woodburner

Using the bone-in works wonderfully. When you can reach in and pull the bone free from the meat with no resistance, your meat is done. It will neither detract or add anything by removing it prior to the cook. woodburner

First you need to determine what your capacity requirements are. ie what is your typical loading for each cook, in pounds. Will you be requiring multiple shelf levels inside the cooker? How much space is required between each shelf level is needed. What will be the time line of your typical cooks, will they be 5 hours or 24 hours? Does it need to be portable? What are the optimal tempreture requirements? Should it be insulated for high fuel effeciency. Smokers are much different than stoves in that one does not normally do a great job at all ranges of temperatures. woodburner

Where do you live? woodburner

I'll be in the area of the Trade Center in Boston in a few weeks and have the opportunity to procure fresh seafood for transport back to New York. Can anyone provide the names and addresses of a few retail fish markets? woodburner

Looks really good Ron.. As some of us have discussed previously on this list, did you find the fat to lean ratio in the pork butt satisfactory in the end product? Or did you add extra fatback to your meat mixture. woodburner

This past summer I had a unique experience cooking a whole, choice grade ribeye approx. 11lbs in weight. Starting with a procedure that Chris Schlessinger expains in one of his books which calls for rubbing the entire ribeye with EVOO and simply salt and pepper. Do a hot sear over hot coals on all sides then removing from the grill and cutting the ribeye into individual steaks, so as to cook each steak to each individual's requested doneness. Well I did a very hot sear, almost blackening all sides, removed from the grill and quickly wrapped in saran type plastic and put the whole kibbodle into a well chilled cooler filled with ice. After well cooled, about three hours later I cut the ribeye into individual steaks and finished over hot charcoal. The peeps went crazy. wonder what I did woodburner

I have at least ten witnesses to this feat. From TWO different occasions. Plus, there's the guy that I bazooka-belched when he had the misfortune to cross my line-of-fire. Wanna hear about the time I ate a whole pineapple, a bag of microwave popcorn and washed it all down with a can of Pepsi? ← Please everyone, no need to "egg" (change to orange) him on it's quite apparent from his reply to me he can, and did. If he shows pictures of his mouf, which when fully unhinged, is as large as a wide mouth mason jar, filled with a Florida's finest.... I, my dear friends will have to eat my words. woodburner

I picked up this product at the market today. Here is the site that shows these cute little bags of beans and pasta for the soup. Add beef stock and some cut up vegetables and simmer for a few hours. Anybody else tried this brand? woodburner

ok mr. mason jar I say nobody can put a whole orange in their mouf. nobody woodburner

hzrt8w, I truly enjoyed your Lemon Chicken last evening. We did reduce the sugar to about half of what you suggested and used Panko crumbs for the breadcoating. Superb! Thank you so much for taking the time to do the pictorials, they are inspiration. woodburner

Great topic Tim, Does any one in residence besides you, ever cook or prepare anything themselves? I mean what happens at 10 pm on a Thursday night, does the misses grill up a few cheesesteak hoagies for her and hubby? Why does my inner thinking you want out of this whole thing..... woodburner

A few common types of Smoke Wood Chunks can be found in local hardware stores, wally worlds, home depot type structures. Most of these type stores will carry chips and chunks, make sure you have the one you want as packaging will be the same on both varities with only the chip or chunk word being changed. Weber Products sells both chips and chunks in hickory and mesquite in what might be 5lb bags if my memory serves me correctly. I've never used the mesquite for smoking so I can not comment on it, but I've heard it should be used sparingly. For other, more unique woods, pecan,alder, maple, apple, cherry, peach etc. I use a few different sources. One is my local fruit grower, whom I trust regarding their spraying technique and pruning schedule. Secondly I go to Peoples Wood located in Rhode Island for mail order. They have always provided a very good service. As important, is your fuel source. Hardwood Lump charcoal, and compressed briquettes are two popular choices for fuel. Which one you use is entirely up to you. I prefer and use hardwood lump charcoal, and the go to guy is theNaked Whiz. concerning lump charcoal reviews. Lump is not always easy to locate, I buy mine from a local ice house, that provides me discounts for bulk purchase. I'll typically burn about 30, 20lb. bags in a year. I've yet to locate a local supplier for the extruded coconut lump charcoal which has gotten high praises among many bbq circles, for it's extended burn times, and smoke flavor. woodburner

