Dump Newbie Question

[bill scott]

I have three-eighteen square inch cooking racks. If I buy average-sized chicken wings, how many wings would you think I should be able to cook on each rack?

 

[chrisjames]

out of curiosity, what are the dimensions of each cooking rack?

 

[SonnyE]

Did you mean 18" X 18", square, cooking racks?
Because 18 Sq. Inches is really small. (6" x 3")

My guess would be around 24 wings on a rack 18" X 18".
But it would be totally dependent on the size of the wings.

I did find this. < Click Here<

Sorry I couldn't be of more help. :oops:

 

[tallbm]

I have an MES 40 and I would say I have 11" X 18" of usable rack space without touching walls.
I did 7 pounds of separated chicken wings (drummy and wingy split, no wing tips) across 2 racks.
This was 63 wing pieces total.

I would estimate you can fit 2.5 pounds of wings or about 30'ish wings per rack if your racks are the same size as mine.

One thing to consider in a verticle smoker though is that the moisture from the lower wings rising up and flowing over the upper racks of wings means you get a bit of a steam effect unless you want to rotate wings. It was no biggy for me since I finished the wings on a hot grill to ensure the skin was edible BUT had I just pulled them out and served them I would have had 1 rack of nice golden roasted looking wings and 1 rack that looked more steamed then roasted.

One last bit of info, Chicken skin often comes out like leather if you don't cook at a temp of around 325F or so. I pulled my wings before they were done and finished on a hot grill to get the skin to be bite through edible :)

Best of luck!

 

[bill scott]

Thanks guys, yes it is 18" square. I managed to get 28-30 on each rack. They are fairly good, but I was not satisfied with the results. I had problems with my new controller. When I built it I thought I put in a 20 Amp circuit breaker and it was a 15 Amp. I discovered this after it kept breaking on me. I just cut it out and finished the session. They seemed to cook fairy evenly, but I cooked them too long. The breaker really messed me up. I cooked 90 wings, ate 3, and gave the rest to neighbors. I wanted to see how well my recipe turned out. Jury is still out. Sorry about the caluclations. 18 X 18 is 324.

 

[tallbm]

Thanks guys, yes it is 18" square. I managed to get 28-30 on each rack. They are fairly good, but I was not satisfied with the results. I had problems with my new controller. When I built it I thought I put in a 20 Amp circuit breaker and it was a 15 Amp. I discovered this after it kept breaking on me. I just cut it out and finished the session. They seemed to cook fairy evenly, but I cooked them too long. The breaker really messed me up. I cooked 90 wings, ate 3, and gave the rest to neighbors. I wanted to see how well my recipe turned out. Jury is still out. Sorry about the caluclations. 18 X 18 is 324.

Well that sucks your setup had problems. It's all lessons learned. You also used chicken which is the cheapest meat to experiment with.
Every time I did something different with my setup (I have a ton of mods) I always tested with chicken since it is cheap. I learned how awesome smoked chicken could be, especially whole chickens at like 99 cents a pound.

Keep on practicing and you will have everything dialed in soon :)

 

[bill scott]

Thanks, Tallbum. I'm disappointed just a little bit but not complaining. It was a test for a friend to see how difficult it was going to be to cook a large amount of food, and the experiment was successful although the results were as I said, disappointing.

I smeared the wings with mustard, ninety of them, and used the zip lock bag method suggested to distribute the rub. Not good. The majority of the rub in the first bag collected on about 20% of the wings and not much on the others. I adjusted the way I did it for the rest, but I still did not like the results.

I set the smoker to 275. As per the instructions for the smoker, I did not give it time to warm up. Just put them in a turned it on. That was a big mistake, because it took the smoker 30-45 minutes to reach temperature. So 1/3rd of the intended cooking time had gone by before it reached 275.

Then the 15 amp circuit breaker i put on the controller kept popping, so I had to stop and fix that. I spent about 3 hours on a recipe that suggested 1.5 hours of cooking time. The wings were a little dry, but they were tasty. The ones with the extra rub were too hot (spicy) for my taste, but after you got past the first one, my taste buds were sufficiently deadened so the others I ate weren't bad.

My friend ate them like a junk yard dog, so I gave him all put 15 or so which I kept for myself. He was going to pass them around among his friends to see if he could make money in a business he wanted to start. That was part of the purpose of the experiment to begin with. As for me, I've gotten pretty good at pork ribs. I think I will stick with them.