Smokers (BBQ - not grilling)

[Knifemaker]

Looks really tasty. But where's the fun in that, what with no smoking?

After dinner I sat out on the deck and smoked a cigar....

 

[08FJR4ME]

I played with the smoker a little more today. I searched the local big box stores for some bricks last weekend without any luck. So I was down in the cellar this morning and spied some of my left over ceramic tile I used on the house when I did the floors. That's when it clicked. This will be perfect for the smoker.

So I dragged out the tile saw and proceeded on with the project. So I cut some 2 1/2 inch strips.

I needed to cut some smaller pieces to cover the bottom half fully.

This came out awesome.

So I did cook a bottom round roast today in the smoker. I started up the smoker and then proceeded to fill the pickup
truck up with my brothers stuff I have been storing for almost a year. Today he was moving into his new abode. After a few trips
the move was done and when I got back home the roast was perfectly done. I was to tired to take any more pictures but let me assure you it was delicious.

Dave

 

[Fred W]

Good save, KM. Going to go out and do the same tonight.

Looks good, Dave. How did you cook your roast? With a load of charcoal and wood chunks on the provided grate?

For dinner we had a piece of strip steak from the local supermarket. I salt tenderized it for an hour (it was well over 1" think) and then cooked it on the hot gas grille. But... I put a tin foil pouch full of hickory chips down on the "flavorizer bars" and they were spewing a nice fragrant smoke for a good part of the short time the beef was grilling to medium rare perfection. The flavor was out of this world.

Sorry, no fud pR0n photos because I had no idea it was going to be that good. Maybe next time?

 

[08FJR4ME]

Good save, KM. Going to go out and do the same tonight.
Looks good, Dave. How did you cook your roast? With a load of charcoal and wood chunks on the provided grate?

For dinner we had a piece of strip steak from the local supermarket. I salt tenderized it for an hour (it was well over 1" think) and then cooked it on the hot gas grille. But... I put a tin foil pouch full of hickory chips down on the "flavorizer bars" and they were spewing a nice fragrant smoke for a good part of the short time the beef was grilling to medium rare perfection. The flavor was out of this world.

Sorry, no fud pR0n photos because I had no idea it was going to be that good. Maybe next time?

Yes, I used a mixture of three things, Hickory charcoal briquettes, Lump cowboy wood and my own red oak chunks from the back yard wood pile. I salted the roast with Himalayan salt. I love doubling up on the nitrates! Then I sprinkled some cinnamon all over the roast and rubbed it all in. That's it, very simple. Next I just let the smoker do its thing. You may think cinnamon is a little weird but it came out really well and I didn't put any sauce on it.

As soon as I find some decent expanded metal I am going to fab up a basket to fit in the firebox. I have enough tile to do the larger smoking portion of the grill but I am not sure if its worth it. You guys can chime in with your suggestions whether or not to do it. Hopefully it will be a constructive conversation. I enjoy this thread to much.

Thanks, All

Dave

 

[Fred W]

Wouldn't bother lining the cooking chamber with stone or tile for a couple of reasons:

Assuming you'll be using it as a smoker, you won't be building any fires in the bottom of the cooking chamber, so it will never get as hot as the bottom of the firebox. I wanted to insulate and protect the FB from burning the paint off and stressing and oxidizing the metal. The other thing is the grease that drips into the bottom of the cooking chamber will make a mess of those tiles. I tilted my pit to the left, towards the drain pipe, so the grease will run out into a little catch can I have hung under.

PS - Himalayan Salt is pink, but it's not the same as "pink curing salt", which is the one that has all the sodium nitrate. You're safe to use Himalayan Pink Salt directly. Don't use pink curing salt as a seasoning or it will make you sick.

 

[08FJR4ME]

Wouldn't bother lining the cooking chamber with stone or tile for a couple of reasons:
Assuming you'll be using it as a smoker, you won't be building any fires in the bottom of the cooking chamber, so it will never get as hot as the bottom of the firebox. I wanted to insulate and protect the FB from burning the paint off and stressing and oxidizing the metal. The other thing is the grease that drips into the bottom of the cooking chamber will make a mess of those tiles. I tilted my pit to the left, towards the drain pipe, so the grease will run out into a little catch can I have hung under.

PS - Himalayan Salt is pink, but it's not the same as "pink curing salt", which is the one that has all the sodium nitrate. You're safe to use Himalayan Pink Salt directly. Don't use pink curing salt as a seasoning or it will make you sick.

