New Member (beginner needs help badly)

I'm no expert by any stretch of the imagination. Did you season it with just heat, no meats or fats? When I seasoned my WSM I first torched it with a just a whole bag of kingsford charcoal running wide open nothing else no water, no meats or fats. This burnt off any oils from the manufacturing process and to take off some of in interior reflective shine. The next day I smoked a couple of fatty pork butts to start the second phase of seasoning and to help seal the unit. I know the MES is different then the WSM but our interior color post seasoning is about the same. You should be fine. Just wipe down the glass. I'm sure someone with a unit like yours will chime in soon. Good luck with the b-day smoke. I know your daughter will love it. Mine even had me smoke food for her wedding instead of hiring a caterer. 

gt183b said:

smoker 3.JPG

• gt183b
• Sep 11, 2016

The pictures show the result of the seasoning.  There is a brown stick substance coating the entire inside smoker.  Is this normal? Is this creosote?  I always thought creosote is more black in nature.  I just don't want my 9 year old daughter ingesting anything negative.  I am really nervous.  I appreciate the help everyone - it is appreciated more than you know! I am nearly embarrassed to post this, because I am sure I did something really stupid, or this is just normal....

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Hi Gt

From the photos this is nothing to worry about and is normal. Once you get smoking food it is going to look a lot darker than that. What does it smell like? If it does not smell of burned oil, tar or plastic then it is fine. Before you put in your meat just take out the shelves and rinse them with soapy water. 

What are you going to smoke first?

gt183b said:

 
There is a brown stick substance coating the entire inside smoker.  Is this normal? Is this creosote?  I always thought creosote is more black in nature. 

Click to expand...

Just to clear this up, when people here refer to "creosote" they are referring to the natural tars and oils that are produced when any wood burns. It is not the commercial creosote from the creosote bush that I think you are thinking of. The smoke flavour that we are looking for includes some of there tars and it is a balance to get the right amount on the food. Not enough and the food does not taste "smoked". Too much and you see it running down the walls of the smoking chamber and condensing onto the food and the food tastes tainted. You will hear people talk about "thin blue smoke" which is very light smoke that is said to deposit just the right amount of flavour over the cooking time. This is hard to create though and you will almost always get some white clouds of smoke at some point. This is fine so long as it isn't too dense. What you want to avoid is thick dark billowing smoke as this will make the food taste of tar or creosote.

Seasoning is to protect the smoker... Unless you have heavy soot or creosote from long periods of use, it does not effect what you are smoking. And even when that happens, you can scape or wash it off... the concern would be it heating up and dripping on the food being smoked. In my experience when this happens (I've had it happen to a brisket and pork ribs) it was cosmetic and did not effect the flavor of the items... but I did clean it after that and it was only a drip or 2

Like Wade said, you're in great shape right now.  It'll darken up more as you move forward with your cooks.

Keep us informed as to how you're progressing!

It looks good and normal to me.

When I got my Masterbuilt, I ran it for a while with the vent open and the chip hopper completely removed with nothing inside, at its highest temperature, just to burn off any manufacturing oils or coatings. It did stink at first. I wanted to drive off as much of that as possible.

Then I ran it the same way, but with wood chips to apply some seasoning.

But it really didn't get a proper coating of dark goo until I'd done several good smokings with it. But those first smokes came out great, anyhow.

The main thing is to burn off any manufacturing oils or coatings from various components in the smoker at the very first before you actually cook with it. The more you run it, at high temperature, with the vents open, the more any of this stuff gets driven off and out of the smoker.

The seasoning builds up over time and gets darker and thicker. It probably adds some flavor to things, bit you could likely do without it. I have never cleaned the inside of my smoker except the window. It's pretty much black inside.

Yours looks correct for this point in its life. [emoji]9786[/emoji]



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