppers, and some garlic so my friend could try making some salsa with smoked ingredients. Tritip is properly eaten with salsa.  The salsa ingredients came off first, after about an hour. I think next time I will leave them on about two hours, because the peppers were only vaguely smoky. The red onion almost tasted like candy. Very sweet and not sharp at all. The sweet onion (not pictured) WAS candy.  In the end, we used the entire smoked red onion and another entire unsmoked one in the salsa (didn't use the sweet onion). The salsa turned out too sweet for our liking, so we'll probably cut the amount of smoked onion down to 1/3 next time.   The small tritip hit 150° after a few hours. I took it off, hit it with a bit more rub, and seared it for ten minutes on my grill. I probably could have seared it a bit more, but that notwithstanding this thing was goddamn loving perfect. Tender, juicy, and perfectly smoky. I don't know if the tenderness beat that of the pit-cooked tritips I was trying to mimic but the flavor was freaking amazing. My friend and I ate almost the entire thing then and there.   The one I took to 200° came out after a bit over 12 hours. Most of the fat had rendered out and the poor thing looked like a shadow of its former self. I weighed it out of curiosity and it was 2.5 pounds, meaning it lost half its weight in the smoker. When I cut it, it was soft and flaky, not really juicy but at least not too dry. It was actually tender enough to cut with a fork, even against the grain. Is this what brisket is like? I've never done it. It really was a lot like pulled pork, except with beef. It was good (especially with this sauce I had sitting around), but it was nothing like a normal tritip. Despite having eaten almost an entire 3 lb tritip between us for lunch, my friend and I ate probably 60% of this one, too. Don't tell my doctor.   All in all, a successful experiment! I'm going to tweak a few things and give it another try next weekend to make sure I have everything down correctly (and make sure this time wasn't just a fluke!) and then I'll post a complete recipe here. Choadmaster fucked around with this message at 22:55 on Oct 21, 2012 |
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Oct 21, 2012 22:52
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Bonus post! (Because I'm not long-winded enough as it is.) After the tritips, I thought I'd try my hand at beef jerky. I've made a lot of beef jerky over the years and it's (almost) always delicious. Up until now I've always done it in the oven, hanging it from skewers and leaving the oven on convection mode at 110° with the door cracked open to vent humidity:  (I like to hang my meat from skewers because that keeps it from sticking to the racks and it allows me to pack 10x the amount of meat in!) Obviously I wanted to try this in the smoker now that I have one! I did everything the same with the exception of leaving the liquid smoke out of my usual marinade. I checked some recipes online to see how people usually do jerky in a smoker. Everyone seemed to be recommending 1/4" slices, but I normally do between 1/16"-1/8". For the purposes of this first attempt I made my slices a variety of thicknesses to see which worked best (I'm still a fan of thinner). The recipes also varied on smoker temperature: some saying 140°, most saying between 150°-160°. But I don't think beef jerky should be cooked, it should be dried, hence the 110° I use in my oven. Slightly risky perhaps, but I have yet to kill myself (fwiw, when I make it for other people I do briefly bring it up to 150° at the beginning, just in case). I compromised and set the smoker to 120°. The racks in the Masterbuilt smoker are somewhat obnoxious unfortunately, because they have two crossmembers going left-right instead of one like in my oven, which really gets in the way of the meat on the skewers and results in wasting about 1/3 of the space. But I managed.   That's about half as much jerky as I normally make. As it turns out I should have done my first attempt with even less than that, because I sort of hosed it up. In order to get max airflow, I took out the wood-chip tray and loader (smoke is provided by my AMNPS). But I think that resulted in the pellets burning too hot and the smoke being too harsh; I probably also used too many pellets (smoked for too long) because I didn't take into consideration the extreme amount of surface area jerky has compared to everything else I've smoked. The jerky is edible, but definitely has a powerful over-smoked taste to it.  Next time: (1) half as many pellets, and (2) don't ventilate until after the smoking process is complete. Anyone have any recommendations for what kind of wood to use for smoking jerky?
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Oct 21, 2012 23:28
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