Wampus
somebody shut me the fark up.
After Dan's big trailer smoker made it to my place about a month ago, I have had a chance to do a couple of good burns in it to familiarize myself with it again.
Not only is this thing HUGE, it's also a very evenly cooking smoker for as big as it is. Of course, there's some hotter spots and some cooler ones, but overall, it runs pretty evenly. Got it up to over 400 on the first burn with about 15 lbs of Kingsford to get a nice kick start, then just 4 logs, stacked "log cabin style" and let it run until it burned out. Didn't smell too good.
On Monday of this week, I did another burn and after it warmed up, I gave it a really good scraping, removing the 3 cooking grates (each 3'x5'!), scraped the ceiling, all walls and floor, scraped the cooking grates really well with both a scraper and wire grill brush, then put it all back together and sprayed it all down with 3 cans of spray vegetable oil. Loaded up the FB again and let it roll and it smelled a lot better.
This weekend, our parish is having it's 7th annual Festival and once again, I'm doing pulled pork to be sold in the food tent, but THIS YEAR, I'm also doing about 600 pieces of chicken (about 200 white quarters, 200 dark quarters, 100 legs, a few cases of wings and some chicken tenders) for a SMOKED CHICKEN dinner on Saturday night.
This morning, the first round of cooking started. I injected 20 butts with Chris Lilly's pork injection, rubbed with Big JT's Sweet & Spicy rub and put it all on the smoker, which wasn't even CLOSE to full. If needed, I could probably get twice that much on that sucker.
Here are some photos of things so far......
THE FIERY FURNACE
Lit a full chimney of RO lump, threw that on about 2 more UNLIT chimneys worth of lump, let that all get rolling then threw on 1 large 1/2 split of oak. Within 30 minutes, 3 out of the 4 door thermos were reading 325.
The PORK....
Injecting (photo taken by my lovely bride before she left for work)......
Rubbed & ready......
BEFORE
AFTER
As you can see, 20 butts didn't even begin to fill this thing up. I have them 3 deep on there, but could squeeze 4 deep if I wanted (although the last ones would be tough to reach, even for my tall, long armed self). There's a really hot spot just above the FB on the right, so I didn't want to put anything there yet. The bottom left is a cooler spot in the smoker, so I'll throw things down there as they get closer to done.
Threw another couple of logs on and let it roll......
IT'S ALIIIIIVE!!!!!
THE PLAN
They all went on at about 275 degrees (need to go see where it's settled in at) at 6 am EST sharp. I plan to wrap them when the color gets right and, when done, throw them all, wrapped, back into the coffin cooler that I pulled them out of this morning. I need to have them all over to the church (about 20 minutes away), and start the pulling process and be ready to start serving pulled pork at 5:00 pm. I'm also hauling the FIERY FURNACE over to the church when I go, so if for some reason some of them are stubborn, I'll just relight the fire and throw them back on to finish, but I don't think I'll have a problem. I hope to be loaded and leaving the house by 3:00 pm (9 hours from now).
HERE WE GO!!!!
SOOO.....
There's a bright crescent moon out, my favorite constellation (my son's name is Orion :thumb
and all the other bright stars, it's a beautiful morning, there's PORK a-smokin, and I'm sitting here drinking coffee and hangin with the BBQ BRETHREN.
What MORE could a man ask for?
Gotta start working on breakfast for the kids, who have the day off from school due to the festival. I promised 'em PANCAKES!
More PRON to come!
I also plan to post a photo thread of the entire Festival Experience sometime later in the weekend, so keep a lookout for that.
HAPPY FRIDAY!
God Bless!
Not only is this thing HUGE, it's also a very evenly cooking smoker for as big as it is. Of course, there's some hotter spots and some cooler ones, but overall, it runs pretty evenly. Got it up to over 400 on the first burn with about 15 lbs of Kingsford to get a nice kick start, then just 4 logs, stacked "log cabin style" and let it run until it burned out. Didn't smell too good.
On Monday of this week, I did another burn and after it warmed up, I gave it a really good scraping, removing the 3 cooking grates (each 3'x5'!), scraped the ceiling, all walls and floor, scraped the cooking grates really well with both a scraper and wire grill brush, then put it all back together and sprayed it all down with 3 cans of spray vegetable oil. Loaded up the FB again and let it roll and it smelled a lot better.
This weekend, our parish is having it's 7th annual Festival and once again, I'm doing pulled pork to be sold in the food tent, but THIS YEAR, I'm also doing about 600 pieces of chicken (about 200 white quarters, 200 dark quarters, 100 legs, a few cases of wings and some chicken tenders) for a SMOKED CHICKEN dinner on Saturday night.
This morning, the first round of cooking started. I injected 20 butts with Chris Lilly's pork injection, rubbed with Big JT's Sweet & Spicy rub and put it all on the smoker, which wasn't even CLOSE to full. If needed, I could probably get twice that much on that sucker.
Here are some photos of things so far......
THE FIERY FURNACE
Lit a full chimney of RO lump, threw that on about 2 more UNLIT chimneys worth of lump, let that all get rolling then threw on 1 large 1/2 split of oak. Within 30 minutes, 3 out of the 4 door thermos were reading 325.
The PORK....
Injecting (photo taken by my lovely bride before she left for work)......
Rubbed & ready......
BEFORE
AFTER
As you can see, 20 butts didn't even begin to fill this thing up. I have them 3 deep on there, but could squeeze 4 deep if I wanted (although the last ones would be tough to reach, even for my tall, long armed self). There's a really hot spot just above the FB on the right, so I didn't want to put anything there yet. The bottom left is a cooler spot in the smoker, so I'll throw things down there as they get closer to done.
Threw another couple of logs on and let it roll......
IT'S ALIIIIIVE!!!!!
THE PLAN
They all went on at about 275 degrees (need to go see where it's settled in at) at 6 am EST sharp. I plan to wrap them when the color gets right and, when done, throw them all, wrapped, back into the coffin cooler that I pulled them out of this morning. I need to have them all over to the church (about 20 minutes away), and start the pulling process and be ready to start serving pulled pork at 5:00 pm. I'm also hauling the FIERY FURNACE over to the church when I go, so if for some reason some of them are stubborn, I'll just relight the fire and throw them back on to finish, but I don't think I'll have a problem. I hope to be loaded and leaving the house by 3:00 pm (9 hours from now).
HERE WE GO!!!!
SOOO.....
There's a bright crescent moon out, my favorite constellation (my son's name is Orion :thumb
and all the other bright stars, it's a beautiful morning, there's PORK a-smokin, and I'm sitting here drinking coffee and hangin with the BBQ BRETHREN.What MORE could a man ask for?
Gotta start working on breakfast for the kids, who have the day off from school due to the festival. I promised 'em PANCAKES!
More PRON to come!
I also plan to post a photo thread of the entire Festival Experience sometime later in the weekend, so keep a lookout for that.
HAPPY FRIDAY!
God Bless!
