I had a chance to fire up the new Party yesterday afternoon. I gave the inside a nice coating of oil and set it up to season.
I filled the fire box with Royal Oak 100 Ultra briquettes that were given out at a competition last year and added some chunks of cherry wood.
I lit a starter cube in the front right corner and let that burn with the door open and both vents open.
Since my plan was to cook some chicken at 300 degrees I decided to use crinkled sheets of foil in the water pan after reading about it in a post from Old Dave on the BWS Forum...
http://www.backwoods-smoker.com/forums.htm/viewtopic.php?t=528
I put 6 sheets of crinkled HD foil in the water pan and then put three layers of HD foil on top of that to catch the drippings.
It took about 45 minutes to get up to temp. I had a false start where the temp got to about 150 and stopped climbing. I noticed that the wind had kicked up and was blowing across the vent on the right side to I turned the cooker 90 degrees and the temp started climbing again. I think the wind cutting across the vent was starving the fire, but that's just a guess.
It steeled in at about 300 so I let it burn for a while since I had meetings to attend anyway. When I came back down the wind had changed again and was pretty much blowing straight into the right side vent, which was open about 1/2 inch and the temp had climbed to 350. Not really a big deal since the cooker was empty at this point, but good to know. I adjusted the vent and the exhaust a little bit and by the time I was ready to put food in it was closer to 300.
I bought a two pack of chickens at Sam's Club, and of course one was bigger than the other
. I spatchcocked them and gave them a rubdown with Yardbird and put them into the Party.
Sorry about the crappy picture. It was almost dark and I used my iPhone.
The smaller chicken (on top in the picture) was done after about 1 hour and 20 minutes and had a great color.
The bigger chicken was a little on the light side so I moved it to the top rack position and let it cook for a while. It was done at about 1 hour and 40 minutes and also had great color.
I didn't take any plated pics since we just made Pasta Roni and frozen broccoli to go with the chicken but I did use the backbones of the chicken to make some stock and I turned into a nice gravy. The chicken was very good and nice and moist. The smoke flavor was light, similar to my FEC-100, but at 300-ish the fire was burning cleanly so that didn't surprise me. I also went easy on the chunks for the first time.
I filled the fire box with Royal Oak 100 Ultra briquettes that were given out at a competition last year and added some chunks of cherry wood.
I lit a starter cube in the front right corner and let that burn with the door open and both vents open.
Since my plan was to cook some chicken at 300 degrees I decided to use crinkled sheets of foil in the water pan after reading about it in a post from Old Dave on the BWS Forum...
http://www.backwoods-smoker.com/forums.htm/viewtopic.php?t=528
I put 6 sheets of crinkled HD foil in the water pan and then put three layers of HD foil on top of that to catch the drippings.
It took about 45 minutes to get up to temp. I had a false start where the temp got to about 150 and stopped climbing. I noticed that the wind had kicked up and was blowing across the vent on the right side to I turned the cooker 90 degrees and the temp started climbing again. I think the wind cutting across the vent was starving the fire, but that's just a guess.
It steeled in at about 300 so I let it burn for a while since I had meetings to attend anyway. When I came back down the wind had changed again and was pretty much blowing straight into the right side vent, which was open about 1/2 inch and the temp had climbed to 350. Not really a big deal since the cooker was empty at this point, but good to know. I adjusted the vent and the exhaust a little bit and by the time I was ready to put food in it was closer to 300.
I bought a two pack of chickens at Sam's Club, and of course one was bigger than the other
. I spatchcocked them and gave them a rubdown with Yardbird and put them into the Party.
Sorry about the crappy picture. It was almost dark and I used my iPhone.
The smaller chicken (on top in the picture) was done after about 1 hour and 20 minutes and had a great color.
The bigger chicken was a little on the light side so I moved it to the top rack position and let it cook for a while. It was done at about 1 hour and 40 minutes and also had great color.
I didn't take any plated pics since we just made Pasta Roni and frozen broccoli to go with the chicken
but I did use the backbones of the chicken to make some stock and I turned into a nice gravy. The chicken was very good and nice and moist. The smoke flavor was light, similar to my FEC-100, but at 300-ish the fire was burning cleanly so that didn't surprise me. I also went easy on the chunks for the first time.
