Three-Letter Acronyms & Four-Letter Words

Another morning has come and thus is bringing our vacation another day closer to the end.

It has been great being able to sleep in and not worry about alarm clocks or deadlines to get some place. However, for most of the last week my body has been waking me up between 8 and 9 AM. I have never really been able to sleep much past 9 or 10 AM, unless recovering from a night that were tequila was readily available.

Gina got the latest Harry Potter book and is now sitting in the living room reading it, throwing out the occasional 'Oh man' and 'No way'.

She looked at my itchy torso and told me that it is probably just my 'tan', therefore I think I might have ever the slightest touch of sunburn. Which makes a bit more sense than my white shirt being the culprit, given that she did use the same detergent as I did on the darks. I have the usual forearm and leg below the knee 'farmer's tan', but this year I tried to get some sun of my chest and back, so I am definitely glad I used the SPF 45 and not a 15 or 30 on Friday.

Regardless, the BBQ is tomorrow. I will need to find out what time so that I can try to figure out when to start smoking the brisket. I normally smoke a brisket for at least 8 hours and no more than 14. It depends on the size of the brisket. The first 3 to 4 hours are spent in the smoker with plenty of mesquite loaded on the coals, ensuring that mesquite flavor has a chance to get that good smoke ring you want on a brisket.

The rest of the time is spent wrapped in tinfoil, this helps to keep the brisket from getting dried out while it cooks the rest of the way through. If you have a good broiler pan (think that is what it is called) you can even finish off your brisket (still wrapped in tinfoil) in the oven. I have done that a couple of times and it works out well, because with your oven you can keep a very even temperature and with the broiler pan you can catch the juices that might slip out of the tinfoil while it cooks.

Because, once your brisket (or other meats) are all wrapped in tinfoil and in the smoker, there is no need to keep adding mesquite (or other hardwoods like oak, hickory, etc) you just add charcoal to keep the temperature up. Meaning that the smoker is basically just an outdoor oven at that point.

Sometime today Gina and I will need to run to Meijer, pick up some Chicken breasts, Pabst Blue Ribbon and maybe see if there is any good looking sausage.

I am going to read some more of my book now. And bug Gina to see if she knows if Snape is friend or foe.

Laterz

But I will admit and even proclaim myself as a night owl.

Gina and I had dinner last night @ FireBowl, a great asian diner/cafe place. They have some chinese, japanese, thai. They make a great "Spicy Coconut Soup" it comes with chicken, rice and shitaki mushrooms. They also make some great "Soft Thai Summer Rolls". Those being my two favorites.

We were going to see "Little Miss Sunshine" at the movie theatre next door. However, the heatre nextdoor was PACKED. So we headed over to the Lake Creek Alamo Draft House as they were showing that same movie, but in 45 minutes.

The movie was FANTASTIC. Honestly, one of the funniest and most original movies that I have seen. The characters were great, the plot of absurdly original and it had some subtle social commentary that made fun of all those folks that love to stick their kids in pageants.

So we hit HEB on the way back to the house to pick up some charcoal. I made up the brine for the pork after we got home. I stuck to the known success, Salt, water, garlic and a few spices. I will experiment next time.

I finished cleaning up around 2am and headed to bed.

I woke up at 8:30. I had wanted to wake up around 6. Of course, setting an alarm clock would probably have helped with the waking up part. I got up and went about preparing the smoker and seasoning the meat (after removing it from the zip lock bags I was brining in).

This time around I decided that I wanted to change up the "fire box" in my smoker works. I have a vertical smoker.

Here is a diagram of how the old smoker looks.



This is basically the setup that they recommend in the manual. The only exception is that they say you should use water in your drip pan. This recommended because of the fact that the BBQ is supposed to be indirect heat. And with a vertical smoker design you definitely get good heat flow, but the meat is more exposed to the flame. The drip pan collects the fat that drips out of the meat as it cooks.

By filling it with water this obviously keeps the fat drippings from bonding with the bowl (or catching fire). However, it creates a HUGE mess. Not to mention that the water evaporates while it cooks, so you have to keep refilling it. I found this to be a pain in the ass. There is another side effect of all of the "steam" in the smoker. It does help to cook the food. However, everytime you open the door to add fuel (wood/coal) or water you lose ALL of the steam.

This mean that the temperature in the smoker drops severely and must rebuild.

A few years back when scouring the net for BBQ tips and tricks I read about using sand rather than water. You cover the sand with tinfoil to collect the drippings. This has two benefits. The first is that obviously you don't have to refill the sand, it doesn't evaporate. This means that you will only open the door to add fuel.

The second benefit is that the sand retains the heat. It means that the smoker doesn't lose as much heat when you open the door. This makes controlling the temperature easier and keeps a more constant temp while cooking.




The following diagram is basically how I set the smoker up this morning. The "Fire box" bowl that comes with most of your lower end model smokers is a fine if your only going to be cooking over it for a couple of hours. Which is really never the case when smoking meat. I would say you should be looking at 6 hours minimum, unless your only doing ribs and sausage, then your about 4 hours for the ribs and 1 hour for the sausage. Anyway, the reason it is only good for a few hours is the build up of the ash. There is only a small hole in the bottom of the fire bowl for the ash to get out of. The second thing is that the placement of the bowl is in a bad spot for the air vents. The fire had a hard time getting air. Thus, I took it out of the holder and placed the bowl on bricks.

This still however, left me with the ash problem. In looking at the smoker last time I realized that there was enough room in the smoker (without the bowl) for me to put small mesquite logs in. (The last time I smoked I used only mesquite wood, but it was in chunks. Still hard to fit in the bowl.)

When we were cleaning out the garage I found a bag of mesquite wood, but not chunks, more like split logs. This meant that I needed to be able to put them in there. The bowl had to go. Gina bought me a little charcoal grill a few years back. In it there is this flat, square metal plate that has a grate on it.

As it turns out this was a perfect fit. I could place it on the bricks and it was the perfect hieght for good airflow and to allow me to place the mesquite logs on the fire. I still wanted to use the charcoal, only because after the first 3 hours of cooking in the smoker, the meat gets wrapped in tinfoil. Thus, no need for smoke just heat.

To wrap this post up. Since I didn't get the meat into the smoker until 10:30. This means that I can expect to leave around 8pm rather than 6pm.

From the first hour and a half of cooking, I think the change in the setup is definitely working.

More laterz