rockpyle
Well-known member
- Joined
- Jul 23, 2013
- Location
- Canton, MI
I built my UDS a few weeks ago and have been playing her with every weekend. We had a party coming up with potentially 18-20 teenaged Boy Scouts and their families, so I needed to have the UDS working and ready for a load of meat. Managed to smoke 6 butts pretty easily. Here's some pics of the action.
Here's the smoker:
The maiden voyage was a simple pork butt and some ABTs (in our house, they are called Dragon Turds). I was very happy with how well the smoker held temps:
The next smoke was a couple of spatchcocked birds. Seeing how she did at higher temps. I got the startup a little wrong (closed down the vents a little quickly, I think), so it took longer than I think it should have to get up to 280-300*. Still, It turned out tasty, if a little slow:
The came the big cook. 6 butts for a 4pm dinner. I was up a at 3am to get the smoker running and loaded. It all worked out OK, but the smoker was a mess to clean with all of the drippings around the outside of the fire basket. I was planning to not foil, but after 9 or so hours, I think the drippings were overwhelming the fire and the smoke started to get nasty and white, so I foiled and it all came out really great.
I had read about the unique flavors from a UDS due to the drippings, and it turns out they are pretty tasty. I don't taste a huge difference, but I figured this smoke would have had a very pronounced flavor difference due to all of the drippings. We turned out not to get the full number of families, so we have tons of pork frozen after this cook!
Here are the butts loaded into the smoker:
And after 6 hours when i was switching the top and bottom rack (quite an exercise!):
That 3am start was no fun, so I convinced myself (and the missus) that a pit controller would be great for overnight and less worrying. I ordered the Pitmaster iQue 120, built the rainbox that they show on their website and yesterday was the first robo-smoke!
Inside the rain box:
Spares!
And some western ribs on the top rack. I pulled them after about 3 hours and did a modified burnt ends treatment, wrapped in foil with rub and sauce. They came out very tasty (but alas, not photographed).
Money Shots!
Thanks for looking!
Rock
Here's the smoker:
The maiden voyage was a simple pork butt and some ABTs (in our house, they are called Dragon Turds). I was very happy with how well the smoker held temps:
The next smoke was a couple of spatchcocked birds. Seeing how she did at higher temps. I got the startup a little wrong (closed down the vents a little quickly, I think), so it took longer than I think it should have to get up to 280-300*. Still, It turned out tasty, if a little slow:
The came the big cook. 6 butts for a 4pm dinner. I was up a at 3am to get the smoker running and loaded. It all worked out OK, but the smoker was a mess to clean with all of the drippings around the outside of the fire basket. I was planning to not foil, but after 9 or so hours, I think the drippings were overwhelming the fire and the smoke started to get nasty and white, so I foiled and it all came out really great.
I had read about the unique flavors from a UDS due to the drippings, and it turns out they are pretty tasty. I don't taste a huge difference, but I figured this smoke would have had a very pronounced flavor difference due to all of the drippings. We turned out not to get the full number of families, so we have tons of pork frozen after this cook!
Here are the butts loaded into the smoker:
And after 6 hours when i was switching the top and bottom rack (quite an exercise!):
That 3am start was no fun, so I convinced myself (and the missus) that a pit controller would be great for overnight and less worrying. I ordered the Pitmaster iQue 120, built the rainbox that they show on their website and yesterday was the first robo-smoke!
Inside the rain box:
Spares!
And some western ribs on the top rack. I pulled them after about 3 hours and did a modified burnt ends treatment, wrapped in foil with rub and sauce. They came out very tasty (but alas, not photographed).
Money Shots!
Thanks for looking!
Rock
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