Got the Next Size Larger Grill/Smoker

[Shiloh]

Had the Wrangler model, moved up to the Super Pro. An extra 145 sq. inch of cooking space.
Now I have to seal it all up like I did the Wrangler. On sale at Fleet Farm for $99. The smaller one I hauled back from Texas was $99.
Already have an interested buyer for the smaller one when I get the new one up and smokin'.

Post pics when It is running.

Shiloh

[MaryB]

Rule of thumb on smokers: Whatever size you own is to small

[Shiloh]

Rule of thumb on smokers: Whatever size you own is to small

How quickly I found that out!!

Shiloh

[MaryB]

I started with Weber kettles, moved to a homemade stacked block smoker(no pic of that, didn't really work well) then I bought one of these

http://www.productwiki.com/upload/images/brinkmann_805_2101_s_pitmaster_deluxe_smoke_n_pit. jpg

By the time I retired from catering this was to small

http://i226.photobucket.com/albums/dd248/maryalanab/bbqparty003.jpg

http://i226.photobucket.com/albums/dd248/maryalanab/Tigger003.jpg

Now I have a Traeger and it is to small for my annual BBQ but that is the only time of the year I need extra space. Multiple smokers are really the way to go, and a good rib rack!

[DougGuy]

MaryB I have a Traeger Lil Tex, my son has the same one, Traegers ROCK! Best BBQ grill they ever invented.

Memorial day 2012, baby backs, grilled fresh pineapple, corn, and freshly picked garlic scapes..

Click on the pic, it's a video..

http://i1202.photobucket.com/albums/bb374/DougGuy/BBQ/th_video-2012-05-28-18-04-49_zps1d0719d3.jpg (http://i1202.photobucket.com/albums/bb374/DougGuy/BBQ/video-2012-05-28-18-04-49_zps1d0719d3.mp4)

And here are those delicious ribs after cooling, another short video:

http://i1202.photobucket.com/albums/bb374/DougGuy/BBQ/th_video-2012-05-28-18-22-47_zps4fe78659.jpg (http://i1202.photobucket.com/albums/bb374/DougGuy/BBQ/video-2012-05-28-18-22-47_zps4fe78659.mp4)

[MaryB]

I have the same Traeger, stacked 6 racks of spares in it last 4th of july. One upgrade that is really worth it is the digital temp controller.

[Three44s]

My brother and a friend of his use this one:


http://www.gatorpit.net/trailer_pits/falcon.htm


It's got another cooking section on the right side and wood storage over there as well.

Three 44s

[Shiloh]

WOW!!

Nice units. When the experience and budget gets bigger, I'll have to make a choice. NICE Units!!

Shiloh

[MaryB]

Traeger is great for a roll it out, plug it on and cook setup. Fill with pellets and good for 24 hours slow cooking. The Klose mobile pit I had was a stick burner. I used red oak almost exclusively in it. Had to tend fire every half hour, lot of work and got to be to hard on my back. But the stick burner also put out the best flavor of all the pits I have used. If you look at the pic loaded with food you will notice thin blue smoke coming out of the upright cooker section. When burning like that the smoke is not acrid smelling, instead it is sweet and that flavors the meat.

[DougGuy]

I have the same Traeger, stacked 6 racks of spares in it last 4th of july. One upgrade that is really worth it is the digital temp controller.

I had a digital controller for about a month and sold it. It wouldn't keep even temps for nothing. Went back to the original controller that you see on there, it works the best on mine. I vary the hickory content of the pellet mix to control temps. More hickory = hotter temps. In the summer I use 100% Perfect Mix from www.cookinpellets.com with no hickory and it runs around 325° which I don't want to go over with ribs, makes the bark too tough. 300-325 is a really good range for baby backs. Cooler weather, I run 100% hickory.

Never tried smoking in it like overnite, I would need a hopper extension for that. It will keep an even temp on the smoke setting but with every other kind of grill, as nighttime temps drop, so will the grill temps. I would need to fill it for a few hours on perfect mix, then later run some more hickory in with that to keep the heat up.

