Hi friends! I purchased the dyna glo offset vertical smoker for my birthday and am wondering if anyone has any tips for me? I have already sealed it with lava lock and put gaskets about both doors. Seasoned it this weekend so I’m ready for a cook ASAP! Just unsure if there is anything else I should be doing :)
thanks!
Hi there and welcome!
I agree 110% with what
SecondHandSmoker
says about getting a wireless multiprobe thermometer.
It seems that you can never trust any of the themometers/probes that come with a smoker.
A wireless multip probe thermometer will save the day for you. You need at least 2 probes but I recommend it have 4 or more.
Why so many?
You will want a probe or 2 at meat rack level to understand how hot the temp is across your rack where the meat is cooking. It is likely 1 side is hotter than the other and you can only know if you have a couple of probes hooked up measuring temp.
Then you have more probes to put into the meat. If you have more than 1 item of meat item at different levels or even on hot/cold sides of same level, etc. etc. then the meat will not be cooking at the same temp and some items will finish before others.
This is where having a couple of meat probes helps.
Now you can see why I recommend 4 as a minimum. This stuff will take almost all of the temp guessing out of the equation and let you focus more on what is happening during your smoke rather than guessing about temps.
Next, I would suggest doing the easiest smoke of them all to see how your system works.
This is boneless skinless chicken thighs. You just season them up and cook until they hit an Internal Temp (IT) of 180F in the meat.
You can practice with more chicken smokes to learn your system cause chicken is easy.
Also you can then move on to chicken with the skin on and/or whole chickens and begin to tackle chicken specific quirks now that you know your smoking system better.
Quirks like:
- chicken skin wants to come out like leather unless you smoke it at a high enough smoker temp like 325F smoker temp
- whole chicken and chicken breast really really really benefits from being brined and you cook to where the IT of the meat in the breast hits 165F and you dont want to go any higher. You could up your smoking game by learning a simple salt + water equilibrium brine to nail such a cook... again chicken is cheap too so you can repeat until you nail it
I always then recommend people do a rack of pork spare ribs and learn its quirks.
After that a big milestone is a pork butt. Its a long smoke for a big piece of meat and it's quick is that it is only done when it is tender, never by time or temp!
This smoke will also teach you a ton about how to manage your system and see how it behaves for 12hr+ smokes.
I could go on but I think this gives you a good idea for a road map and what you need to start your smoking journey being well prepared :)
I personally use and love this Inkbird, it has high and low alarms incase you have a flare up or the smoker heat dies on you for some reason:
I have never used the following one but for the price, high/low alarms, and the good reviews I would give it a whirl if I were in your shoes and wanted to save a little money:
I hope all this info helps. Ask all the questions you have, this community is great and will surely have an answer :)
