Hi everyone!
My name is Christy and I am a smoking newbie from PA. Now if you immediately are thinking Pittsburgh or Philly then you got me all wrong. I am from the beautiful South Central region that we affectionately refer to as Pennsyltuckey :-)(https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Pennsyltucky). I am about 15 minutes from Harrisburg and 25 from Lancaster, close to the Susquehanna river and where it is crossed by the Appalacian Trail. I live with my fiance Matt and our two dogs Elli and Bodie (a.k.a. the furkids)
I have very little smoking experience but what I have made so far has turn out pretty darn good, which I attribute completely to beginners dumb luck and a lot of binge watching of BBQ Pitmasters. I had been using a offset stick smoker with wood chunks and chips but its old and getting pretty rusted out so I decided it was time to upgrade and get serious about my smoking. Luckily right about that time a friend of mine won (what I thought was) a pellet smoker grill. She didn't really want it and sold it too me for a great price. I did some research and ordered some Traeger pellets from Home Depot and impatiently waited until the previously mentioned boyfriend FINALLY went and picked it up for me. That's when I realized that what she had won was an electric smoker and not the pellet smoker grill I had been so excited about. What in the heck was I going to do with all the pellets I had just bought? So back to the research I went and discovered the A-Maze-N pellet smoker tray. I decided to try it out on my old stick smoker and did an 8 hour smoke on a chuck roast and OMG the smoke ring was just crazy and it was so delicious. I have no thermometer for the grill temp but I found a bunch of posts on here about the meat temps so I let it go until it hit 165F and then put it in a foil pan with some beef broth, wrapped it with foil and finisedh it in there until it hit 190F. Most delicious chuck roast I have ever had (see my avatar).
So I go back to do MORE research and see what my options are with this electric smoker I got stuck with (charcoal snob in me coming out). That's when I realized I didn't just get AN electric smoker...I got THE electric smoker. It's the MES 40 inch gen 2.5 with Bluetooth and from the review that BearCarver did of it I'm now super excited to try it out.
So if you made it all the way through my novel LOL I have two questions before I give it a try. The first is where is the best place to put the tray in this model? I'm also curious to find out how hot the outside of the smoker gets. We have a little side porch that I would like to run the smoker in, in case the weather gets bad and so I can block the dogs from it but the instructions were pretty adamant about having it 10 ft from anything and any overhangs. I can leave the door open and put a fan in a window so I'm not worried about the CO2 or smoke but I'm not trying to burn our house down.
Thanks for any advice you can offer, and I promise to try to keep my posts shorter in the future
Christy
My name is Christy and I am a smoking newbie from PA. Now if you immediately are thinking Pittsburgh or Philly then you got me all wrong. I am from the beautiful South Central region that we affectionately refer to as Pennsyltuckey :-)(https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Pennsyltucky). I am about 15 minutes from Harrisburg and 25 from Lancaster, close to the Susquehanna river and where it is crossed by the Appalacian Trail. I live with my fiance Matt and our two dogs Elli and Bodie (a.k.a. the furkids)
I have very little smoking experience but what I have made so far has turn out pretty darn good, which I attribute completely to beginners dumb luck and a lot of binge watching of BBQ Pitmasters. I had been using a offset stick smoker with wood chunks and chips but its old and getting pretty rusted out so I decided it was time to upgrade and get serious about my smoking. Luckily right about that time a friend of mine won (what I thought was) a pellet smoker grill. She didn't really want it and sold it too me for a great price. I did some research and ordered some Traeger pellets from Home Depot and impatiently waited until the previously mentioned boyfriend FINALLY went and picked it up for me. That's when I realized that what she had won was an electric smoker and not the pellet smoker grill I had been so excited about. What in the heck was I going to do with all the pellets I had just bought? So back to the research I went and discovered the A-Maze-N pellet smoker tray. I decided to try it out on my old stick smoker and did an 8 hour smoke on a chuck roast and OMG the smoke ring was just crazy and it was so delicious. I have no thermometer for the grill temp but I found a bunch of posts on here about the meat temps so I let it go until it hit 165F and then put it in a foil pan with some beef broth, wrapped it with foil and finisedh it in there until it hit 190F. Most delicious chuck roast I have ever had (see my avatar).
So I go back to do MORE research and see what my options are with this electric smoker I got stuck with (charcoal snob in me coming out). That's when I realized I didn't just get AN electric smoker...I got THE electric smoker. It's the MES 40 inch gen 2.5 with Bluetooth and from the review that BearCarver did of it I'm now super excited to try it out.
So if you made it all the way through my novel LOL I have two questions before I give it a try. The first is where is the best place to put the tray in this model? I'm also curious to find out how hot the outside of the smoker gets. We have a little side porch that I would like to run the smoker in, in case the weather gets bad and so I can block the dogs from it but the instructions were pretty adamant about having it 10 ft from anything and any overhangs. I can leave the door open and put a fan in a window so I'm not worried about the CO2 or smoke but I'm not trying to burn our house down.
Thanks for any advice you can offer, and I promise to try to keep my posts shorter in the future
Christy