[MaryB]

my digital controller holds within 25 degrees, not bad for a wood burning appliance. On 225 the hopper will easily burn 24 hours on mine.

[Changeling]

Anyone ever smoke a young ground hog? Just wondering.

I've cooked them in a Dutch Oven before and they were awesome.

[crawfobj]

I did 200 lbs of briskets for a charity event in my Southern Pride DH-65 the other day. They turned out goooood! Found it used at a restaurant surplus auction and couldn't pass it up. Did 4 turkeys at Christmas.

There are 3 briskets on each rack in the picture.
http://img.tapatalk.com/d/14/05/08/5yqy5yry.jpg

[Shiloh]

YUM!!

You guys seem to really have a grasp on this. Gonna do a pork butt as my next project. Get good at that, and move up to brisket. Briskets are about
$45.

Shiloh

[crawfobj]

Pork butt is good stuff.

Fortunately, I didn't have to pay for the briskets for the event. We did 200lbs of briskets, 250lbs of baby back ribs, 50 lbs of sausage, a whole hog, and 200 hot dogs for our March of Dimes walk. Fed 500+ people.

I like to buy turkeys when they're cheap around thanksgiving and Christmas. Doesn't get any cheaper than that.

[Love Life]

Very nice stuff!!

We used a pit. It was a brick pit with a rack that could be rotated. We had a separate burn barrel where we burned down our oak. We shoveled coals from the burn barrel into the bottom of the pit. That did all the cooking and smoking. Mmmmmmm.

[crawfobj]

A buddy of mine has a Cuban pig roasting box. Really cool setup that can cook a whole pig in 5 hours.

http://www.lacajachina.com/Barbeque-Grill-p/lcc-g100.htm

[DougGuy]

The Cubans aren't the only ones that use a caja china. If you watch much Anthony Bourdain, you will see the same style cooker used on several of his shows in different countries.




my digital controller holds within 25 degrees, not bad for a wood burning appliance. On 225 the hopper will easily burn 24 hours on mine.

I wonder if mine was a bad one? Maybe that's why it was on fleabay to start with? It went back to from whence it came in due time.

[MaryB]

I bought my digital control from Traeger

[Shiloh]

[QUOTE=crawfobj;2770081

I like to buy turkeys when they're cheap around thanksgiving and Christmas. Doesn't get any cheaper than that.[/QUOTE]

I know people with freezers full of them. As stated they are priced right during the holiday. It is economical feasting and they smoke GREAT!!

Shiloh

[MaryB]

I prefer turkey on the weber grill cooked indirect. Load the top with bacon and lots of butter on the breasts under the skin. Takes maybe 2 1/2 hours for an 11 pounder. Great eating and something we did at the lake a lot for easy meals.

[Shiloh]

Haven't done one yet on my new unit. I do up to 15 pounders on the Weber. Coals to the outside, bird in a pan in the middle. About 1/2" of water in the pan. I usually have to cover the wings and drumsticks with foil.

Shiloh

[Changeling]

Haven't done one yet on my new unit. I do up to 15 pounders on the Weber. Coals to the outside, bird in a pan in the middle. About 1/2" of water in the pan. I usually have to cover the wings and drumsticks with foil.

Shiloh

Hi Shiloh, I use a method now for cooking turkeys that is impossible to beat in my opinion and I have cooked a lot of them. I usually try to get one about 11 to 15 lbs like you. Sometimes I stuff it sometimes I don't .

I'll skip the preliminary thawing/washing/pin feathers.

Sometimes I use butter to baste/ sometimes olive oil, both are really great. I season with pepper/salt/garlic/papreka, truss it as usual, helps cooking it correctly.
In preheated oven at 365 deg, lower rack, "Breast side DOWN, totally basted and seasoned for 30 minutes, then just turn down the temp to 325 deg and cook for another 1.5 hours. Open oven, flip bird onto it's back, add same seasoning, baste again (you will have to take the bird out of the oven to do this),(I know you know that), through it back in the oven breast side UP. Cook for about 40 minutes more depending on bird size (do the thigh test thing with a GOOD thermometer), if not browning on breast increase temp to 425 till browning suits you, Might take another 15 to 30 min. That's it, it always comes out with moist breast meat and cooked legs and thighs.