Well that's good to know, I still eat spinach though. I was looking at McMaster Carr for some of that expanded metal. I think I found some and may order it tonight to make a FB basket. I just need to take some measurements to see what I need.

 

[Knifemaker]

This might help you...

 

[Knifemaker]

This might help you...https://youtu.be/I5poqrIboAE

And if your not aware of this, when you bend metal it grows in length. Meaning if you want a box 11 inches wide at the bottom when it's finished, you have to bend it a fraction of an inch shorter at each end. 18 gauge metal grows about a 1/16 of an inch (for a 90 degree corner) I'm not sure what it is for thicker stuff like expanded metal, but you can take as scrap piece and find out.

 

[Fred W]

Dave,

That video is exactly how I made mine for my OK Joe.

I bought a piece of 24" x 24" 3/4" expanded metal from Home Despot. Made the appropriate cuts, bend the ends up and folded the end tabs into the slots to hold it together. You end up with a ~12" x 12" x 6" tall basket, which is about the biggest you can get in the top door of the firebox You'll be able to fit enough charcoal in there for about 8 hours smoking, but can easily dump some more in there later on for a really long smoke.

The Home Despot metal wasn't very expensive and saved on shipping. As for dimensions, I just whanged on it with a hemmer till it fit through the door.

 

[08FJR4ME]

I will check HD then. I checked Lowes but all they had was some real flimsy decorative stuff. I see your wood under the smoker on the shelf. I was thinking of making 3 baskets to fit under there also. One oak, one hickory and one maple. I could cut up my chunks of wood and store them there. I have all three types on my property.

KM: Yes I am familiar with how bends work. I have done a little bit of sheet metal forming years back. We kept a book called the book of gains. for this project I am not to worried about it. I might try a cardboard mock up first. Sounds like another weekend project coming up.

Thanks,

Dave

 

[LittleJon]

I have been away from this thread since May. I just caught up. I try and stay away from this for the same reason I try to (and mostly fail to) stay away from the classifieds.

Now I want to finish my UDS.

And I want to run to Walmart to see if they have offsets on clearance.

And I've done a short bit of searching on CL for a nice large tank to turn into a small trailer-able smoker.

And I want to build a cold smoker in the back yard.

We (my good buddy Ben and I) did another competition this past weekend with his Franken-smoker. Once again, we fell middle of the road. It's his show, and I try to limit my input to holding temp, and helping prep and plate. I think it's time for me to start experimenting on my own. Not for competitions, but for the flavor of it.

 

[Knifemaker]

Was pretty sure you were aware of bends growing Dave, was kinda putting it out there others than might be planning the same project.

As for - "Wouldn't bother lining the cooking chamber with stone or tile for a couple of reasons:"

I will mention I've read of folks using tiles to make baffles for their offset pits, and even read about a guy with a reverse flow that used a large tile by the firebox on top of his baffle to help even out heat more. My pit only seems to vary a few degrees between one side or another, but I could see on a long cook or a real hot one where you might want to insulate the side near the FB a bit more, as it still does get hotter on that side.

As for clean up, I line my baffle with aluminum foil, so you could easily wrap your tile with foil too. It's suggested if you use tile, to use an unglazed tile, which would be pourus, so covering it in foil would be the way to go.

 

[Fred W]

Yabbut... Dave's pit won't be reverse flow like yours, which will complicate foiling or putting stone or tiles on top of the baffle plate. His tuning plate(s) will need to pass smoke and hot air up from the bottom all along the length of the cooking chamber. I get a reasonably even temperature along the length of my pit with just the pre-made baffle / tuning plate installed.

I find that, like many of the other things that people obsess over in this hobby, the evenness of temperature and tight control of exact temperature are pretty highly over-rated. Sure it might be more important if you had a giant smoker full of food, like in a commercial chest style one, where you want to flop the meat in there and not look at it for 12 or 14 hours. But for back yard cook a few flips of the meat at strategic intervals during the cooking is all you need to do to ensure even cooking.

Of course, fiddling with the design of the pit is half the fun.

 

[Knifemaker]

Yes, was not clear there, but yes, did read where a person was going to drill holes in some tiles to make his "tuning plates" 'for his offset smoker... Also read where some folks use a pan of sand instead of a pan of water... Guessing clean up isn't too big of a concern to some So yes, fiddling with the design is rampant.

