Fired up the smoker and tried a few more things today:
- a couple of beef short ribs
- a slab of beef (chuck, maybe)
- a smallish piece of pork belly that I'd cured for a week using the maple bacon cure from Ruhlman & Polcyn's Charcuterie
- the 3 ribs I'd trimmed off the pork belly prior to curing it
- 2 duck breasts and 2 goose breasts, cured using the "duck breast ham" cure from Charcuterie
The beef was rubbed with salt, black pepper, cayenned. The ribs got a dusting of the sweet rub I'd made for the inaugural smoking. No rub needed for the bacon or waterfowl.
All turned out well so far. The duck breast was the surprise hit -- had some warm and it was excellent. Supposedly it's better chilled and thinly sliced, so we'll see. The bacon needs to be chilled, then sliced, then fried, so verdict on that yet to come. The beef was really good. Getting closer to tackling a whole brisket.
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| As heavy as it is, the smoker is easy to move. This is on initial startup as it's getting up to temp. It's smokier at this stage than the photo shows. Big smoke on startup for a couple minutes but then it really settles down. The lower the temp, the more smoke, although even at lowish cooking temps of around 100C or so, it's not that smokey. Smells nice. |
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| duck, duck, goose [goose] |
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| oh yeah, the beef! & a sweet potato I threw in there the last hour after pre-heating for a couple minutes in the microwave |
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4 comments:
that looks great. nice setup for the smoker, as well. after it's cool, do you just wheel it into the, um, shed?
what do you call that area?
Yes, exactly. The covered area does not have a good name. Lately I've tried calling it "the porch".
Is there any "cleaning" required, or does the smoking process 'self clean'?
Cleaning is similar to a gas grill. I remove the cooking grates, drip pan, and grease pail, the latter two lined with foil to make cleanup easier. The grates I throw in the dishwasher, although a scrub with water would probably be sufficient. I don't do anything to the interior, other than vaccuum out the burn pot. It doesn't produce much ash so I likely wouldn't need to do this except every now and then, but it's a simple habit to get into before each use. Every few smokes I'll also try to get in the habit of cranking the temp up after the smoke is done, to do a pseudo self-clean of the interior -- i.e. keep the interior surfaces nicely carbonizing rather than getting a little greasy as might happen after repeated lower-temp smokes.
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