Seasoning and re-seasoning COS

[SmokinLogs]

I finally have my Father’s Day gift installed, and couldn’t be more excited. I’ve got my new smoker box on my year old char broil barrel grill, and I made sure to put a good bead of Hi-temp red rtv in between them. Ive got big plans for the future of this little smoker like a baffle, reverse flow setup, adding exhaust stacks and a few other ideas floating around. Some of this will have to wait a little while. I went ahead and scraped and vacuumed all the ashes and crud out of the CC from the last year of use. My next step in this set of mods will be seasoning the FB and re-seasoning the CC now that it’s cleaned out and pretty well down to bare metal. Does anybody have any suggestions other than the instructions just saying use vegetable oil? I didn’t know if a good coating of solid Crisco shortening, or even some bacon grease or the oil cooked out of ground beef might be something worth trying. If anyone has some opinions I’m all ears!

Picture included, it’s nothing fancy, but a good starting point! I might even throw a butt on after seasoning it. I know I should wait until I finish my mods but I don’t think I can hold out. I will let you know and get a Q view if it all goes down.

 

[chef jimmyj]

Any fat will do. PAM is super fast to apply. Saw an eepisode of Man, Fire, Food, where a big brisket smokehouse lost their main smoker to a grease fire. The host helped coat the whole new smoker with Brisket Grease. So yes, meat fat will work...JJ

 

[SmokinAl]

I think I would stick with Pam, it's easy to apply & works great.
As a matter of fact I spray the grates & outside of my Lang firebox with it, before each smoke.
And the grates clean up real easy, I just spray them off with a hose & crank the temp up to 350, and the whole inside gets steam cleaned.
No rust on the firebox at all either.
Al

 

[mike243]

meat oil will go rancid quicker than vegetable oil,same goes for coating cast iron skillets

 

[joedube70]

I do the same as Al with my offset.
Any cheap veggie oil in a spray can will work. I used to put veggie oil in a spray bottle. Pam is so much easier.

 

[SmokinLogs]

Thanks for all the info, will keep ya updated

 

[chef jimmyj]

meat oil will go rancid quicker than vegetable oil,same goes for coating cast iron skillets

While it is true that all fats go rancid eventually, in terms of Rancidity from Oxidation, mono-unsaturated and poly-unsaturated fats go rancid much faster than the saturated fat in animal fat. The poly and mono-unsaturated fat molecules of vegetable oil are missing one or more hydrogen atoms in the carbon chain. With saturated fat, each carbon atom is bound to a hydrogen atom forming a more stable molecule.
In this case either one, veg or meat fat works...JJ

 

[SmokinLogs]

Well just to update, the seasoning and first smoke was a success, other than the paint peeling off my FB. But I can address that another time. At the last minute I decided to cut a plate and make this a reverse flow smoker. I don’t have a baffle but the plate alone was enough to keep my temps low enough to the point that I need to take a little more material off. It’s 3/16 thick steel and the fit turned out great. I left about a 4 inch gap on the non fire box side of the CC. I may take it up to 5 inches and maybe some strategically placed holes. I need to get a thermometer for each side of the lid so I can balance out the temps across the grating. Plus I definitely need to seal up the door leaks. All in all I’m very happy for my first smoke with it.

Now to the Q, pics included. I had an 8.5 pound Boston butt, put on a mustard binder, and rubbed it down with some generic BBQ rub I had in the cabinet that I doctored up to be a little less salty with some more heat. I made a charcoal basket for it with expanded metal, and started out the first half with mostly charcoal and some mesquite chunks I had laying around. For the second half of the smoke I kept a nice bed of coals going and was using some dogwood logs I had for the SMOKE. The pictures on the smoker were from hour 10, and I took it off to rest after 14 hours total. The bone pulled right out clean as could be, pulled apart so easy, and it tasted fantastic. Not bad for the first smoke with my new smoker box. I’ve definitely got more to do to get it setup the way I want.