I do agree it's rather useless to line the cooking chamber (bottom) of an offset with tile. The bottom gets the least heat on it and insulation wise it's about the same as putting a cold beer in a cooler and expecting it not to get warm when you neglect to put the top of the cooler on.

This last cook I didn't flip my ribs....and I'll say I found no difference (as to one side cooking more than the other) and as far as taste goes...

I do however throw several rocks and a few bricks on top of my baffle when I cook, but they are only there to hold the foil down when I open the pit on a windy day.

Just as a thing to waste time one day....I envisioned making an offset smoker that had a spherical cooking chamber....where the food grate was a "lazy susan" that slowly rotated as the food smoked......

 

[08FJR4ME]

Yes, was not clear there, but yes, did read where a person was going to drill holes in some tiles to make his "tuning plates" 'for his offset smoker... Also read where some folks use a pan of sand instead of a pan of water... Guessing clean up isn't too big of a concern to some

So yes, fiddling with the design is rampant.
I do agree it's rather useless to line the cooking chamber (bottom) of an offset with tile. The bottom gets the least heat on it and insulation wise it's about the same as putting a cold beer in a cooler and expecting it not to get warm when you neglect to put the top of the cooler on.

This last cook I didn't flip my ribs....and I'll say I found no difference (as to one side cooking more than the other) and as far as taste goes...

I do however throw several rocks and a few bricks on top of my baffle when I cook, but they are only there to hold the foil down when I open the pit on a windy day.

Just as a thing to waste time one day....I envisioned making an offset smoker that had a spherical cooking chamber....where the food grate was a "lazy susan" that slowly rotated as the food smoked......

Now that's an interesting prospect. What came into my head when I read it was to use an internal fan inside the pit to create circulation inside. Don't convection ovens use that concept?

Dave

 

[Fred W]

Maybe we need a draft driven circulation fan of some type...

like a turbonator!

 

[Knifemaker]

"Now that's an interesting prospect. What came into my head when I read it was to use an internal fan inside the pit to create circulation inside. Don't convection ovens use that concept?"

Well, most smokers kind of already are convection ovens. A normal oven is basicly an insulated box that has a heating element usually at the bottom, and it heats the air in the box. Only problem there is that heat comes from the bottom so food put on the rack is subjected to more heat on its bottom than on its top. It's still heated air doing the cooking, but the hottest part is under the food.

A convection oven is basicly the same oven, but a fan is used to circulate the hot air inside the oven, so both the top and the bottom of the food itself is subjected to the same tempature. Some ovens even turn the broiler element on top on and off to further help evening out the air tempature throughout the oven.

An offset smoker, and even a reverse smoker, are not completely sealed boxes, they continually pump in hot air (and smoke) into the food chamber, which passes over, under and around the food as it flows out of the chamber via the smokestack. So they more or less accomplish the same thing a convection oven does.

I have however wondered if there is any way to alter this...but with out the right instruments one can't really tell how the air inside a smoker is moving, other than the basic flow from intake to vent. There must be eddys of air in a smoker and areas where it's moving slower or faster on its way out. The shape of the food should have some effect on this.

When I thought of the idea of the "lazy susan" smoker, I thought to do it right you'd have to build a mock up out of clear plexiglas to determine the ideal speed of the rotating food grate. You wouldn't want it to "blow" the smoke out, not letting it contact the food as well. Especially if you had different sized items inside. Nor would you want it to trap pockets of smoke inside where they'd become stale.

The concept of all the food taking turns being in the "hotter" location inside the pit does seem worthwhile.

The other difficulty is finding the materials to build such a thing. You'd want it to be at least 3 feet in diameter..(if not more) and you'd have to build the food grate so it turns easily, even after the build up of grease and such.

I could see building a smaller model using a big round Weber grill.......

 

[08FJR4ME]

Well thanks to Fred's suggestion going to Home despot I picked up what I needed today to fabricate my basket. Now I just need to find time. NERDS will be here soon.

Dave

 

[eflyguy]

When I used an offset, I would place a heavy steel plate over the opening between the boxes to prevent direct radiant heat from over cooking the food nearest the fire.

In a kamado, you're typically using a heat deflector when smoking, same effect.

As to circulation, I get much more even coverage with the kamado, and much better temperature control (after I made several modifications to seal it up where needed)..

 

[Bounce]

Mod suggestion on the kamado?