Smoked snapper in the UDS

Hi all,

another question for anyone that might be able to help out!

Tomorrow I am going to be using my UDS to cook for the guys at work, and I am planning on cooking 3 beer can chickens and a Red Snapper that a guy at work caught this week. I will be using Hickory as I have it on hand and can't get anything else with the time I have left!

My dilemma is, the snapper weighs about 16 pounds, so how long and at what temperature should it be cooked?

The snapper is gutted and scaled, I was thinking of making up a holder that would keep the fish on its back to make more room for the chickens, hoping also to stop the snapper from breaking up so much. Just to clarify, I will be cooking the fish whole, and the inside will be filled with bacon and some other stuff for some extra flavour.

I guess the temp of the UDS for the chickens will be around 300 or so (150C) at the grill (please correct me if this is wrong), will this be too much for the fish, or is it a matter of putting it on a bit later?

I intend to cook the chickens for about 4-4.5 hours, and was thinking this might be similar to what the snapper will take. Looking online the general internal temperature for snapper (indeed all fish) seems to be 145 (63C), so I guess that will be the decider as to when it is done. As for the chicken, I have in the past sought to hit an breast internal temperature of 175 (80C) to make sure that the chicken is done, but do others think this is a bit paranoid?

I will be taking photos tomorrow of the cooking, but will be leaving it once it is going to a mate's dad, as I will be at work from about 1 hour into the cook. This should be interesting!

LATE THOUGHTS: I think after a bit more reading, that I will be shooting for a temperature of 300 or so at the grill (for the chickens especially) and will aim for the food to be cooked in about 4 hours or so. I will put the chickens and the snapper on at the same time to avoid any confusion, and may just have to put either the chickens or the fish in the oven at a low temperature to even out the cooking times according to the internal temperatures I am aiming for, which is more likely to be the fish given the lower internal temperature.

Ah, the stress begins.... I don't want to screw up my mates fish, or poison my workmates with undercooked food...... and mostly I want them to be able to enjoy that wonderful UDS cooked food!

EDIT: I plan on raising the temperature for the last half hour of cooking the chickens to crisp up the skin.

cheers,

Crundle

No photos - so we all know it didn't happen..... BUT anyway....

The cook went well, other than the chickens fell over part way through the cook. My mate's dad said they fell over, but since he had a few beers I think he may have been the one to fall over.

THe snapper ended up being a bit smaller than what I was told (always the way with fishing tales!) and was 19" long. It was wrapped in foil and we decided to put it on for only 2 hours maximum, 2 hours after the chicken went on. In the end it was done in about 1.5 hours, so we kept it aside in the foil till the chickens were done.

We opened up the air vents for the last half hour of the chickens and the skin came out very crisp and tasty. The guys at work loved the hickory flavour, and every time one of us burped later on, all we could taste was smoke.

I plan on doing a pork forequarter on Monday at my brothers house, and will be going squidding at a holiday shack towards the weekend, so hopefully if we get enough I might be able to give a crack at smoking some squid!

cheers,

Crundle