Last Thursday morning, my new offset was delivered. Didn't have the time to fire it up because we were prepping for the Dutch BBQ forum winter bash. We left Friday around noon and came back Sunday evening. Spend a whole weekend Q-ing, just not with my new toy, oh the agony :laugh:
As we also had a day off yesterday, it was time to season the new pit and while I was at it, might as well throw some meat on there.
I coated the insight of the pit with some vegetable oil and fire here up, the blurb I got with it said to run it between 300-400F for a couple of hours. I slowly got it up to about 300F after an hour, raised the temp a bit more and let it run at about 350F or so for 2 hours. Had a look inside and it looks nicely seasoned. There was hardly any leaking so I guess build quality is top notch. While seasoning, I took temps on the grates with 3 probes, middle and smokestack-side were fairly even, closer to the fire box I had about 50F more. In the bottom I have a heat 'diffusor' plate with holes to spread the head, seems to work pretty well.
Time to cook something, I had a some leftover pork shoulder/loin, rubbed it with pepper/salt/garlic and tried to get the cooker temp down. The pork is pretty hard to screw up so I played it safe there :evil: Opened up the door to the cooker for a bit, temp dropped but not as much as I wanted. I put the meat in the middle of the cooker but decided to move it closer to the smokestack as temp was a bit lower. Guess 6mm of steel does keep the temp very well :biggrin1:
I was initially aiming at 260F but I noticed that the cooker liked to sit a tad higher, 280-290F so I let it ride there, no need to fight it. After about 2.5h, the pork reached it's IT of 145 and it was time to let it rest. In the meantime, I baked some potatoes in a skillet on the fire box, worked really well although it left me with less space to pre-heat wood.
My 1st EVER session with a stickburner, learned a lot of things, was a bit busier with it then ideally but I'm not complaining, had a really enjoyable afternoon, with some good music, a nice beverage and it ended with a plate of excellent food.
As we also had a day off yesterday, it was time to season the new pit and while I was at it, might as well throw some meat on there.
I coated the insight of the pit with some vegetable oil and fire here up, the blurb I got with it said to run it between 300-400F for a couple of hours. I slowly got it up to about 300F after an hour, raised the temp a bit more and let it run at about 350F or so for 2 hours. Had a look inside and it looks nicely seasoned. There was hardly any leaking so I guess build quality is top notch. While seasoning, I took temps on the grates with 3 probes, middle and smokestack-side were fairly even, closer to the fire box I had about 50F more. In the bottom I have a heat 'diffusor' plate with holes to spread the head, seems to work pretty well.
Time to cook something, I had a some leftover pork shoulder/loin, rubbed it with pepper/salt/garlic and tried to get the cooker temp down. The pork is pretty hard to screw up so I played it safe there :evil: Opened up the door to the cooker for a bit, temp dropped but not as much as I wanted. I put the meat in the middle of the cooker but decided to move it closer to the smokestack as temp was a bit lower. Guess 6mm of steel does keep the temp very well :biggrin1:
I was initially aiming at 260F but I noticed that the cooker liked to sit a tad higher, 280-290F so I let it ride there, no need to fight it. After about 2.5h, the pork reached it's IT of 145 and it was time to let it rest. In the meantime, I baked some potatoes in a skillet on the fire box, worked really well although it left me with less space to pre-heat wood.
My 1st EVER session with a stickburner, learned a lot of things, was a bit busier with it then ideally but I'm not complaining, had a really enjoyable afternoon, with some good music, a nice beverage and it ended with a plate of excellent food.
