UDS Cooking and Building Questions

Yeah nothing great on cooking on them if you completely disregard this website.

I'm not sure how many times it's been stated in that you should put the holes 2" up from the bottom before the burnout to give the fire more O2. But it's in there and it's in there early in the thread too.

I think some people try to make this more complicated or daunting than it really is. It's a giant can with some air holes in it and a fire box to hold some coals. That's really all there is to it. It's really one step above caveman cooking. And while they may be beautiful to us they really aren't intricate or elegant pieces of cookware.

As for cooking on it. Start a small amount of coals (I do about 10).
Dump them on top of your loaded coal basket (that has only about 4 fist sized wood chunks).
Open up all the air holes.
Shut one down at 200.
Shut another down at 220.
Use the valve or magnet to keep it between 225 and 250.
Let the smoke thin out a bit.
Put the meat on.

That's it. You can stand around and wait for it to dance and do backflips but it's a pretty boring site from then until you mop or pull the meat out.


Really the most complicated thing about it is something that doesn't get talked about much and that is calibrating your thermometers. If you have analog dial therms, make sure to calibrate them every now and again. For those using the cheap turkey fryer ones this is especially important. There is a nut on the back that you can turn to adjust it. Boil some water and adjust it to the proper temp (yes it changes in different geological areas). Or crush up some ice and test it that way.

bh5k said:

Yeah, the thing I have noticed is that there is TOO much information here and often it get polluted with albeit funny, but waaaayyyyyy too many joking comments.

So what simple recipe should I start with? From what I have read it sounds like a Boston Butt with some variation of a dry rub...right?

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Yeah man it can be a bit overwhelming. Boston Butt is awesome. I would do a smaller one at that. You can use a premade dry rub or use the one that I use:
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup Paprika
2 tblsp coarse Salt (sea or kosher)
2 tblsp Black Pepper
1 tblsp Cayenne Pepper
4 tsp Cumin
2 tsp dry mustard
2 tsp Onion Powder
2 tsp Garlic Powder
2 tsp Thyme Powder
2 tsp Sage
2 tsp Coriander Powder

Basically you want the salt, paparika, and the pepper everything else is just gravy IMO.


Seriously though, erlax and have fun with it. You will get it dialed in and you don't need to worry about that on your first attempt. Just try to keep your temps in reasonable range and don't go messing with adjustments too often because if you are adjusting more than every 20 minutes you aren't seeing the results of those adjustments.

As Moda says keep it simple follow his directions and yeah a butt or a fatty to start is perfect.

if it had a liner in it, then yeah it needs to get REALLY hot and the outside paint will come off. Hopeyer neighbors aren't fussy.

bh5k said:

Awesome! Thanks for the Rub recipe. It will be the first thing I try!

On the burn out, should it be so hot that it removes the paint on the outside of the drum? That seems a bit excessive... Mine had corn syrup in it so I am sure it had a food liner in it. (just picked it up last night)

I am going to have to find a good place to get wood here. Briquettes are obviously easy to find, but wood could be interesting...

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