Smokers (BBQ - not grilling)

[eflyguy]

Amazing ribs says no water bowl. I did not notice a difference when I stopped using one.

As to the Maverick gadget, I like that it doesn't have actual temps on the gauge. You would/should still use a probe, and adjust the gadget to maintain the target temperature - numbers on the dial mean nothing. So, I think it would work on any type of smoker where closing the exhaust would cut down the airflow.

I have a pit controller and use it almost every time. The automation is great but not foolproof, so most important to me is I can keep an eye on it and adjust things remotely - even if I am not home. I have smoked a couple of times while out on the bike for the day, and many more times just out running errands. The app can notify you if certain limits are exceeded. I just wish you could adjust the top vent as well - which brings me back to the Maverick - I may buy one to see how that would work in conjunction with my pit controller. Having the ability to totally kill airflow when temps shoot up, or open up wide if temps fall too low, would be awesome!

Speaking of top vent, once my kamado is up to temp, it only needs to cracked a fraction for the remainder of the cook. When the fan kicks on, smoke pours out the top, but when it's off, it just puffs out slowly.

 

[Fred W]

I believe it was the second time with slightly better results than the first. I used almost a hole bag of apple charcoal with apple wood from the orchard. I let the fire burn a 1/2 hour before putting on the meat. It was about 285 when I put it on but I cut down on the air intake until it reached 225/230 degrees. It stayed pretty much even for about 10 hours then started to lesson. I had to add some more wood to finish off the next couple of hours and it came back up to temp. It was 160 degrees internal when I took it off. I put in the oven for an hour at 375 to finish it off. I have no diffuser setup like Fred has. Pretty much as it came out of the box. Maybe if I could get it to 16 hours next time around it would make a difference. It was still tasty and the smoke penetrated quite deep. Well at least the red coloring into the meat. I will try again and plan better next time so I don't have to stay up so late. I think putting it on at 10:00PM would work the best next time around.
Dave

Couple of thoughts:

If you are going to finish it in the oven set the oven for the same temp the pit was running at, still low and slow. By cooking it at roasting temps it doesn't give the collagen in the meat time to break down. Depending on how big it is, it can take 16 hours or longer to cook at 225 - 235F. You can go a little faster by cooking at 250-270 but I certainly wouldn't go much higher than that.

The diffuser plate seems to help even my temps out a lot, but the one I bought was pretty expensive. Since it is just going into the cooking chamber which doesn't get all that hot you could make one pretty cheaply out of some relatively thin sheet metal from Home Despot, That's what I used for my little Cheap Offset Charbroil when I converted it to reverse flow and 2 layers of that sheet metal worked fine.

I also saw a guy that took the two grates they give you for searing meat in the firebox and covered them in a few layers of heavy duty aluminum foil, then he set them up on the right end of the cooking chamber as diffuser / deflector plates. I don't think the aluminum would last long as that end right near the fire gets pretty hot.

I need to try an overnight smoke soon too. If the TTT works half as well as people say that along with my remote reading dual thermometer may just be the ticket. Someone in the neighborhood is smoking something today. They are making my stomach grumble!

 

[Knifemaker]

Well, to be fair here on the water pan thing....I don't use one in my pit. However...this last pork butt I did that I finished in the oven...

was placed on a rack in a roasting pan with 2 cups of liquid (apple juice) in the bottom of the pan. It was covered tightly with foil, and cooked for about 3 hours at 225F and at 275F the last hour.

This of course would be similar to using a pan of water in a small cooker. Perhaps Dave, if you did this, it might have made a difference? Am wondering if finishing yours at 375 for the last hour was just too high a temperature, that it got you to the target internal temperature, but didn't allow enough time for the fats to break down properly?

Edit..HA HA...looks like we had the same thought at the same time here Fred..

 

[eflyguy]

I don't think finishing at high temp is good - totally different "cooking process" for the outer portion of the food, just to get the inside to a target temp. That's what makes smoking low-and-slow work so well, it doesn't over-cook the outside just to get the inside up to temp.

I do a lot of sous-vide, where your target temp is precisely maintained for as long as it takes to break down the tissue as required. Steaks are only an hour but short ribs take two days. You cook low enough to break things down as needed, without damaging/destroying the outside layer. That's the same premise with smoking, because there's too much meat to simply "cook" traditionally without having a drastic variance in "doneness"..

