Hey guys, I just bought my first smoker. Hoping I can get some good tips or maybe a recipe or two to try. Any help is greatly appreciated.
Smoker help
- Thread starter mbh78
- Start date
MoBucks
Old Mossy Horns
Put your clothes and gear in it for a few minutes....then go hunting......let the wife do the cookin'!!!!!
nchawkeye
Old Mossy Horns
I just load the smoker up with charcoal, fill the water pan with water, wrap a deer ham in bacon and smoke for 6-8 hours...
LOL. I let her handle cooking in the kitchen and I take care of the outdoor cooking.
Ok, i have another question for those of you that have a propane smoker. How do you keep your temperature from slowly creeping up throughout the smoking process? I smoked my first batch of sausage today. I was shooting for 160-165 degrees, which is what I could find as the recommended temp for sausage. No matter what i did, it would slowly creep up to around 180. I opened the door a few times to bring the temp back down a little, but it was the same thing each time. As far as I can tell, the sausage came out pretty good. Has good color and texture. The only thing that doesn't look exactly right are the casings. During the cool down process, they loosened up a little and are not tight to the sausage. Pretty pleased for my first attempt. As far as the temperature fluctuation, am I doing something wrong or is that normal?
strut buster
Eight Pointer
The temp fluctuation is not going to hurt you, unless you get high enough for long enough to start rendering fat. I always start at about 100F and creep my way up to about 175F by the end. Did you quick cool the sausage when you hit your internal temperature (always best to go with internal temp than a recommended smoker temp and time)? I throw my sausages in a tub of ice water as soon as they are done. Let them stay in there until the IT gets down to 90 F or so. Then I hang them to bloom for a couple hours in the garage. Really helps the final look. I also believe it helps texture and taste, but I've never done a side by side comparison to see for sure. Finally, you've got to be careful with long, lower temp smokes and be sure to use the right amount of Cure 1 or the like if you are holding an internal temp of less than 140 F for more than 4 hours, but you probably knew that.
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apexhunter
Ten Pointer
I'm not familiar with propane smokers but with the old style charcoal (R2D2 style) smokers doing fresh hams the rule of thumb is 1# of charcoal per pound of ham with 1 hour smoking time. Turkey breasts, sausage and fish use a different formula.
I removed them from the smoker when the internal temp was 159. The information I was using said to leave them at least until the IT was 152. I took them straight from the smoker to a sink full of cold water and left them in it for 5-10 minutes. I left them laying on a towel on the kitchen table for a couple of hours afterwards. That's when I noticed that the casings had shriveled a bit. I know it won't hurt the taste, I was just wondering if I could have done something different to prevent them from shriveling. Since I'm a novice, the link below is where I was getting my information.
http://www.lets-make-sausage.com/smoke-sausage.html
I have a Masterbuilt electric smoker....I load it up...set the temperature and hours to cook....go out in about 3 hours put some wood chips in the container. Then go back when you set your time to end and you have perfectly smoked meat.
kilerhamilton
Old Mossy Horns
Looks like this ham round off a baby deer