It’s neat reading all of the stories here, I must admit I was a total failure at bbq’ing on grills, I’ve had both charcoal and propane, never learned the secret of coals or indirect. For many years all of my food was carbonized, I just couldn’t understand why someone else’s was so good and mine was so bad.
There was a deep pit bbq beef that was served several times a year where I used to live in California that was oh so good, my problem was it was cooked underground and all I knew were grills. Then I came here, the locals cook in underground pits all of the time, all right…, problem was all they cooked was pork and veggies, several times I asked my friends if they could throw in some beef, they just laughed at me, called me “whitey.”
Then a few years ago a local hardware store became a franchised Ace Hardware and the good stuff started rolling in, Weber Grills and accessories. One day, as I was contemplating a Weber Grill and remembering my decades of carbonized food at the same time, I looked up on the overhead shelves, there were probably 30 WSMs in boxes stacked there, I asked my friend, the store manager, what they were, he said they were smokers, but they weren’t any good, they made the food taste bitter. I asked him if I could look at one, he took one down and I started reading the instruction manual; I was sitting in a lawn chair when in the recipe section it told how to cook a beef shoulder, BINGO!!! I remembered the bbq back home was made from beef shoulder, I was sold, told him I would take it, he tried to talk me out of it, said he would give me a great deal on a grill, nope, I wanted the
WSM.
I bought it along with a sack of Kingsford briquettes, remembered the book said to start with a chicken, so stopped and bought a chicken, went home excited as a kid with a new toy. When I unloaded it my father-in-law asked what it was, I told him it was a smoker and was going to smoke a chicken for tonight’s dinner, he said, oaf…, smoked food isn’t any good, makes your mouth burn and it’s bitter, …where have I heard that before?
To make a long story short, I over cooked the chicken, I didn’t have a thermometer, just rubbed with oil, salt and pepper, it was excellent, but most important, it wasn’t carbonized! My wife listening to her father wouldn’t taste it, but after I had consumed over half of the bird she broke down and tried it, she immediately told me I was finished, the rest was hers.
I went to the internet and lurked on another site and then found SMF and all I can say is thank you to all that make this such a great place, I have learned soooo much from you, oh yeah, now my father-in-law is the first at the table when we smoke, …my friend at ACE, I have taken him, chicken, lamb, beef, fattie, scotch eggs and told him all of it was cooked on the
WSM, he has since sold all of them, he now has GOSM’s for sale and is waiting for the
WSM 22’s to arrive.
Gene
