col klink

gknl, what do you really want to get out of your grill? Dave needed the Chargriller because of it's larger capacity and its flexibility. I bought mine because I wanted to smoke meat. It sounds like you're looking towards the latter in which case I do recommend the Chargriller Pro but with a few caveats. Something I haven't mentioned is the firewood. I live in Seattle and it's not that easy finding inexpensive hardwood. When I first bought my smoker I purchased a half-cord of maple, which I really liked for many reasons, and it cost almost $200. That's really expensive, but it was aged at least 6 months, it was already cut and ready to burn and it was delivered to my doorstep. That wood also lasted me over a year of heavy use. I highly suggest going to outlying areas and looking for wood. Also, like I mentioned above, you will need a new fire grate pretty quickly. For the last two years I've pretty much thrown all of my culinary focus at my smoker and I've had some stellar results, just check out the potlucks on the PacNW board and you'll see other people's opinions on my smokery. Now, If you don't want the smoker to be an impulse buy (whatever you do, don't throw out the weber, they come in handy!), you'll go through some trial and error at first, figuring out how to best work it and all but it will take dedication. If you like the idea of hanging around your smoker and checking it at least every 2 to 6 times an hour for up to several hours, then by all means get one. Since you'll probably need 30 to 45 minutes to get the fire started and the smoker warm, you can see that smoking meat is a long process and there will be a number of runs out to the smoker and it's a pretty high maintenance cooking method. But damn, the results are worth it. I don't think anything of spending an entire Saturday smoking up a brisket or a hog leg (and drinking too). Also, you'll smell like smoke, or as I call it, bbq, permeating everything you wear. By the way, if you wear a baseball hat while smoking, make sure to wear it backwards otherwise smoke with build up under the brim and make you cry like a baby, something I learned pretty quickly. Small poultry takes an hour to an hour and a half, turkeys take about 2 1/2 to 3 hours. Fish take 45 minutes to an hour and half (if you're really good at keeping the fire really low but still alive) and fresh sausages take only half an hour. However, the bigger items like brisket can take 4 hours to 15 hours depending on size, likewise pork roasts. If you start off with a medium range item that's easy like a pork ass, you'll get a good feel of what you can get and then you'll get really excited about everything else. A cool thing to do on your first smoking is to get some fresh sausages to throw on, they're a great appetizer and will get you even more excited about the main course! I think Dave's already hooked with his brisket. Dave, have you called Chargriller yet?

Um, er, no, not exactly, but I'll put creme brulee on my list of things to smoke and you can be the first one to try it!

Last weekend I was at a birthday party and I met Chef Ken of the Columbia Tower Club. He's a really nice guy and we talked a lot about, guess what, food! He gave me some pointers on what creme brulee is supposed to look like and a new idea I had never thought to do with my smoker. But that's our little secret and I won't be trying it until I get my cold smoker up and running. If it's a success, y'all get to try it. When I was talking about how much smoking I do, Ken's SO turned and asked if I was in the business! Ken also drives a Chrysler so he's pretty cool in my book.

That looks like some pretty decent food, I think I could get used to student-subsidized meals.

I live in Seattle and only within the last year did we get a KK in the area. There was of course huge media coverage and believe it or not, KK lived up to the bill. After I tried some I was immediately hooked, and these were not hot off the line. What amazed me was how KK had reinvigorated my interest in donuts so when the (new) need for a doughnut hit and there was no way I was going to drive 45 minutes to an hour to wait in line for an hour and then drive another 45 minutes to an hour to get home, I would go get my donut elsewhere, usually a Winchells. I guess that just says how poor the Seattle donut market is. I can only assume that most folks are interested in scones or muffins because they seem "healthier." What impressed me the most were the cream filled doughnuts. The cream I'm used to was nothing more than a sugar paste, like the cheap white frostings you get at a cheap grocery store or a Costco. Bleah. My favorite though was the old-school blueberry cake doughnuts.

