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CeramicChef

Syzygies' Smoking Pot

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Is the pot actually sitting on red coals.  I had it not work once and I found that although the pot was sitting above hot coals there was a few unlit lump pieces keeping the pot from actually sitting down on the coals. 

If the pot and the wood inside doesn't get to a high enough temperature the off gassing of the wood will not occur. Not sure what that exact temperature is and it's probably a little different depending on the type of wood inside. 

 

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I usually light the charcoal with a weed burner, aiming right under the smoke pot, and generously missing, dousing the pot itself with flames. Addressing this issue, I haven't had any problems with insufficient smoke at 225 F, using a two quart pot.

At a friend's house, he was trying to cook four butts on an old K5. I advised a thorough preheat, so to catch up the smoke pot we put in later, we heated it as hot as we could get it in a gas grill, then moved it. This also worked.

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I think you could add the smoke pot just after lighting. That would allow the smoke pot to heat up and get going.  I  get about 4 hours of smoke out of my 1 quart smoke pot. Meat only sucks up smoke the first couple of hours so if I loose an hour of smoke pot time while everything is heating up no big deal. Will try this next time I use it. Also cooking your low-n-slow at a slightly elevated temperature will help. 

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59 minutes ago, MacKenzie said:

I believe that the temp is too low. There really won't be a lot if hot coals to keep a KK at 250F. This is where the KK smoker will shine.:)

Sent from my SM-G930W8 using Tapatalk
 

 

 

 

I totally agree. If I had a cold smoker I would have already figured this out. One day I'll order one. 

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I think 250 is plenty hot.  Last weekend I did ribs using syzygies smoking pot.  I used the standard 2 quart pot from Lodge that many of us have.  I heat soaked my 32 for about an hour and a half and then put the pot on 5 minutes before the ribs.  I stuffed the pot full of chunk and chips and had smoke for about 5 hours. Also, there has been significant discussion about what to seal the pot with.  I have not sealed mine with anything.  the lid sits on pretty well and I have just left it that way.  Seems to work pretty well.  I may be losing some smoke around the lip, I haven't actually tried to watch it while it is smoking, but it is definitely creating the thin blue tasty smoke we are looking for. Sealing it might get me smoke for a longer period of time, I'm not sure.

 @bosco I think it probably wasn't sitting on the coals right and just did not get hot enough as @ckreef suggested. 

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1 hour ago, ckreef said:

I'm thinking once everything gets going you might be able to close your vents and unhook the air pump. The KK sucking air through the cold smoker keeping the smoker going along with the KK temp. 

Interesting idea. I could definitely see that. Beef ribs are a long cook, so should have some time to play around with it if all goes well. 

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Ok, so all this pot smoking conversation got me really worried about the direction KK was headed, until I read what was REALLY going on. :)

If I'm about to take the plunge for the cold smoker kit, is there still an advantage to adding a smoke pot like this?

I understand the cold smoker would be for low cooks, below 275 or so. But how do I impart the smoke from my wood using that method versus the cast iron pot? (I'm new to the cold smoking world).

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