Kstone113, as you own a
Rec Tec Bull, there is no need to pre heat it to 300*-350* and then continue to run the grill, dial it back down and wait for it to drop back down to a usual smoking temp of say 225*-250*. Nor wait for it to drop all the way back down into the "Xtreme Smoke" range, ie less than 200* for a
Rec Tec.
Preheating to 300-350* degrees for 20 plus mins, and then dialing back to my normal smoke temp and waiting several additional minutes on top of that 20 minutes, for it to cool down to 200* before starting to cook???? I can't imagine. Seriously, and again, just me, but I'm scratching my head here. I'd go and light a chimney of lump charcoal and fire up my
WSM before I'd do that.
In many ways, thank goodness that you don’t have to perform such steps in order to use your grill and get good results.
Looking at that, in terms of time expended and pellets expended, doing so would very quickly and easily add up. While pellets are cheap, time isn't necessarily, and so optimally, I'd prefer not to waste either if I don't have to.
So bottom line on that, perhaps you should be grateful that operation of your particular grill does not call for such steps. Reading some of your prior writings, it seems doubtful that you're likely to introduce such a step or steps, into your cooking process, however I do admit that I could be wrong on that.
If you’re like many, if not most
Rec Tec owners, including this one, then you set your grill to the desired temp that you want, and when it hits it you put your meat on.....and your PID controller, makes sure that it stays put at plus or minus 5 degrees of that set temperature for your cook, or until you tell it to do otherwise. That's part of what you paid for.
Or if you open the lid. And even after you open the lid, it’s going to take s few mins to go right back to the temp you had set.
In your case you’ve described how the suggestion of soaking your wood would be of no benefit to you. I have to say that I follow your logic.
I particularly follow your logic, when taking into account that as soon as the little bit of water that your wood soaked in during a several minutes soak, it’s going to go ahead and ignite as usual anyway.
Wood in your HD placed in your Bull, is possibly either going to ignite somewhere en route (likely around 200*) to you reaching your set desired smoking temp of 225-250* (if you smoke at those temps), or if you take the time to wet the wood, it is possibly going to ignite as soon as that little bit of water that soaked into it evaporates.
And at a set temp 225*, I can tell you for a fact that this temp was hot enough to ignite wood in the SD HD while placed in my Stampede.
Indeed, I'll do you one better. Even during my experiment running my Stampede on Xtreme Smoke plus the SD HD, the Xtreme Smoke setting coming in at a temp of 180-185*, the wood eventually ignited and Xtreme smoke temps were surpassed and heading into my normal smoking temp of 225 in minutes.
Instead of letting my PID controller continue to fight to keep the temps at 180-185 Xtreme Smoke range, as it was getting nowhere doing that, I went ahead and dialed up my temps to my normal 225* before allowing my original plan of running at Xtreme Smoke for 2hrs first, played out.
The point? Even at Xtreme Smoke temps of 185*, the wood ignited and drove up my temps. Granted the wood was dry. But had it been wet, what would it have bought me? Maybe another 10 mins, and billowing "steam" before I saw the same thing? No thanks.
As a
Rec Tec owner myself, and with experience using this item, my belief, my opinion now is that the most logical “best” option for use of this device in a PID controlled Rec Tec, is to not fully load it with wood.
Because if you do, your temps are going to likely shoot up and become more difficult for your PID controller to manage them.
So my first piece of advice, and I offer you it because I am trying to help, is going to be use as little wood in it as will give you the additional smoke flavor you’re seeking. Find out the amount of wood that is, and go with it. Hopefully the amount of wood which will give you the desired smoke flavor you seek, is something less than filling both sides of the item.
This will possibly give you your best chance of avoiding potential runaway temps during the times that you might not be watching your temps.
If anything, well, logically, it should limit the duration of excessive temps as the wood is consumed. It would seem that less wood would facilitate this instead of if the thing is chock full of wood.
Secondly, if you’re going to use this device, then I'd recommend that you use it with realistic expectations. That is, do know that logic dictates that should the wood ignite, and it will, your temps are going to go up and your PID controller in your Bull is going to have an additional burden to deal with or take into account. A burden which it was not designed by Rec Tec to deal with, namely ignited wood in an aftermarket device. So don’t expect that it will be as quick nor as effective at controlling your temps as it would be were the grill stock.
However in those cases where it appears that it did, well be thankful but cautious that this might be the exception and not the rule.
Finally, and again, it goes to common sense and logic, and likely ties into that which you already know or have experienced at one time or another on some other cooker.
Once wood ignites into flames inside of the HD as it sits in your grill, dialing your temps back, is not going to extinguish the flames. At least not immediately anyway. It's going to stay lit and in flames for awhile, and give off heat for awhile. I'll elaborate.
If I get a flame up, or even a grease fire in my Kamado Joe, well then I can close the top and bottom vents, shut it and the seal of the lid will starve the flames for air and they are extinguished. In fact, in a good sealing Kamado, you won’t see even so much as a peep or a wisp of smoke around it’s lid when it’s shut.
If I get a flare up or grease fire in a kettle or my
WSM, well again, I can close off the top and bottom vents, shut the lid and quickly put it out, starving the flames for oxygen.
I have no such option in my Stampede. You have no such option in your Bull. Your Bull, my Stampede, have a grease port, through which air can get in and feed flames. Right at the site where it would be needed. Furthermore, I know on my Stampede, and perhaps on your bull, the lid does not form the seal that my Kamado Joe does, nor that my
WSM does when closed. Thus it's more drafty than either. This is why you see burn residue on the stainless steel surrounding the lid of a Bull or Stampede. They were never intended to seal as tightly as a Kamado.
What this means is that a grease fire, should one occur inside my Stampede is going to be more difficult to manage than in my other cookers. And by extension, ignited wood, forget the grease fire example for now, is also going to take longer to extinguish back down to just "smoldering" inside of my Stampede vs the same situation in one of my other cookers. Common sense. Logic.
