What is The First Thing You Want to Smoke After A Long Break From Using Your Smoker?

Another easy recipe I like to make is apple brined pork steaks, by Malcom Reed. These things are easy, cheap, and delicious. I give a lot of them away to people at church, and they go nuts over them. For about 30 bucks, I get 16 steaks or so (2 butts cut into steaks). You can't beat getting that much meat for so little money. On the downside, these are one of the messiest things I cook. My Weekender is not a big cooker, so 16 pork steaks fills up my three cooking grates quite well. The cleaning after cooking those probably takes an hour and a half.

As for freezing food before or after cooking it, I've never done that. My wife has on occasion put leftover bbq in the freezer, but I don't know that we've ever taken it out and eaten it. Our typical routine is cook and eat it Saturday. Eat it again Sunday after church. Eat it a third time Wednesday evening, and give any leftovers away. I buy more than enough meat each week to provide 3 meals for 3 or 4 people. We are a household of 4, with one living on campus at a college across town. She'll be home all summer. She likes Q, but my other youngster does not. It's always a toss up as to whether she'll eat it or not.
 
Brisket is my usual default. Gotta do at least one a month.

As long as I'm working there's never a problem with too much food leftover. A couple of texts and there's a potluck one of the nights I'm working.
 
sudsandswine said:
I let it cool a bit then portion into vacuum bags, and if its a larger amount of meat, i will shock chill it in an icewater bath before putting into the fridge or freezer so that it quickly gets below the danger zone. I apply just enough suction to remove the air but manually override the food saver auto seal because it tends to apply too much vacuum and actually pull moisture out of the meat. Reheat in the same bags, usually with sous vide, at 140 to 145* or so.
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Well, that has like every step different than when I last tried it. My method was still edible, but not amazing. I'll give your way a try, thank you!
 
My time off has been health reasons so I haven’t cooked in 2-1/2 years. Unfortunately, I have two nice butts in the freezer. They are two years old and still in the Cryovac. I really don’t know for sure how they will be until they are thawed and opened. It would be really nice to cook these but I’m not holding my breath. Maybe it would be best to hold my breath. If they are not in good shape then I will cook 3 racks of baby backs. With my health concerns, I hope it’s not too long. This has been a long and tough period and I’m ready to get moving.
 
I think I'm getting lazy in my old age. Haven't cooked outside once this winter. But the first cook will be beef short ribs. Love that steak on a stick!
 
My go to after a little break is ribs and chicken since it's a pretty short cook. Like yourself I cook on a humphreys and I'm pretty anal about the cleanliness of my smoker. Once I started cooking and pans it made my clean up time way faster. The only thing I'm doing shortly after a cook is cleaning out the ash basket and wiping the ashes out of the bottom.

Sent from my LM-G710 using Tapatalk
 
I rarely go much more than a week between smokes but when I do I need ribs. Pork or beef but it’s always ribs.
 
I haven't had any long breaks from smoking but it occurred to me that I haven't cooked any pork ribs in quite some time. I got some Victory Lane Cherry Bomb rub and I found a great cherry bbq sauce recipe. So yeah, ribs are my priority soon.
 
I haven't made pulled pork in a very long time. I have found that I like to cook it overnight, due to the long cook time. However, I don't want to cook it in my Humphrey's, as that cooker is in a pretty much permanent location on my back deck. I don't know if I could sleep peacefully with a live smoker on a dried out wooden deck that close to my house. So when I do pulled pork, I move the WSM out into the yard, a little further from the house. The Humphrey's is too heavy to move out into the yard, unless someone helps me, and there's no one here strong enough to do that.

The problem with the WSM is that it tends to run out of fuel and water on overnight butt cooks. So I have to get up to top those off. I saw a thread on here some time ago where someone was saying they don't understand the need for overnight cooks. I don't disagree with that. Maybe I should cook hotter so they get done faster. That way, an early start in the morning has us eating fresh pulled pork for dinner.
 
wire-it-up said:
We have two freezers, and I'm not sure why, but I've never stocked up on meat and put it in the freezer. Since I got into making barbecue a few years ago, I've always purchased whatever I want to cook on the day I cook it. I just head to the store that morning and pick something out, bring it home and prep it, and in the cooker it goes.

Do you notice any quality difference between fresh meat and frozen? I don't really cook meat that has been frozen, so I have no way to know if freezing affects quality. I suspect it doesn't affect it much, if at all, or people wouldn't stock up.

As for the Humphrey's being a lot of work... I guess it kind of is when it comes to cleaning. Either that, or I'm anal about not wanting to eat food out of a dirty cooker. I am a borderline germaphobe - I'll admit that. When I say that in front of my wife, she looks at me and says "Borderline?" LOL
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Cook in pans and clean up only takes a few minutes
 
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