These are my opinions, not representing them as fact, but they've worked for me..

 

[Fred W]

My new TTT arrived yesterday (Sunday!) because I ordered it on Friday from Amazon Prime. It seems that the USPS now sends out a few of their delivery trucks loaded with just Amazon Priority Mail deliveries on Sundays.

It's a pretty neat little gadget. I had already read a bunch of the online reviews, and watched a few YouTube reviews, so I knew what to expect. But I did learn a few things about it, and had the opportunity to give it a test run yesterday afternoon. The first thing that I noticed was that the point where the inner-most coil of the bi-metal spring is supposed to be crimped to the shaft that you rotate with the temperature knob was a little loose. That would have allowed the damper flap and coil spring to rotate randomly by about 10 degrees. I reached inside the spring with a pair of small bent tip, needle nose pliers and crimped the end down firmly and eliminated that variability. If that hadn't have worked I'd have just put a drop of epoxy on the shaft/coil interface to eliminate the slop.

Next thing I noticed was that the smaller diameter, raised center section looked like it might be about 3" in diameter. Test fitting it on my OK Joe's 3" chimney shows that it is, and that it fits perfectly on top of the chimney with no modifications at all. I'm guessing that this was purely intentional on the part of the manufacturer.

I loaded up my minion charcoal basket with a small load of Kingsford Blue and started up a small number of briquettes on the inverted chimney. As is usually the case, it takes quite a while, about 45 minutes, to get the pit all warmed up and cruising at cooking temp of 225F.

Here' the OK Joe chimney with the stock damper flap removed:

Just slipped the TTT on top without even having to mess with the welded on piece of threaded rod

With the pit warmed up to nominal 225F cooking, I adjusted the knob on the TTT for an approximate 45 degree angle as shown above, which was about 4.5 on the dial. I then opened up the firebox air inlet all the way, which would normally have caused the pit temp to rise, but the TTT held the pit temp relatively steady at 225, varying only by about 5 degrees, but with no fiddling with any dampers.

Maverick probe was clipped to the grille in the very center of the pit

So far so good.

So since I already had the pit all warmed up I decided to try something new (for me) on a piece of cheap steak. I had heavily salted the 1" thick NY Sirloin steak and left it in the fridge for an hour to tenderize. Then I rinsed all he residual salt away, patted it dry and gave it a light coating with Meathead's Big Bad Beef Rub.

Flopped it on the pit and threw a handful of hickory wood chips in the firebox every 15 - 20 minutes. Gave it about 1/2 hour on each side and that brought the internal temp up to ~130F, In the meantime I had preheated my gas grille on high and threw it on that to try and get a little searing on the outside.

Flavor and tenderness was fabulous. Decent little smoke ring for such a short amount of time. Center was a bit more well done than I normally care for, probably medium, vs my normal medium rare. The sear wasn't very dark, and the center being too well done, I think were both caused by the grille not running hot enough. Next time I'll take the meat off the smoke, and try heating a cast iron frying pan on the firebox and giving it a hot sear that way. It was still a good tasting piece of beef for short money. We had it with some sauteed cabbage and a salad.

The offset grille does use a lot of fuel compared to any upright. This is always going to make that type of pit more difficult and expensive to run for 12 hours or more at a time. I believe that this inefficiency is caused by the sheer amount of exposed horizontal surface area to lose heat.

I do not think the offset's inefficiency is due to smoke leakage (which I have very little of) or by the pit not being made from thicker steel plate. Steel is a very poor insulator, and it would shed heat at the same rate regardless of how thick it was. The only way to really improve the efficiency would be to go on a major insulating campaign, insulating both the firebox and cooking chamber.

My next test of the TTT will be on the Ugly Drum vertical where I expect it to really shine, and be useful for those longer cooks. I saw that the local meat market has some Beef Ribs on sale. I may go score some for cookin' next weekend. That should be a good ~ 6 hour + test of how well it holds temperature.

 

[Knifemaker]

Curious as to how much movement the TTT went through?

