I like to start my posts by acknowledging I am new to this forum and smoking altogether. Since beginning smoking I've found better ways to grill all my favorites from hamburgers to hotdogs and it's been an awesome adventure as well as kept in depth notes on every one of my smokes. I'm here to offer helpful tips I have found along the way about smoking.
First off I'm working with a smoke hollow 4-1. It has a smoker, propane, charcoal and sear on it. I started on 27 February 2016 with a 2.91 boneless pork butt and since than I have done 3 other pork butts, 4 tri tips, and 1 baby back ribs.
Problems I ran into at first were the confusion of injections and rubs to use. There's so many possibilities out there and I couldn't really settle on just one. My next and one of my biggest ones was keeping the heat in the grill/smoker and planning to make it last. There so many different affects the weather has on a smoke but also what kind of fuel you are using plays the biggest part.
In order to fix the problem of injection and rub choices I found what my family and I enjoyed the most and went with that. I know that apple juice and apple cider play a huge part in the the taste and outcome of pork so I make a point to use that what I inject and let the pork sit in it overnight. Also we like brown sugar so I go with a more sweeter flavor for now. To sum it up find something you like and work to perfect that before you try all these high speed recipes.
The heat was my biggest problem and I knew it from the beginning. I would be chasing to keep the heat going after a few hours and play catch up from there. My planning wasn't completely bad it was more of inexperience. I did a few upgrades to my smoker and grill. I put a big green egg gasket on the lid and box in order to decrease the amount of smoke/heat I lost there. Also on the edge I used high temp RTV (color red) sealant because I could see a lot of smoke being lost there. I also constructed a chimney out of a foil pan and extended my chimney further down into my grill (I know this helps with keeping smoke in but it's an upgrade). I still noticed a lot of heat loss and did more research and I believe the next three upgrades were my most beneficial. I made the DIY charcoal basket from 24"x3/4"x24" expanded metal (the result was a little to big so I altered it to fit), and I raised that with bricks (
First off I'm working with a smoke hollow 4-1. It has a smoker, propane, charcoal and sear on it. I started on 27 February 2016 with a 2.91 boneless pork butt and since than I have done 3 other pork butts, 4 tri tips, and 1 baby back ribs.
Problems I ran into at first were the confusion of injections and rubs to use. There's so many possibilities out there and I couldn't really settle on just one. My next and one of my biggest ones was keeping the heat in the grill/smoker and planning to make it last. There so many different affects the weather has on a smoke but also what kind of fuel you are using plays the biggest part.
In order to fix the problem of injection and rub choices I found what my family and I enjoyed the most and went with that. I know that apple juice and apple cider play a huge part in the the taste and outcome of pork so I make a point to use that what I inject and let the pork sit in it overnight. Also we like brown sugar so I go with a more sweeter flavor for now. To sum it up find something you like and work to perfect that before you try all these high speed recipes.
The heat was my biggest problem and I knew it from the beginning. I would be chasing to keep the heat going after a few hours and play catch up from there. My planning wasn't completely bad it was more of inexperience. I did a few upgrades to my smoker and grill. I put a big green egg gasket on the lid and box in order to decrease the amount of smoke/heat I lost there. Also on the edge I used high temp RTV (color red) sealant because I could see a lot of smoke being lost there. I also constructed a chimney out of a foil pan and extended my chimney further down into my grill (I know this helps with keeping smoke in but it's an upgrade). I still noticed a lot of heat loss and did more research and I believe the next three upgrades were my most beneficial. I made the DIY charcoal basket from 24"x3/4"x24" expanded metal (the result was a little to big so I altered it to fit), and I raised that with bricks (
