The equipment
The process: My go to when I make last minute decisions on what to smoke. Stubbs Chicken Marinade (this time 6 hours in the marinade). And a great rub that I use on poultry.
The guests of honor. 6 bone-in, skin still in place, dusted with the rub, warming up while working on the fire pit.
Looking into the fire chamber. This run was with Kingsford Competition, laid out around the outside of the fire ring, burning counterclockwise. That's a few Apple chips scattered around the top.
We're at about 2 hours in. Added the bell peppers for a future project. Chicken was spritzed with a combo of Apple Juice-6oz/Yoshida's Gourmet-4oz (obviously not all used) about every 30 minutes, or more accurately, when I remembered to do it.
Pulled off and resting.
And the money shot. Nice smoke ring and moist. SWMBO had seconds, which for her is very rare.
Observations:
I've read that new WSM's tend to run hot while still "new". That was certainly true with the Smoke EZ. I had a heck of a time getting it below 250 at the top grid, monitored with an ET-732. I think 2 factors were at play: A. New. B. Perhaps I laid too many briqs (depth wise) around the fire ring. In fact, I'm almost certain of it. Next run will be with just a double layer and see what happens, unless I get some sage advice from more experienced SMF'ers. I throttled the air flow down at the bottom vents by just barely having a crack of opening to plain just shutting it off to get any type of temp drop. I did the temp drop trick of removing the top cover for a short time, about 15 seconds, but the temp would rise back up. Tells me that temp recovery will be fast when spritzing or rotating meat or whatever.
All in all, I'm very pleased with the Smoke EZ married up to the Weber OTG. Excellent results out of the starting gate. Like any new piece of equipment, there's going to be a learning curve but once I get tuned in to the "quirks" of this smoker and charcoal smoking as a whole, all I can see is bright sunny days and birds singing and peace on earth and.... (well I can always hope for peace on earth).
Thanks for following along. And thanks now and in the future to all you WSM gurus for passing along a ton of information to help make this such a success.
~Dave
The process: My go to when I make last minute decisions on what to smoke. Stubbs Chicken Marinade (this time 6 hours in the marinade). And a great rub that I use on poultry.
The guests of honor. 6 bone-in, skin still in place, dusted with the rub, warming up while working on the fire pit.
Looking into the fire chamber. This run was with Kingsford Competition, laid out around the outside of the fire ring, burning counterclockwise. That's a few Apple chips scattered around the top.
We're at about 2 hours in. Added the bell peppers for a future project. Chicken was spritzed with a combo of Apple Juice-6oz/Yoshida's Gourmet-4oz (obviously not all used) about every 30 minutes, or more accurately, when I remembered to do it.
Pulled off and resting.
And the money shot. Nice smoke ring and moist. SWMBO had seconds, which for her is very rare.
Observations:
I've read that new WSM's tend to run hot while still "new". That was certainly true with the Smoke EZ. I had a heck of a time getting it below 250 at the top grid, monitored with an ET-732. I think 2 factors were at play: A. New. B. Perhaps I laid too many briqs (depth wise) around the fire ring. In fact, I'm almost certain of it. Next run will be with just a double layer and see what happens, unless I get some sage advice from more experienced SMF'ers. I throttled the air flow down at the bottom vents by just barely having a crack of opening to plain just shutting it off to get any type of temp drop. I did the temp drop trick of removing the top cover for a short time, about 15 seconds, but the temp would rise back up. Tells me that temp recovery will be fast when spritzing or rotating meat or whatever.
All in all, I'm very pleased with the Smoke EZ married up to the Weber OTG. Excellent results out of the starting gate. Like any new piece of equipment, there's going to be a learning curve but once I get tuned in to the "quirks" of this smoker and charcoal smoking as a whole, all I can see is bright sunny days and birds singing and peace on earth and.... (well I can always hope for peace on earth).
Thanks for following along. And thanks now and in the future to all you WSM gurus for passing along a ton of information to help make this such a success.
~Dave