My brother in law has a very well-equipped lake house that, among other things, has an Oklahoma Joe Longhorn offset smoker. Since I have been smoking meats for many years, my job at big family gatherings is to smoke supper for one of our meals. I used this smoker with varying success last year - I don't think my fire was hot enough - so this year I watched a few YouTube "How Too" videos. Things went much better, although it wasn't bad last year.
My personal smokers are an MES40 (my second one) and a Brinkmann Grill/Smoker. I have also used an old Brinkmann Bullet-type electric smoker extensively (what I started out on).
My review of the Okey Joe Longhorn Smoker follows:
The YouTube videos for fire box management were a HUGE help. Although I would never own this smoker because of my lazy nature when it comes to smoking meats (thank you Masterbuilt!), it has done a fine job the few times I have used it.
Next time I head down there I will work on some of the fits around the firebox to reduce the leakage. I want to be able to control the fire the way it was meant to be, not because the smoker only gives me one option.
My personal smokers are an MES40 (my second one) and a Brinkmann Grill/Smoker. I have also used an old Brinkmann Bullet-type electric smoker extensively (what I started out on).
My review of the Okey Joe Longhorn Smoker follows:
- I smoked 16 pork steaks for this review. The pork steaks were HUGE and I had to double them up to get them all to fit.
- We were on the water too long and we were "hangry" and I was told to hurry things up of there would be hell to pay ha-ha - so I used a hot fire. SO - The 100% uncalibrated temperature gauge on the far side of the smoker was between 275F and 350F for this smoke.
- If you like fiddling with the fire and baby-sitting the grill, this is the smoker for you. This is the full-on old-school smoking experience. You had better have a lot of time and a plentiful supply of your fave beverage. As I am a big fan of my set-it-and-forget-it MES40, fiddling with the fire does not interest me for long smokes but I did not mind it for the pork steaks.
- There is a HUGE temperature difference between the fire box side of the smoke chamber/grill and the far side...I mean like 50F on a hot summer day. It would not surprise me if it was more on a cold windy Missouri winter day. I both liked this and disliked it. More fiddling was required...swapping pork steaks from the hot side to the less hot side meant I had to lift the lid often and we all know "If you are looking you are not cooking!" But it was necessary.
- Because of the need for switching out the pork steaks from the hot and cool sides, I made my fire a bit hotter to recover faster. This also meant the pork steaks had to be even further away from the fire box side. So more pork steaks had to be doubled up
- This smoker ate my hickory splits faster than the babysitter’s boyfriend when the car pulls up...have a good pile handy!
- This particular smoker used for this review needs a good tweaking. It was a leaky thing in the fire box area. The cooking area was OK. There were too many gaps at the fire box door and ash pan to ever get the fire to die down to let me use the fire box dampers to control the blaze...so I had to do it with the way I fed the fire. Like I said earlier - a lot of fiddling with the fire was required.
- At about 1hr 40 minutes I sauced the pork steaks
- At about 1 hr 50 minutes I sauced them again
- Pulled them at 2 hrs
The YouTube videos for fire box management were a HUGE help. Although I would never own this smoker because of my lazy nature when it comes to smoking meats (thank you Masterbuilt!), it has done a fine job the few times I have used it.
Next time I head down there I will work on some of the fits around the firebox to reduce the leakage. I want to be able to control the fire the way it was meant to be, not because the smoker only gives me one option.
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