tony b

Wow! That's a large batch of beer (20 gallons!) I'm actually going in the opposite direction and brewing smaller batches (1-3 gallons), as without beer club meeting and other festivals, I don't have an outlet for full 5 gallon batches. If I have to drink it mostly myself, I get bored with it well before it's gone and I'm ready to move onto another style.

Good advice, Dennis.

Since I'm not travelling this year, keeping it simple. Plan is a turkey breast (boneless), with some legs (my favorite!) Going to inject them with Butcher BBQ marinade the day before and rub the outside with EVOO, lemon pepper and dried roasted garlic just before going on the KK. Main grate, direct, 350F, apple wood chunks in the smoker pot. Cocochar to not over smoke the bird. We're supposed to get snow tonight turning to rain for the next couple of days, but assuming the forecast is correct (🤞), should be OK on Turkey Day.

Was in the mood for Italian, so hot Italian sausages/snags on the grill, direct, main grate, 325F. Plated with fettucine with a puttanesca sauce. Side salad didn't get in the picture? But the chianti did! 😄

De nada!

Inspired, I did a rib-eye cap steak from CostCo last night. Direct, lower grate, mesquite chunks, rubbed with Dizzy Pig Raising the Steaks. Plated with a huge baked potato loaded with Peruvian green sauce, sauteed shrooms and creamed spinach. Chimichurri for the steak, too. Side salad and dinner rolls.

Now, off to the races!!

This is the fundamental principle behind sous vide cooking - temperature AND time.

Worth all the pain and suffering though!

Made a Trader Joe's run this week and had to get a pack of their chicken shawarma. Tasty stuff and no work! Direct, main grate, 325F, apple wood chunks. Plated with coconut curry rice and roasted broccolini. Side salad with feta cheese.

Unfortunately, some of these older threads have broken links to external sites. They didn't translate well when the Forum software was changed a couple of years ago. At least this one had the recipe in it and not an external link.

Can't wait for the final reveal!

That looks very tasty! Took advantage of the nice day yesterday by doing a 1/2 rack of baby backs. Indirect, main grate, Guru @ 275F, smoker pot of hickory and apple. Ribs rubbed with Dizzy Pig Crossroads. I did sauce 1/2 of the ribs with my house sauce for the last 30 minutes. Ribs were on for 3 hours. Plated with airfryer tater tots w/Peruvian green sauce and hushpuppies. Side salad.

Enjoying a brief respite in the weather here (sorry, MacKenzie). Yesterday was in the upper 50sF, today upper 60sF, before heading back south over the weekend with rain and 40sF. Last night was a couple of petite sirloin steaks. Direct, sear grate, mesquite and post oak chunks. Rubbed with Gunpowder and Raising the Steaks. Plated with roasted spuds, parsnips and broccolini with parm/garlic/parsley butter. Mushroom and caramelized onion sauce.

Dude, this post is over 10 years old. Hence, the reason that you can't see any of the pictures, it was the old Forum format. None of these folks are on the Forum anymore. Sorry!

@Troble - be careful with those really old pressure cookers - they were known to explode/overpressure. Didn't have all the safety features that the news ones do. My mom had one with the weight on the spindle to regulate the pressure, it would hop up/down and sputter steam. As a kid, I thought it was neat. Now as an Engineer, it was pretty scary.

NAILED IT!! Never tried making the rolled omelets before. I know having the special pan helps, but that's the last thing I need - another piece of cookware, especially a specialty one - LOL! Love ribeye cap - an underrated cut. I can usually find Prime grade ones at CostCo, but they were out today. Had to settle for Prime NY strips @ $12.99/lb. SCORE! Nice job on that one, btw!

Happy hunting!

The thermal mass (BTU/lbm) is the same, it's just the surface area to volume is a lot bigger, so these pieces burn up faster than larger chunks. Not a bad guess for a "non science" guy, @BARDSLJR.

We're gonna pitch a Wing, Ding Doodle, all night long! Wing night, direct, lower grate (trying to balance crispy with not overcooking them), 325F dome, peach wood. Half rubbed with Suya pepper rub, the other half with Hot Wing Dust. Plated with airfryer tater tots, with Peruvian green sauce and carrot/celery/cucumber sticks with blue cheese dressing. A nice homebrewed pilsner to go with it all!

They are pretty much here in this thread if you go back to the beginning. Most folks use a 2 quart cast iron Dutch oven. Get the cheapest one that you can find. Drill several small holes in the bottom. Mine are 3/32", some folks went with 1/8". I wouldn't go much larger than that and don't drill anymore than 3 or 4 holes max. Space them around the bottom of the pot so that you don't risk all of them getting clogged if they were clustered too close together in the center. The idea is to starve the wood chunks/chips of oxygen to make them smolder and not burn. Putting the holes in the bottom forces the smoke back into the fire where some of the nastier volatile components will burn off and produce cleaner smoke. This is why this pot works so well. The cool part is when you open it back up after it's cooled down, you'll have made charcoal out of the wood! The amount of the wood is not super critical. Obviously, the more wood, the longer the smoke will be generated. For shorter cooks, use less to avoid wasting your wood chunks/chips. Longer cooks, add more. The production rate of smoke is fairly fixed by the 3 small holes - only so much oxygen can get in and smoke get out. Remember, smoke is only absorbed by meat until it reaches about 140F on the surface. So, you don't need to produce smoke for the entire cook. That's why the old BBQ'ers trick of spritzing the meat with some sort of liquid works, it causes evaporative cooling on the meat surface and lowers the temperature, prolonging the smoke absorption. It is essential that the lid be airtight to make the smoker pot work. Remember we're trying to limit the amount of oxygen inside. The easiest way to achieve that is to make a simple flour and water paste in a plastic sandwich bag. The consistency should be like Playdoh. Takes some practice to get the water to flour ratio right, but if it's too wet, add more flour; too dry, add water. Also make sure that you mix it together thoroughly to not have dry flour pockets. Twist up the top of the bag, cut off a lower corner and pipe the paste onto the rim of the lid. Make sure to get a good amount completely around the lid. Then put your wood chunks in the bottom and carefully place the lid on, making sure to seal the outside all the way around with the paste that oozes out. Place the smoker pot directly on top of the burning charcoal to ensure that the internal temperature comes up to smoldering as quickly as possible. Remember you want as much smoke as possible on the meat before it reaches 140F on the surface.

Happens to the best of us, Doc! I see that you're still experimenting with the combo of pressure cooking and smoking. I remember you doing that before with pork ribs. I tried it and was pleasantly surprised that they didn't taste "parboiled" like some BBQ places do to get "falling off the bone" ribs - a style that I don't particularly care for.

Same here!!!