Very nice. Could you post some photo's of your smoke oven with some explanations? In the above photo I've applied a second rub application halfway through the cooking time. Something you might consider. I don't have an explanation yet on why you have no visable smoke ring. woodburner

good move. The minimum btu burner for the propane cooker you had should have been about 160,000 btu. output. I think you'll like to use wood chunks instead of chips. woodburner

Sad to see the suffering of cranial anal inversion in the kitchen. You need to get a photo of her brushing her teeth. woodburner

Couple of questions and sorry to hear about all of the problems. What is the distance between the propane burner flame and the water pan? Also do you happen to know the btu rating of your supplied propane burner? I did read further up where you say charcoal is not an option, but really you will have none of the issues you bring up here with a Weber Smokey Mountain cooker. Many people who have issues with charcoal, find using Real Lump Wood charcoal not offensive. The Weber unit is not all that much more money than what you spent originally. Just some suggestions trying to help. woodburner

When your all done figuring out what and what's not authentic, best thing to do is hold that hoagie sandwich way out infrontofya, kinda like your arms are painted on, and bring your mouth to the sandwich, with your butt, stuck way out. Lest that's the way I was taught. Positioned possibly like drinking water from a water fountain back in high school. woodburner

whew, sounds like a lot of work so far, for just a little smoke. I'm not familiar with your type of smoker, but the jist of it seems to me that you need to get the fire hot enough to achieve the boiling point of the water in the pan, that or a high simmer, soooo.. crank up the fire. The cold should not affect it all that much, but winds will surely do a bad things to an uninsulated cooker. Your unit seems a bit like a Weber Smokey Mountain, with the exception of the fuel source, yours being gas not charcoal Stick with it, let's get this figured out After re-reading your initial post, I see the problem. Here is my guess, regardless of what the manual says. Crank the heat up until the water starts to boil and let it stay there for a few minutes, gradually lower the flame until the water will stay at a high simmer. You'll be good to go. I'll be surprised if your able to cook without the fire ignited continously. woodburner

Here is my 2 cents so take it what it's worth. I cook chicken thigh's at 225ºf or so, and they take 4 hours. Start them skin side down and flip about halfway thru, and then sauce the last 30 minutes. The following image shows thighs and a whole chicken before saucing. I normally do pork butts so, I'll leave times to others. Key rule in bbq is to allow plenty of enough time for the overall cook. Reheating is fine for pork and chicken, just remember to reheat slowly. I also like to allow about one hour after the pork is done, keeping it wrapped tightly in foil and placed in a thermos like cooler to let it rest before pulling. Hope you enjoy your new cooker. woodburner

I'm ready to rock and roll for the New Year's Day Festivities. Six racks of beef ribs are currently sitting in a moist marinade of mojo, ready to smoke cook tomorrow during the afternoon for a wonderful kick off dinner for 2006. This photo shows my cooker on July 5 of this year, in the blazing hot sun, but tomorrow will be a bit adverse with snow predicted during the entire day. The cooker is well insulated so I expect no problems. I rarely if ever, wrap any meats in foil, commonly known as the "Texas Crutch" while in my smoker, but I'm willing to experiment a bit with these six racks. So I plan to cook these a bit lower in temperature, than normal. Say 180ºF for about 6 hours. Smoke unwrapped for say the first two hours and then wrap in foil for 3 hours and then let them crisp up unwrapped for the last hour or until done. Anybody have any suggestions? woodburner

Yeah, I agree about grilling in the rain, pretty much the worst of all scenario's, including wind and snow. woodburner

Very nice ellencho, Everything but the bone. Which leads me to, did you have purpose for not tying the bones to the roast during aging or cooking? Or possibly you bought it boneless, which would make my question totally irrelevant. woodburner

I've often wondered in any benifit from using a jaccard before aging? It lessens meat juice loss during cooking as far as I'm concerned. woocburner

Don't even mention the word "*rits" in my hood. Save the gas money, and keep all that booshit, well below the Mason Dixsom line. There, I said it. woodburner

If your speaking of ground hamburger meat, here are a couple of choices. Blue Smoke Burger Mixture Which reads 1/3 Ground Brisket, 1/3 Ground Beef Clod, 1/3 Ground Chuck, about 85% lean. Napa Style Burgers Which reads 1/3 Brisket, 1/3 Short Ribs, 1/3 Sirloin. The Blue Smoke Burger has gotten very good reviews, which I believe is the same served at the Shake Shack another well recieved Danny Meyer spinoff. I've done the Napa Style grind and never looked back at ground chuck for burger nirvana. woodburner