Hello from Arizona - smoking noob

[barbarian bbq]

Ok, so here goes.

My name is Chris and I am from Mesa, AZ. I am a pretty experienced gas griller

, but pretty new to the whole smoking thing. It all started when my brother in law gave me an old hand me down Brinkmann electric. I got in a few pork butts which turned out great, some not so stellar spare ribs, and then the element on the BBQ failed.

In a moment of stupidity, I threw the whole BBQ away (not realizing I could easily modify to a charcoal grill). Since then, I have been telling the wife I want to get more involved in BBQ and smoking, but I had no equipment and no budget.

My decision was to save up for a Weber Smokey Mountain.

Well, this week I got an email from Bass Pro Shops and they had their ECB on sale for Memorial Day. I went out and bought one and did the essential mods. I also added a nice cut to my thumb, but that is another story . As we speak, I am doing an initial run seasoning the unit. This afternoon I am going to do some quick  chicken leg quarters for a test drive.

One thing I might be able to add to the community is food safety advice as I have been a sanitarian for about sixteen years. I am also addicted to fishing and video games... much to my wife's chagrin. I have three teenage kids.

Maybe some day I will smoke some fish...

 

[scarbelly]

Hello Chris and 

to SMF - sounds like you are on your way into your new addiction 

Please do us a favor and update your profile with your location 

 

[smokinhusker]

Hey Chris, welcome to SMF! Glad to have you here! 

I'm sure your food safety experience will come in quite handy.  Congratulations on the new smoker.

You might be interested in Jeff's Free 5 day Smoking Basics e-course and can sign up for it here:

http://www.smoking-meat.com/smoking-basics-ecourse.html

Would you please update your profile information to include your location?

We are looking to run a query on the database to see how many members we have in different areas of the country and across the globe. This will be important for planning meet ups, gatherings and events. We don't need specifics such as what part of town you live in or even what town you live in if you are uncomfortable with that, but we would like for you to at least insert a state and maybe even a region of the state.

As in Northeast Oklahoma or even Tulsa area, Oklahoma and that would have been equally good.

It will also be fun to see what states and areas have the largest representation here at SMF… We will post that information once we have it.

It also helps us to know the climate you live in if you have any smoking questions.

Could you help us out with this?

Instructions:

1.      Click on "My Profile"

2.      Click on "Edit Community Profile"

3.      Fill in or Edit the "Location" field

Thank-you,

 

[jrod62]

:welcome1: to SMF