Well, sure. When you're in the desert, you'll drink anything.

Sounds great tsquare, I've been meaning to go there for a long time. Glad to see someone else likes it too.

I'm not surprised to hear about all of the people out there who basically don't cook and just go for the prepared food. Cooking is a wonderful art and it's something that you can work on for the rest of your life. Yes I understand most people just don't have the time and that's why there are so many prepared foods out there. But what does surprise me is that most people in my circle of friends (eGullet folks excluded) love to cook or cook on a regular basis. I have a hard time thinking of folks who don't cook.

I cook for people who don't feel bad. And, especially, for those who do. i pity those who don't cook for people who feel bad. I feel for people who cook for bad people. I feel people who cook and aren't bad people.

Those Polder remotes are a Godsend. I don't know what I'd do without mine! And yes, I too have given them as gifts.

mixmasterb, those turkeys sound pretty good. If you want, add a dry rub to the skin or under the skin for extra flavor. I just love the skin. It's also fun to deep fry ducks too, very tasty.

When I visit my folks in the summer, all I have is their old pos weber. The only thing wrong with it is the wood handles on the side are BOLTED to the drum which means there a NUTS and SCREWS on the inside which prevent easy removal of the grate. It is such a pain in the ass when you want to add chips to the coals and you can't lift the grate so you kind of slide it out, but you have three chickens on the far side and they start falling down so you use your wrist to lever the grate back up and it's still hot and you have burn scars for the rest of your life that some people think you tried to commit suicide but I say I was just commiting gallocide and then I have to explain that's killing chickens (or it could be interpreted as killing the French but I think that's gallicide). That may be one of my longer sentences. Except for that design anomaly, webers can be fantastic, especially with cuts of meat that have a lot of fat and tend to flare up in gas grills; all you have to do is put the lid back down and you're back in business. People here have been mentioning that you can't smoke large amounts of meat on a weber, but I've smoked up 6 whole chickens at a time before. Granted I didn't have a water pan, but the results were great, that was the second year in a row my family has told me "that's the best chicken I've ever had." It's now a yearly ritual, "Klink, make your brined chicken!!!!" For the weber, put the coals in the center along with your chips and put the chickens along the perimeter radially out from the center breast side up and rotate every half-hour or so, and for the last 10 or 15 minutes, put the breast side down for perfect skin. Pull them off at around 170F and they'll heat up the rest of the way, but they will be done enough, no pink and clear juices. The smoking temp should be around 250, but gauge more by the sound, if there's a lot of sizzling, time to rotate and close the vents more at the bottom. Total cooking time should be 1 1/2 hours to 2 hours. Occasionally there will be flare-ups from all of the fat, but like I said above, just put the lid on. So to surmise, you can put more meat on (but not two whole length of ribs, just one) but you might have to get rid of the water pan. When I'm at home, I rarely use the weber since I have my smoker and everything tastes better when it's been smoked. For the most part the chargriller pro that I have (pictured above) has been a real trooper and I can see at least another 5 years of heavy use. After about the 6 month period I had to tighten all of the bolts again, but so far it's done well. There has only been one thing that I've had to replace and that was the fire grate in the side firebox. The fire box comes with a small weber style grate (rectangular though, I'm just referring to the diameter of the steel rods) and another grate welded to a false bottom. After about 10 to 15 uses, both grates were just mangled and pretty much useless. Of course they were pretty useless to begin with. I had my buddy take off the small diameter grate and build a new one out of rebar in about 1" to 1.5" spacing. You can see it below: That fire grate has been a real champ, now I can get my smoker to above 400F without any problems. I don't have a cover for my smoker, but I part of my porch is covered so I just roll it back under when I'm done or it's raining outside. The paint on the firebox is not for high temps and it comes off pretty quickly so if you don't repaint it with special high temp paint, you need to spray it with oil after each use to retard oxidation. That may sound like a pain, but you really should have spray bottle of veggie oil by your grill or smoker anyway for spraying the grate before you put your meat on. I will grant that I don't spray down my cast iron grates because they're pretty well seasoned and if they're not, they soon will be with the all of the pork ass I smoke (snicker, snicker). As for clean up, I only recently started doing some heavy cleaning. I noticed that my smoker would "leak" black substances. I used a hand trowel to scoop out the smoking debris, which is mostly fat. I just need to figure out how to clean out the false bottom for the barrel section now because that stuff is flammable and I don't need to dirty my deck. The side firebox on the other hand is really easy to clean up with the false bottom fire grate and the fact that hardwood doesn't leave many ashes, and they're soft ashes too, light and feathery. I have to say that throughout my life I've made many purchases that I've liked and loved, but none of them can compare to how much joy not only I've received but also how many people I've blessed with it. It's just amazing to watch people taste good smoked meat for the first time and see their eyes light up and say "how did you do this?"

