Direct heat smoking

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UMICH1

Got Wood.
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A buddy of mine has it down. That’s the only way he’s ever smoked. He mainly does pork spareribs and chicken parts. He did a brisket and 4 full chickens a couple weeks ago which turned out good. He smoked for like 5 hours then wrapped and stuck in oven. While he was smoking he would periodically move the brisket and flip it. Now it does take continual monitoring of the fire which he likes to do. He says he likes the flavor he gets when the drippings hit the charcoal. I would say his brisket wasn’t the best I’ve had but it was damn good. Anyone else smoke like this? Oh yah, he does this on a “cheap” RiverGrille Stampede from Home Depot.
 
When I started out we fabricated our own cookers out of 275 gallon tanks, more or less just bigger real estate than the Rivergrille your buddy uses but same idea with a lower grate for charcoal and wood and upper grates for cooking.

We put charcoal and wood on about 1/3 of it on the lower grates and cooked everything up top offset from the fire on the other 2/3 of it.

You could move food directly over the coals if needed, or smoke at lower temps offset from direct heat.

~I've never had better Q than what we cooked on those old crude cookers, and it was good enough to start our first restaurant and got me into the catering business.

I've since spent a fortune on *better* stick burning trailer smokers as a matter of convenience and appearance but I can't say the food is any better than what came off any of those old cookers we built there's nothing to dampen the flavors imparted to the meat from the fire and if you know what your doing and tend it constantly they work just fine.
 
In on this as I am very interested also. Just yesterday I finally drug the stack of cinder blocks out of the barn and started to “build” the pit in the back yard. In my mind it’ll be something similar to what franklin uses in the whole hog episode he does on the PBS show.
Anyway direct heat seems to be very popular all over KY for a variety of meats & styles.
 
He has done so well that he does small grad parties and such for people at his work. I asked him if he was going to go bigger and he said maybe someday. I asked if he was gonna do a different style smoker and he said he was going to have one fabricated to
his specs. Same style but the distance to coals is key. He said the grill he uses now could
actually be further away and it would be better.
 
The Pit Barrel cooks directly over open charcoal. You can run a UDS or a WSM the same way.

Now a cinderblock pit where you have a burn bucket and shovel coals directly under the meat is what I call real old school.
 
I have a UDS and recently started cooking sans diffuser.

I am never going back.
 
I do it for pork steaks and chicken most of the time on a direct setup. I need something dedicated, though. I usually rig my camp grate over my 26"kettle, but it's still hard to feed more coals into it.
 
Ive been stockpiling blocks for a while for an open pit in the backyard. Got a piece of expanded metal last week, just need to find something easy and cheap for a lid. Can’t wait to experiment with more direct heat cooking. A couple of buddies swear by it.
 
I have a cinder block pit I only started using. I posted a few weeks ago about the cook. One new comment since that post: my wife tried some of the pork butt I cooked on the CBP weeks after I portioned and vacuum sealed and froze it, and she said that it was the juciest butt I had ever made, and that was reheating from frozen - she didn't have it the day of the cook. Remember that people were cooking over direct fire for a long time before we got fancy with the offset method.
 
keeperofsecrets said:
I have a cinder block pit I only started using. I posted a few weeks ago about the cook. One new comment since that post: my wife tried some of the pork butt I cooked on the CBP weeks after I portioned and vacuum sealed and froze it, and she said that it was the juciest butt I had ever made, and that was reheating from frozen - she didn't have it the day of the cook. Remember that people were cooking over direct fire for a long time before we got fancy with the offset method.
Click to expand...

We vac seal lot's of pulled pork and brisket for the freezer or for low temp commercial 38* overnight refrigeration for catering deliveries.

Just about everyone that's had it after being vac wrapped comments they like the flavor better than fresh off the smoker.

It's the only way I eat BBQ anymore, a few days away from the pit and all the smoke does small miracles for the taste buds.
 
Anybody who runs a UDS without waterpan or diffuser does this..........as well as Pit Barrel Cooker, Barrel House cooker, WSM if they take out the waterpan........ many Homemade smokers. Somoking on Grills - unless they bank colas to One side.
 
Yep, lots of ways to do it. Pure wood, or using coals.
More distance between fire/grate when using pure wood.
Here is Paul Shirley's open pit he built just like his dad's.
My 2 cookers burning pure wood. But I can also use coal/wood.
 

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I just use my UDS but I've lately been using a water pan with it, seems to help keep everything moist especially with the longer smoke sessions.
 
I have a raised direct wood burning drum like Tom's



I've also done the direct heat Carolina style hog

 
smoke ninja said:
I have a raised direct wood burning drum like Tom's



I've also done the direct heat Carolina style hog

Click to expand...

Any more pics of the cinder block pit with the whole hog?
For what I’ve got going I will have 2 blocks high, expanded metal grate, then one more level of blocks on top the grate. Don’t know about doors or tops yet.
I’m thinking big enough to handle whole hog but more often will just be a bunch of random cuts. Wood burnt down to coals & all that Jazz. Like I mentioned earlier I had the cinder blocks & the room so why not?
Open to any suggestions
 
Last edited:
it was all built with building materials I had laying around. the grate was re bar and mesh with a second on for flipping. the lid and vent doors were made of wood paneling. the blocks were various sizes because that's what was on hand. I didn't have a source of wood at the time so it was fueled with lit charcoal from chimneys







 
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