I read about this method in the famous cook book "The Joy of Cooking" about 10 or so years ago, I changed the recipe slightly through experience.
This is the # 1 cook book in the USA, about the only thing I was left after the divorce, witch means I was lucky, I won something, LOL.

Take care.

[Shiloh]

I have a 1942 or 43 addition of that cookbook. Erma Rombauer was the author IIRC. Tells how to stretch meat, sugar, butter and other rationed items. I'll look it up.

Shiloh

[MaryB]

Instead of basting drape bacon over the top for part of the cook, adds another layer of flavor plus the cook gets to munch bacon as it gets cooked out...

[DougGuy]

I made a pheasant for Thanksgiving last year and loved it, but you could do this with a turkey too. Take about half a cup of butter, melted, put some Herbs de Provence in it and let it set for a while and absorb the flavors from the herbs, then refrigerate it to turn it back into butter. Now, use THIS butter for the pats you stick under the skin on the breast! Oh man, now we talking some awesome stuff!

Oh and +1 on bacon wrapping over the top of the bird, everywhere you can lay it!

[Changeling]

Pork butt is good stuff.

Fortunately, I didn't have to pay for the briskets for the event. We did 200lbs of briskets, 250lbs of baby back ribs, 50 lbs of sausage, a whole hog, and 200 hot dogs for our March of Dimes walk. Fed 500+ people.



I like to buy turkeys when they're cheap around thanksgiving and Christmas. Doesn't get any cheaper than that.

Question for you and Shiloh:

When you buy the turkeys/briskets,butts, whatever and they are in a "sealed heavy plastic wrap" that has an experation date to use or freeze by then. How long can that item be frozen before going bad?

[crawfobj]

I've had no problem keeping them frozen for better part of a year. They're not going to spoil on you. Check for freezer burn signs. That's the worst of your worries, and even most of that can be solved by cutting it out. I have vacuum sealed game that's good far longer than that, but the turkeys generally get eaten long before their freezer life.

[Beagle333]

I got a Big Green Egg..... but then I'm only cooking for 2. :cool:
I've never had a big one. When I was cooking for the construction crew on Fridays, they just gave me 5 regular size smokers to use instead of one huge one.

[Shiloh]

If your freezer is up to snuff, they last a long time. Had some for better than a year and it was fine.
It was a small roast that got lost behind some bargain chicken quarters.

Shiloh

[Baja_Traveler]

I built mine out of a 4' x 4' NEMA 4x stainless electrical cabinet I got for free. Insulated it and plumbed it into the natural gas line to the BBQ - Great for doing 13-14 hour smokes, just get it to temp and forget it. I've been using an A-maz-n pellet smoker tray that I cant recommend highly enough - allows me to do cold smokes on cheese, butter and Lox...

http://www.pbase.com/baja_traveler/image/143609549.jpg

Here's my last cheese smoke, pepperjack and chedder - 4 hours in apple, then a 4 week age to perfection. Only a little bit left, so I better get busy...

http://www.pbase.com/baja_traveler/image/151192086.jpg

[Shiloh]

NICE Unit Baja!!!

Shiloh

[smokeywolf]

I use an offset smoker. I'm on my second one. Hopefully the next one will be made out of a big water or air tank. I've found that diameter of the cooking chamber is just as important as square inches of cooking surface. Hard to fit a 12 lb. turkey into a barrel shaped smoker with an upper rack.

smokeywolf

[Shiloh]

I take the upper rack off when doing beer chickens. I loosen two nuts and slip it off the pivot bolt.

Shiloh

[smokeywolf]

I take the upper rack off when doing beer chickens. I loosen two nuts and slip it off the pivot bolt.

Shiloh

I do too. But, that then precludes you from being able to put vegies on the top rack or as I sometimes do, put bacon or when I can find it, jowl on the top rack above meat on the bottom and let the fat drip down and baste the meat on the bottom.

Besides, don't want to have to modify the smoker every time I have something taller than 8" on the bottom rack.

smokeywolf