Oh yeah, we never deep-fried a turkey that was bigger than 10 or 11 pounds, the smaller the better. Plus, we did it outdoors on a propane range primarily used for homebrewing. I would never suggest doing it indoors.

I throw a Thanksgiving party every year and I smok up a turkey and duck and my buddy Shamus deep-fries a couple of turkeys and couple of other birds, last year it was a capon and a couple of ducks. Deep frying takes hardly any time at all and you get a very juicy bird with perfect skin in hardly any time at all. You have to be very careful with the oil because it can cause a lot of damage. The most important thing is to have a narrow and tall oil pot to reduce splatters. The second most important thing is when you put the bird in, DO IT SLOWLY. Dip it in a little, pull back, put in deeper, pull it back a little, etc. A slow ingress is a safe ingress. Oh yeah, make sure to use leather gloves and wear long sleeve shirts, protective eye wear and a silly clown outfit. By the way, injection is not needed if you first brine the bird. And this goes with any bird, regardless of how you cook it. Also, I should mention a caveat about my buddy's deep-fried birds. Though they were delicious and perfect, nobody ate them. Everyone went for the smoked turkey.

I used to replace my olive brine with vermouth because I was too cheap to use gin. But it never occured to me at the time to use cheap gin in the olives and good gin in the drink. Anyway, I liked my martinis with vermouth olives and I certainly liked the idea of vermouthing my olives, I've just fallen out of practice.

Dana, do you make your own sausage? My buddy and I just made up some spicy venison sausage cut with plenty of pork shoulder. Of course it never hurts to add wine and whiskey too.

Wow, there's nothing like bringing up painful beer memories. When I first visited Austin, TX, I was living in Seattle and was a tried and true beer snob. I'm in my hotel and along with my dinner, I ask for a "local" beer. Well, I recieved Shiner Bock and my critique was "I'd rather lick the sweat off a mule's scrotum that just climbed out of the Grand Canyon and died." Awlful, awlful stuff, but for some reason people like to drink it down there. Probably because it's healthier than the local water.

Well put Dave! They go down so !@#$ing smooth. It's a good thing I'm unemployed! Next thing you know, I'll be a girl-drink drunk.

