New MES30 Auber Rewire

[tallbm]

I actually have bone-in and skin-on thighs. I'll do a couple with and without skin and preheat my oven to 475. I can try blasting the skin for a few minutes after pulling them from the smoker. I make a pretty mean Panko breaded Air Fryer thigh with skin that you can eat like potato chips and would like to duplicate that somehow.

I was looking for something in the Auber like a master over-temp setting that would just shut the whole thing down if it reached whatever you set it for, but I couldn't find it. I'll look into the safety rollout thing.

I don't think there is an Auber shut off set temp. It may have an alarm that I think just flashes a light hahaha. Not very helpful if you are inside the house.

If you pull the thighs at like 150F and broil in the oven to get that skin right and hit an IT of 178-180F then that might be enough time to get edible skin.

Whatever you figure out with the oven and the skin please report back. I have done many many many many a test with trying to get chicken skin to not be rubber and best surefire approach for me was to smoke at 325F :D

You may want to smoke lower than 225F to get more smoke flavor. Just finish the cook within 4 hours for safety reasons and u are good to go :D

 

[AlwaysHungry]

Hey All

Got an update on my learning curve. Life and weather have slowed it somewhat and speaking of weather, I discovered that 35 degrees and 15mph winds are not all that helpful when your smoker only has 700 watts. Lol.

In spite of that, I did manage to get thru some chicken thighs. I did a SPOG, a brined lemon-pepper, and a straight lemon-pepper version (two of each), smoked with cherry chips. What should have been a roughly 1-1/2 hour smoke turned into 2-1/2 since I couldn’t get the smoker above 247 degrees and the chicken got stuck at 150 after the first hour at 225.

Aside from being a little dry (still juicy near the bone), they were amazingly tasty. I won’t try that again under those weather conditions though. :)

Sorry, I didn’t use the fine China or the guest card table for the presentation pic. Lol. It was a useful day regardless. That was like two weeks ago and today it will be in the low 50’s so I’ll try something else. I bought one of these, and will try smoking some chuck roast burgers.

And I finished up the mailbox mod and have been cold smoking cheese while I’m figuring out what works with that. Hickory pellets work well on their own, cherry pellets worked better when dried. I nuked them in the microwave.

The vent really didn’t help - I actually had better luck with it closed and just using the bottom holes in the box. I’ll play with that more when I see what it does with heat in the smoker. I also need to look at building an insulated box around the smoker.

So anyway, got some good hands-on with everything and I’m looking forward to more favorable weather.

 

[dr k]

Hey All

Got an update on my learning curve. Life and weather have slowed it somewhat and speaking of weather, I discovered that 35 degrees and 15mph winds are not all that helpful when your smoker only has 700 watts. Lol.

In spite of that, I did manage to get thru some chicken thighs. I did a SPOG, a brined lemon-pepper, and a straight lemon-pepper version (two of each), smoked with cherry chips. What should have been a roughly 1-1/2 hour smoke turned into 2-1/2 since I couldn’t get the smoker above 247 degrees and the chicken got stuck at 150 after the first hour at 225.

Aside from being a little dry (still juicy near the bone), they were amazingly tasty. I won’t try that again under those weather conditions though. :)

View attachment 659808

Sorry, I didn’t use the fine China or the guest card table for the presentation pic. Lol. It was a useful day regardless. That was like two weeks ago and today it will be in the low 50’s so I’ll try something else. I bought one of these, and will try smoking some chuck roast burgers.

View attachment 659809

And I finished up the mailbox mod and have been cold smoking cheese while I’m figuring out what works with that. Hickory pellets work well on their own, cherry pellets worked better when dried. I nuked them in the microwave.

View attachment 659810

The vent really didn’t help - I actually had better luck with it closed and just using the bottom holes in the box. I’ll play with that more when I see what it does with heat in the smoker. I also need to look at building an insulated box around the smoker.

So anyway, got some good hands-on with everything and I’m looking forward to more favorable weather.

I plugged the bottom mounting mailbox holes and rear corners from the rear to the front and left the two bottom pencil sized holes closest to the door hinge open and made a center third matching hole between them. These three holes are at the edge of each maze row and the air coming in at the bottom hinge burns pellets completely to ash and all air going into the smoker passes over or under the pellet maze. The maze is elevated on a rack inside the mailbox so all air comes in low at the front and rises around the maze to the top rear 3" hole to the smoker.

 

[AlwaysHungry]

Thanks Kurt, I'll keep an eye on it and see where it goes. I had 100% burn of the hickory pellets and about 95% of the cherry. There were a few blackened leftovers but still a nearly complete burn. I assumed the vent would be better with more air, but it wasn't the case.

The un-nuked cherry went out about halfway thru the first row with the vent slightly cracked. After re-lighting and keeping the vent closed they burned the rest of the way thru just fine. The nuked pellets started and finished end to end with the vent closed.