SMetroHawkeye
Full Fledged Farker
Very cool thread. El Luchador - I appreciate your candor. Very supportive community here. Stick with whatever works best for you... but keep on cookin’!!
I hear ya!
I love my wood burner and love the food that comes off of it. I won't get rid of it.
There are times I don't want to tend the fire or don't have time to tend the fire. I can toss the meat or whatever into a drum and walk away. Check cattle, fix fence, chase critters, come back to some good eats, with no fuss.
Thank you. btw, I was on your website and saw the whole hog you cooked in the cinder block pit using nothing but charcoal. It was great to hear that some of your friends thought it was the best they had ever tasted. :thumb:
I really don't have much to add but I run my pit pretty much like txsmkmstr described, that said I do not always have time for that, that is why I have options.
I started cooking with my egg around 2005. I had a heavy Oklahoma Joe prior to that that I never really learned because I didn’t take the time. The egg made it it so easy. I still have that same egg. Next, I bought a Traeger Texas. It was even easier. I plugged it in and tried to set it and forget it just like the commercials said. Like a post above, I could never let any of those cookers be. I guess you can say that I never “trusted” any of them.
To this day, I’ve had a Pitmaker Vault, Yoder YS640, PBS and a Gateway drum on top of all of the above cookers. I never learned to trust any of them...and was able to go to sleep or the kids or grandkids “games”. I have always needed to know “where it’s at”.
I’ve won several GC’s and RC’s at competitions while winning at Sam’s, IBCA, LSBS and KCBS competitions. I’ve qualified for and attended the American Royal Invitational as well as the World Food Championship when it was in Las Vegas.
I have always been too anal to allow myself more than probably more than 2 hours without checking my cooker.
What I am saying I guess, is if you trust whatever tool you choose to do the cooking for you; you are more of a relaxed cooker than I have ever have been despite the multiple attempts and the thousands of dollars I have spent in that pursuit.
Me? I give up. I’ll sit by the fire and feed it.
lol Thanks! :-D
There's an underground pig there too, using fence posts and hard wood. :thumb:
I’ve won several GC’s and RC’s at competitions while winning at Sam’s, IBCA, LSBS and KCBS competitions. I’ve qualified for and attended the American Royal Invitational as well as the World Food Championship when it was in Las Vegas.
bwahaha. lmao
:thumb::thumb::thumb:
what cooker do you have?
my charcoal burner is a uds and it is on the internet so I have eyes on the temp at all times.
low and slow cooking for a long amount of time and still being able to run errands - priceless!
I have a follow up question since you compete , and win.
by the time its all said and done, how much of a difference does the cooker make to the flavor. in your opinion. ie stick vs charcoal vs pellets etc
Ive heard they are very good at keeping temp, and moist because they don't turn over the air that often. Maybe once they come down in price ... :-D
Bwahaha. LMAO :thumb:
I have several cookers but the one that I smoke on the most is my Good One Open Range. I also have a Good One Marshall for larger cooks.
On my last cook using the Open Range cooking some pork butts, I had to go to a town 35 miles away to do some errands and I was gone for over three hours. I monitored temps using my smoke thermometer with the Gateway app and the thing just chugged along. I was using Good One lump in it. I can usually go five to six hours before reloading and this thing keeps pretty steady temps. I know some people who have gone up to 10 hours on one load of lump.
Wayne
It all tastes good when done right. As far as the flavor from the “fire”, the drums add the drippings effect. The offsets add the increased airflow effect which in my opinion is noticeably better to me. I’ve won more with the “public” judges than I have with the CBJ’s of KCBS. Most of my wins came off of the Vault.
They sound like what you are looking for in a grill that that smoke, grill, seer. You'll make amazing brisket, pulled pork, ribs, wings, chicken, steaks and the best pizzas on the planet.
Make sure you get one with a lifetime warranty.
You will never regret a BGE, Kamado Joe, Primo or other.
Absolutely anything that you can cook in an indoor oven can be cooked with ease on your ceramic kamado.
You can also go the route that many, myself included, have gone....buy a Akorn kamado from Char Griller. Can be had for $299.
Air flow is the same as it's ceramic cousins....it is slightly more finicky if you overshoot your target temp, so more care is needed in how you start your fires for slow'n'low cooks. That being said....once you lock into the temp you are golden.
I bought an Akorn and found myself using that bad boy several times a week for three years. I simply wore it slam out. My family went nuts over my grilling in ways they'd never done before. In my opinion.....it's the best grilling money I've ever spent.
So I washed my hands of the stick burner and I'm back to charcoal. I did my first charcoal cook in a month today. OMG it's sooo easy compared to stick.
So here is the wife's verdict.
First, I wanted to cook ember style with roaring natural charcoal and no wood in sight. No chunks, no chips, no pellets no sticks, nothing wood. I just wanted to understand what pure charcoal tastes like by itself.Just lump charcoal. I bought what was available at home Depot which is Royal oak.
Ok compared to kb briquettes lump has almost no visible smoke.
I brought a chimney full to red hot and dumped it in the cooker. I added a fresh chimney about every hour. All intakes wide open, 1.75"" of exhaust wide open. Temp would get to 310 and slowly die down to 225 then I would add another chimney of lump.
I knew it was going to be good because there was no visible smoke for 90% of the cook and the heat smelled so clean.
Anyhow, four hours later the ribs are ready and this is where it gets interesting.
I asked my wife if she could taste smoke and she said yes. I asked her is it lighter than normal she said yes. So I asked do you like it better, she said "yes I like the light smoke better but I know you like your food smoky so..."
So I ask again do you prefer this smoke and she said yes that the light smoke was not interfering with the meat and she felt like she was tasting meat with smoke instead of smoke with some meat.
What????!!!
So confirmed to myself that the cleanest smoke is using no wood at all and just "embers"
not to be a nitpick, honest question, how is this different than adding a split every hour in a stick burner?I brought a chimney full to red hot and dumped it in the cooker. I added a fresh chimney about every hour. All intakes wide open, 1.75"" of exhaust wide open. Temp would get to 310 and slowly die down to 225 then I would add another chimney of lump.
I'm not sure that is the right conclusion. You were burning charcoal, not embers. Food tastes different choked over lump charcoal than on an Argentinian grill, to illustrate this.
And wood can burn so clean and with so much airflow that the smoke profile can remain very light indeed.
As with everything fire it's really complex, and the amount of oxygen and rate of combustion have as much to do with the resulting flavour profile as the material being burned, IMO.