JoeWras
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
- Joined
- Sep 18, 2012
- Messages
- 11,727
Well three or four of you pointed to amazingribs.com. Thanks for the pointer! I may get lost there. Nice.
Well three or four of you pointed to amazingribs.com. Thanks for the pointer! I may get lost there. Nice.
I meant to mention that I like his "Memphis Dust" recipe for pork ribs and pork shoulders.
OK, a few additional comments to follow my post #5.
In NC, you know what BBQ is. Some comments here are a little mixed up; steaks and burgers do not involve BBQ, cooking them is "grilling."
Many products that are basically grills can also be used for bbq, but like a Leatherman multi-tool, they are not optimum for all the jobs they can be made to do. For example, I could bbq in MY 22" Weber kettle but it is IMO a crude tool with little capacity. My pellet smokers are the right tool for bbq.
Ceramic grills like the heavily and successfully promoted BGE can also be used for bbq in the same way the Weber kettles can. BGE is the most expensive AFIK but there are others that look to me to be just as good. I see few or no ceramic cookers at bbq competitions. Ditto few or no Weber grills.
There is a class of smokers that are basically round and tall. The Weber Smoky Mountain is one. Others are based on 30 or 55 gallon steel drums, sometimes called UDS ("ugly drum smoker") These are very popular on the bbq comp circuit IMO primarily because they are fairly cheap. The can turn out excellent 'cue but I will never own one because I don't want to hassle with moving and removing grates to get to the fire and the hassle of sometimes having to hang meat because the grates are too small diameter to take it otherwise. Others, obviously, don't see this as an unacceptable hassle. Zealots abound.
In NC you should not need an insulating blanket, but the cheap ticket is a $15 moving blanket from Home Depot. At 225deg smoking temps it works fine. I learned the hard way, though, that if you get the cooker up to searing temperature the cheap HD blanket will burn!
You will probably read a lot about temperature control. Manufacturers and aftermarket controls sellers like to make a big deal of this but it is really not. Other than the surface, the mass of the meat never sees temperature swings; it is heating and cooking based on the long term average. So as long as the temp doesn't get so high that it physically affects the surface it is no big deal. There are many passionate debates about this on the BBQ Brethren forum but I have never seen a single claim that temperature excursions have affected the actual cooked product. Some cooks, however, seem to go crazy if they see +/- 20deg. YMMV.
BGE is the most expensive AFIK but there are others that look to me to be just as good. I see few or no ceramic cookers at bbq competitions.
Yes. I like that because it means that it's the cook, not the cooker that matters. And that there is no need to chase the perfect cooker; almost any of them can turn out excellent food.... Actually, the variety of cookers at competitions is staggering. From the smallest and simplest rigs all the way up to gigantic mobile installations costing probably north of $200K.
OP here. Thanks all!!!
I am leaning towards a pellet smoker. I have a Weber kettle that can step up when needed for straight grilling. Traeger has some pretty good competition since the patent(s) expired, so will give the higher rated ones (including Traeger) some tire kicking.
I own a BGE. I use it for everything.... Earlier this week I wanted to cold smoke homemade sausage. So, I built a smoker. Yes, its a cardboard box. Worked well.
Yup. Great product. I'll be doing bacon on Sunday, hanging it in my old tin-box LP smoker (no LP heat). The maze gives me about 11 hours if I load it carefully with pellets. I'll also be putting a bunch of cheese and some almonds into the smoke for a couple of hours.... I don't use it quite so much anymore, since I found this other nifty gadget: A-MAZE-N-PELLET-SMOKER ...