- Jan 28, 2020
- 9
- 10
Hey all,
I got a OC Pecos offset smoker about 2 months ago, watched a lot of you tube before I got started and used it about 8-10 times so far with all kinds of meat.
I think I've got a real good feel for it, I've been using maple I got from Academy, I chop it down to wrist size sticks. I leave the fire box door door open for good air flow, control the temp with the smoke stack damper (usually about 50%). I let the wood start to burn after I put it on before I close the fire box so I don't get any white smoke in the cooking chamber...I always have blue to clear smoke coming out the stack. The OC Pecos is very responsive to adjustments and I can control the temperature quite well.
So my last cook was two whole chickens, I dried the skin well, sprayed with canola oil and put on salt and pepper. I used no water bath this time because I read somewhere that will prevent the skin from crisping, and I ran it at around 325F for 2 hours, rotating the chickens once.
The meat turned out perfect but the skin was like thin tough leather. Now we really don't eat the skin so it does not matter that much, but the reason for my questions is this, the skin was very sooty. If you touched the skin you would get black soot on your hands, worse than I've seen in any other of my cooks...
I would expect this if I were not careful about the quality of smoke, but I thought I did it perfectly...
So my question:
Is this normal for an offset smoker?
Is it the maple? Should I try a different wood?
Is there any way to prevent this, or does it even matter?
Thanks!
Ken
I got a OC Pecos offset smoker about 2 months ago, watched a lot of you tube before I got started and used it about 8-10 times so far with all kinds of meat.
I think I've got a real good feel for it, I've been using maple I got from Academy, I chop it down to wrist size sticks. I leave the fire box door door open for good air flow, control the temp with the smoke stack damper (usually about 50%). I let the wood start to burn after I put it on before I close the fire box so I don't get any white smoke in the cooking chamber...I always have blue to clear smoke coming out the stack. The OC Pecos is very responsive to adjustments and I can control the temperature quite well.
So my last cook was two whole chickens, I dried the skin well, sprayed with canola oil and put on salt and pepper. I used no water bath this time because I read somewhere that will prevent the skin from crisping, and I ran it at around 325F for 2 hours, rotating the chickens once.
The meat turned out perfect but the skin was like thin tough leather. Now we really don't eat the skin so it does not matter that much, but the reason for my questions is this, the skin was very sooty. If you touched the skin you would get black soot on your hands, worse than I've seen in any other of my cooks...
I would expect this if I were not careful about the quality of smoke, but I thought I did it perfectly...
So my question:
Is this normal for an offset smoker?
Is it the maple? Should I try a different wood?
Is there any way to prevent this, or does it even matter?
Thanks!
Ken