I think the only thing that makes an offset "inefficient" is that by design, the firebox is separate from the cooking chamber. On an UDS or vertical smoker, all the heat rises from under the meat. On an offset, it has to move sideways into another chamber. Heat up the baffle or diffuser. Then heat the meat. On my first cook with my pit, I took some temperature readings with an inferred gun. At 235 degrees at grate level...the sides of the cooking chamber were 195-200. First few inches of the smokestack were 190, but the top of the firebox was 840F. All the energy heating up the top of that box wasted into the atmosphere..

This is why a UDS uses so little fuel in comparison. The TTT likely can help regulate temps on your Joe for a long cook, but you still have to hang around to add wood, and extra fuel.

Yeah, I don't know if smoke can really go "stale", but it still seems to me the best use of that TTT is as advertised..for kettles and drum type single chamber vertical smokers.

 

[Fred W]

You are probably right about the TTT working best on a vertical smoker. I did the same thing with an IR themo-gun and saw the same results. If we were able to devise a good way to insulate the firebox that would provide the biggest bang in efficiency gain

But in any case I will probably try it again on the OK Joe since I already have it and it fits on so easily. I bet I could get a full load of briquettes to burn for ~ 8 hours so maybe only require one refueling? You would have to add wood chunks once in a while in that time if you want a heavy smoke flavor.

It was kind of neat to watch the gadget at work. It stayed at that 45 degrees most of the time, but for grins I cracked the end door of the firebox open and as the pit temp tried to climb the flap closed down so the pit temp went up very little. How robust the thing is and whether it will last under regular use is to be seen.

 

[Bounce]

https://www.gbcindia.org/ecotiles.aspx

?

 

[Knifemaker]

https://www.gbcindia.org/ecotiles.aspx
?

I only want one. They only sell in quantities of 25,000 sq/ft or more.....

 

[eflyguy]

I wonder if Chevy knows they're using their logo..

 

[Knifemaker]

Fred, I'd wager the thing is fairly "robust", you might need to clean it if at some point it gets a coating of carbon/creosote on it...(would guess a degreaser would clean it up...see no plastic parts on it other than the knob)

Insulating the firebox likely wouldn't hurt, although not sure how much of an impact that would make. I think calling it "inefficient" is not a fair judgement, as you're comparing it to a totally different contraption...as an offset cookers main benifit is not having direct heat under the meat, so obviously your going to have a trade off because of the way it operates.

Looking foreword to your testing on your UDS.

 

[Bounce]

I wonder if Chevy knows they're using their logo..

https://www.gbcindia.org/ecotiles.aspx

?

I only want one.

They only sell in quantities of 25,000 sq/ft or more.....

My bad. I looked for insulating tiles and did a quick scan. Shoppers are left to do their own deep research.

 

[Fred W]

Re: efficiency, that is exactly what it is. Yes, the advantage of the offset is no direct heating, or less anyway; only indirect convective heat with smoke.

We sometimes lose sight of the fact that these things were not designed to cook with expensive charcoal or LP gas. They were intended to be run as stick burners where the fuel is literally growing on trees. Lack of efficiency is no problem at all when you are burning essentially free fuel, except that you need to tend the fire constantly. By using the more expensive fuels we are buying long and steady burn times and modern convenience.

 

[eflyguy]

"All the modern inconveniences".. who's quote?

 

[Knifemaker]

"All the modern inconveniences".. who's quote?

Mark Twain

 

[Fred W]

Bah! I guess I procrastinated too long and foiled my own plans. Went to the meat market that had advertised the "longhorn" beef ribs (not short ribs) on sale and they were completely cleaned out. All they had were some marinated ones that I did not want. Picked up four small racks of baby back pork ribs for the weekend instead.

I'll cook those up, using the TTT again, while we are doing a 100k service on son's FJR tomorrow afternoon. Valve check will have to wait until Sunday AM when it's stone cold.

 

[08FJR4ME]

Today's feast, drool boys, it was good.

Hickory from last years cutting.

Yummy, Dave

 

[Fred W]

Looking good Dave!

 

[08FJR4ME]

I caught hell from the wife for using her cookie sheet. I may have to buy a new one.

Dave

 

[Fred W]

At least you foil lined it!