I've smoked with and without my water pan (sometimes I forget) and the meats I've smoked with the water pan have been moister than those without the water pan. I didn't write my results down like a good little researcher (good little researchers don't drink while they work either), but that's been my experience. Pork shoulde and the butt come from the same limb, but from different places on the arm. The butt is on shoulder side, the shoulder is on the hoof side but both cuts abut each other (heh, heh). Here's a hard to read picture: And you are right that "country style" ribs are actually cut from the shoulder, sometimes boned, sometimes bone-in. As for how long a butt takes, it depends on the size and what texture you want. Since the shoulder and butt have lots of marbled fat, you can smoke them for a lot longer than other roast and you don't have to worry about overcooking, just drying out. For pulled pork, which is really the best way to go with a big pork roast, you need to hit an internal temperature of at least 210F and preferably 220F and you want to reach that temp slowly. For a five pound butt, figure on smoking for 7 hours with an extra hour for each additional pound. Once you start getting into whole legs and roasts in the 20 lb range, you go for 18 hours in the smoker. Then it helps to have a partner. Just to illustrate how beautiful the shoulder and pork roasts are in general, my last big bbq I smoked two whole hog legs (~23lbs a piece), a shoulder (~8 lbs) and a whole trimmed brisket (~7lbs, on my buddy's bullet). The legs were the first to come off at 14 and 16 hours because they started falling apart. Then the brisket came off after 15 hours. I still crack up when a 'que newbie, while watching me slice this beautiful brisket, says "I don't think it's done, it's still pink." After I mentioned that it had been at 225F for 15 hours, "I assure you it is done," he seemed to calm down a little. So, just for shits and giggles, we decided to leave the shoulder on the longest and finally pulled it off at the 18 hour mark. It was still juicy and plump and my favorite meat of all.

Oh yeah, I forgot to add the website: http://www.mojitocafe.com/ WARNING: There's a lot of distracting music everywhere on the site. As for the drinks, I made a whole bunch of them this weekend and I was able to get a lot of mint flavor without having to muddle 'em too much by using the overpriced organic $2 packages of mint. It certainly wasn't spearment like I have in my garden, more towards the peppermint side. That and there was only a hint of mint in the Mojito's mojitos, they weren't a mint party.

Thanks for the perfect idea nightscotsman. I don't drink as many manhattans as I used to because they're on the sweet side for me, even without the cherry. Personally I never liked the cherry, bleah. I like mine with Black Velvet and Martini and Rossi dry vermouth. I haven't tried Noilly-Pratt, now I will along with a perfect manhattan. I like Tanq 10 for my martini's and I like them shaken as I like the hopefully, very few ice crystals and the cloudiness. As for the ratio, it's probably around 15:1, just a couple of drops of dry vermouth for me thank you very much. Big green olives are my favorite, they soak up the most the gin. I just love eating a gin soaked olive after I've finished the drink, that's dinner! Of course, I have an "emergency" jar of olives in the fridge at all times, 'cause you never know when the urge for a martini will hit you.

I FINALLY went to Mojito Cafe last week even though they've been open since last December and I've heard good things about them. I'm kicking myself for not going in sooner! They've been casually mentioned here in the forum before by Papachef but a full write-up hasn't been done yet. Batgrrrl and I arrived around 4 pm, before the dinner menu was out. Both of us opted for a Cuban pork leg sandwich, though mine came with a slice of ham, the Mojito's special. I'm not sure what the sauce was, but there was just enough so the sandwich wasn't dry; on top of the meat was a slice of non-processed "white cheese" that seemed like it was swiss. The bread is vaguely like a french loaf and the whole sandwich is compressed under a grill. The result is warm tasty pork with cheese. Damn good. The sandwiches were plated with fried slices of plantains and topped with a garlic and parsely sauce, though it was mostly garlic. We also ordered a side of black beans and rice that had a touch of spice. Be forewarned, since the sandwiches were so filling, we hardly made a dent in the large serving of beans and rice. Many leftovers were taken home. The owners of Mojito's were very smart when they planned out their restaraunt, they applied for their liquor license a full year before they opened shop, and it's a full liquor license which means they're able to sell mojito's! For the uninitiated, it's a rum drink with mint, lime and sugar. Mojito's mojitos are the best I've ever had, though I'm willing to admit that I'd only had one mojito before going to Mojito's. All I know is that they went down smooth and tasted great. At first I wasn't sure if there alohol in drink because it was so good and I had to ask Batgrrrl. A little embarassing to say the least. I remember when the building was being remodeled after the failed coffee shop and thinking that it was just a terrible location and that the owners were nuts but still wished them the best. It turns out that nutty location has actually helped them. It was a little tough for them when they first opened, but now they're so busy that on Friday and Saturday nights there's a line out the door and an hour and a half wait. This is not surprising because the food is great and there is only 8 tables. They're located at 7545 Lake City Way NE, Seattle WA. They're right by the Lake City Way on-ramp to I-5. If you're going south on LCW, instead of veering left and heading towards I-5, head right like you're getting on to Roosevelt. Mojito's is the second or third building after you head right. If you're coming from south of there, you'll have to go north of the location and come back down LCW. When we arrived (4pm), the place was empty and one of the owners was very nice to chat with us. He told that the place is doing very well and they're looking for another location. Also, that the bulk of the customers are from Miami Beach, or are with someone from Miami Beach and was dragged there for the authenticity. I highly recommend dropping in. I can't wait to try dinner myself. The sandwiches were ~$6.50 and the mojito's were expensive but damn good at $5.75. The owner mentioned that everyone who's tried their version has tried to duplicate it at home. He didn't tell us the main secret, but did give us a tip, don't grind the mint and the lime too hard otherwise the ground lime will get too bitter.

