Nice! My gravity fed has been fun thus far, but my rig does not seem to be able to snuff the fire… so anything in the charcoal chute is going to burn. Not a huge problem, and it’s not big deal to add charcoal on a cook.
Love this! We did smoked mahi last Sunday…was perfect!
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Doing my first brisket this weekend. I’ve read both ways…what say this group?: Fat side up or Fat side down for the smoke???
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Rule of thumb…where’s the heat coming from on the smoker? If it’s from beneath the rack level fat side down if it’s from rack level or slightly higher fat side up. Don’t forget to use beef tallow on your butcher paper after you wrap it…it’s worth the effort.
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Turned out pretty well, though it could use more smoke flavor… have another shoulder waiting to be smoked (maybe tonight?)
New grill is pretty solid overall… holds temperature well, but doesn’t do great at sub 250 degrees…
Oh well.
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Is it a holding temp issue below 250? The bark looks incredible. I still have trouble with stall,. I do get impatient and then do a foil wrap when I hit that. I mean I like the flavor of my shoulder, but I would bet Myron or Aaron would notice and I wouldn’t win a prize…lol
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No, I had it set to 215 and it cruised along at 250… I haven’t played with the vents enough to figure out if it was user error…
Since it’s using charcoal as a heat source, I assume it’s just not going to be great at going lower than that… I’ll toy around with settings but if it can consistently stay in the 250 range, then I’ll be OK.
I also didn’t check the actual temperature of the grill…
For 0 upkeep during the smoke, it went really well… I’ll probably toss another on there tonight with some process modification and see how it goes (I’m not patient enough to try one variable at a time… or record what I’m doing different)
I wanted a grill that was easy to fire up, got hot enough to sear / grill like a regular grill and had the capability of making decent BBQ… thus far, I’m happy with my purchase!
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I would bet it’s the vents, practice makes perfect, . I’ve never used a gravity fed chute, I don’t think charcoal burns " hotter" than wood. But at 250 that shoulder did look primo…
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No complaints on it, I need to do some checking and verify my temperature and everything else… it tasted pretty good, but there is definitely improvement to be made…
We went to the pool tonight instead of grilling, so I’ll grill tomorrow… trying to figure out the timing of everything with cook time + quality rest…
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Yup, this is the correct answer.
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Yea, I spent one whole summer as an overnight pit Master, My boss Chicken George made sure I was well versed… I didn’t ever want to F up my job, if I did, we weren’t serving stuff Friday into Saturday. I watched over 2 12 ft long barrel smokers and one home made box smoker. Stoke fires and peel taters…
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I mean the only thing you could do. Which is a real PITA…take a spray bottle of water and spray the coals every 15-20 minutes, but it’s not competition cooking, it’s for your fam and…ok so it’s a little drier and the cook is a little faster… I’m still impressed with that bark, you probably got a nice smoke ring and it pulled apart nicely.
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Yeah. I’m not willing to spritz it often enough for it to have any value… cooking another shoulder tonight, so we will see how it goes!
If you are interested, I do have a recipe called Big Joe’s Carolina Gold. It’s pretty good…we use it on our pork sandwiches on poppy seeded kaiser. There are literally hundreds of recipes and u probably won’t go wrong with any you execute. The most important thing though is ya gotta use A tried and true yellow mustard like French’s or Plotchmans. No fancy Dijons or Stone Grounds etc. Take my word for it…Blah…they ruin the sauce. I also have Alabama mayo Q sauce, Coke, Root beer and a clear 7-Up Sauce we use on skewered shrimp…
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Very happy with my first brisket tonight! Even with a crutch to get out of the stall it was 17 1/2 hours in the Traeger. Flat was amazing, point was butter…good bark all around. Man I love this new hobby…plus i shot an 83 yesterday…very good birthday weekend.
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Nice work! Looks delicious. Hopefully you let it rest before digging in… I’ve been reading that’s a super important step.
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Yep….about an hour and a half rest. Put it in last night at 7:30pm, foil wrapped it around noon today to power through the stall, got it to 193 then unwrapped it and turned the heat from 225 to 300 to firm up the bark again….took it out at 204 and rested it. Kids got here at 4pm…just in time to slice and serve.
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I’ve noticed and read that the altitude here in Salt Lake City really messes with smoke times. I already need to add 2-3 hours to every recipe I see online to get to temp here.
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Awesome! Yeah, altitude cooking is weird… though it’s not as bad in the part of Idaho my families lives in!
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