- Aug 29, 2015
- 9
- 11
Hi,
I've only been smoking meats for about a year. I previously had a Chargriller propane grill that I connected a side smoking box to smoke mostly ribs. I had a terrible time trying to maintain temperature. I tried running one gas burner super low while smoking chips in the side smoker to give the meat flavor. Other times, I would leave the gas off and just burn charcoal in the side smoker along with different types of wood chips. It was such a pain and one day my neighbor noticed me fiddling with my grill and invited me over to check out his Traeger. I was amazed by the set it and forget feature, but I persisted anyway with my side smoker because despite the pain in keeping temperature, the ribs came out AMAZING. I just love the smokey flavor imparted on the meat. I probably lean toward more smoky than most people's taste. Anyway, I failed to clean the grease out of the bottom of my grill over the year or so of smoking and regular grilling and I created a huge grease fire in the grill. Pretty scary but luckily nobody hurt. haha. My grill unfortunately did not survive (well at least that's what i told my wife). I decided to get a new smoker - one that was not cobbled together. After a year of searching, I finally settled on a Cabela's 48" pellet smoker. I fired it up once so far using Cabela's alder wood pellets. Did the 3-2-1 method on baby back ribs which previously worked so well for me. I gotta admit, the end product was very disappointing. the texture was pretty spot on. It had a smoke ring. crusty outer coating... BUT it just didn't have a lot of smoke flavor. I ran it at the high smoke setting which is 225F the entire time. I'm running another test run today using a bag of mesquite pellets i bought from Walmart. I notice the smoker doesn't produce much smoke and understand that the smoke comes and goes as the auger is triggered to dump more pellets into the burning area. If this batch doesn't come out any better, what else can i do to salvage this purchase? Different pellet source/type? maybe throw a tube smoker on the grate too?
Thanks in advance
bummed in DC
I've only been smoking meats for about a year. I previously had a Chargriller propane grill that I connected a side smoking box to smoke mostly ribs. I had a terrible time trying to maintain temperature. I tried running one gas burner super low while smoking chips in the side smoker to give the meat flavor. Other times, I would leave the gas off and just burn charcoal in the side smoker along with different types of wood chips. It was such a pain and one day my neighbor noticed me fiddling with my grill and invited me over to check out his Traeger. I was amazed by the set it and forget feature, but I persisted anyway with my side smoker because despite the pain in keeping temperature, the ribs came out AMAZING. I just love the smokey flavor imparted on the meat. I probably lean toward more smoky than most people's taste. Anyway, I failed to clean the grease out of the bottom of my grill over the year or so of smoking and regular grilling and I created a huge grease fire in the grill. Pretty scary but luckily nobody hurt. haha. My grill unfortunately did not survive (well at least that's what i told my wife). I decided to get a new smoker - one that was not cobbled together. After a year of searching, I finally settled on a Cabela's 48" pellet smoker. I fired it up once so far using Cabela's alder wood pellets. Did the 3-2-1 method on baby back ribs which previously worked so well for me. I gotta admit, the end product was very disappointing. the texture was pretty spot on. It had a smoke ring. crusty outer coating... BUT it just didn't have a lot of smoke flavor. I ran it at the high smoke setting which is 225F the entire time. I'm running another test run today using a bag of mesquite pellets i bought from Walmart. I notice the smoker doesn't produce much smoke and understand that the smoke comes and goes as the auger is triggered to dump more pellets into the burning area. If this batch doesn't come out any better, what else can i do to salvage this purchase? Different pellet source/type? maybe throw a tube smoker on the grate too?
Thanks in advance
bummed in DC