Glad to hear it was a such a huge sucess! And very happy that I could help. Hopefully this will inspire legions of home smokers lighting up brisket! How smoky was it? I know the Girl thought the brisket was better than she had in Texas, do you? How did it differ? After I started smoking my own brisket, I thought back on the 'que I used to get in Texas and realized that I can do better. Sure there's the pride of doing it yourself (e.g. My kid is the best looking kid out there), but someone at home can dedicate attention than a 'que joint. You can make sure to mop it, turn it, sauce it and not have to worry about customers or smoking 60 lbs at a time. Anyway, I liked the fact you use bricks between the fire and the meat, if the fire acts up, they'll provide a nice buffer. I've found that when I fill up the entire grill meats on the fire side tend to get a little singed, bricks should help that immensely. I'm with Cathy in that any flavoring added to the water pan will not affect the flavor of anything you smoke. However I still do insist that the water pan does aide in helping the meat keep moist. It's not that the water pan adds moisture, it basically helps prevent moisture from leaving the meat. For instance, lets say you put one brisket in a sauna and another brisket into a steam bath. Which is going to come out moister? Dave, there's a couple of tricks you can use if your temp spikes by adding warm or cold water. Usually I put a whole kettle of water on the stove when I start to smoke so I can start the smoker faster. However, if the temp gets too high, you can put cold tap water in the pan to absorb the heat. That way you can keep the lid down and continue smoking without interuption. Sorry I couldn't post sooner, I've been a little busy this weekend and on Friday I was doing some smoking of my own. An 8lb cured but raw ham (it looked like a four inch steak for a split pea soup), a 6lb shoulder and small fresh venison roast. All turned out well except for the venison. My marinade had too much vinager and venison just doesn't do well on the smoker, it's too lean and you have to get temp too high to kill off the trich. The shoulder had that great pulled-pork consistency and was really smoky, it made damn good sandwichs. Dave, pork ass can be one of the most beautiful things to come out of a smoker. Brine it first of course, and the mop is optional (with a mop, it won't get as smoky). My 6lb'er smoked at 200 to 225 for around 8 hours and reached a temp of 208 before I pulled it off. Don't forget to let it rest! With the really fatty meats, I've found that mustard and vinegar sauces work out the best to cut through the fat and the smoke. Damn I'm getting hungry, luckily for me I have some of that pork in the fridge!

Oh please, I can handle Tabasco sauce without a problem. It's not the heat that I don't like, it's the flavor. Crystal just tastes a helluva lot better. Get Crystal extra hot sauce if you can. Crystal and Siracha are my favorites, but the Jalepeno Tabaco isn't that bad. Regular Tabasco is for consumer whores, go buy a tie.

Thanks for your help Malawry! You're so dreamy!