Nothing tastes better and has the color and textures of real hard wood smoked meat, and no one builds a pit that cooks like a Shirley does.
You aren't doing this in a box full of charcoal and restricted airflow...
See how nice that sausage casing has browned and tightened up? That's the magic of the lower cooking grid in a reverse flow cooker you get radiant heat and a constant smoky sizzle from the meat juices and fat hitting the hot RF plate.
And Shirley does it right with 3/8" steel above the fire, I cooked and catered for years on another popular manufacturers RF pits that uses 1/4" and the Shirley pits are superior in construction and materials in every conceivable way and they make better BBQ.
Side dishes cooked in a RF wood fired pit are delicious, you can't make a better pan of pit beans any other way the taste after 3 hours in the wood smoke is off the chain.
Before:
After:
Ever had ears of corn soaked and wood smoked for 2-3 hours?
I've watched 115 pound soccer moms chisel off half a dozen ears and make sounds like barnyard animals at the trough doing it the stuff is to die for good and the magic happens with the amount of airflow and hot gasses a superior wood fired pit design provides.
You can use a hand sprayer to keep corn moist on the pit while it's cooking, the water drops just hit the RF plate and make delicious smoky steam.
That's a couple pounds of bacon in the pic on the lower grate cooking and sizzling for a pan of beans just above the RF plate getting crispy.
Some more of the corn cooking and finishing:
Airflow matters when you cook pit treats with bacon, these poppers are off the top rack of a Shirley start to finish and it's thick sliced Costco bacon that cooked perfectly and crispy.
Does anyone not love pulled pork and brisket? You can cook 17-18 pound packers in 5 hours on a Shirley and right at 45 minutes per pound for butts and beat down anyone else cooking on anything else with the BBQ you'll turn out with hot and fast cooks.
There's only one drawback to all of this, you have to wait your turn over the course of three years to own one, and it's worth the wait.
Unless your lucky enough to find a used one for sale...
