My New Smoker and Her Maiden Voyage

While working at the store over these last 4 1/2 months, I’ve seen and learned some really cool new things. For example, I can now practically debone a lamb leg and tie it up into a handsome roast with my eyes shut and I recently also got to try my hand at taking apart some pork shoulders. In particular, I have become enamored of one particular cooking technique that we employ very often to produce some incredibly tasty meaty treats – smoking. Sure, I’ve eaten smoked foods in the past – smoked salmon and any good, ‘authentically’ prepared BBQ dish such as ribs or brisket – but my experience of working in the store’s kitchen has really opened up my culinary world and proved to me that smoking is more than just a one trick pony.

Wanting a way to replicate some things that we do at the store and bring some of my own ideas to fruition, I decided to purchase a new smoker for Christmas. After performing tons of research solving for questions like ‘how much smoking capacity do I need’ and ‘what fuel source is best for me (gas, charcoal, electricity)’ I finally pulled the trigger earlier this month and bought a 22.5″ Weber Smokey Mountain Cooker. Here she is in all of her glory right after I completed the easy-to-follow assembly process.

At just over 4 feet tall and 2 feet wide with a Weber-claimed 726 square inches of cooking space on two different cooking levels, she is quite the big girl. If it looks quite different than a ‘conventional’ grill, there’s a reason for that; smoking and grilling are two completely different cooking techniques. Where grilling is essentially cooking food directly over flames producing relatively high heat (a process best suited to quickly cooking smaller pieces of meat and veggies), smoking is an indirect cooking method generally utilizing temperatures in a much lower range than grilling, anywhere from 200-275 degrees F (with the 225-250 range being thought of as the ‘sweet spot’) for ‘hot smoking to 100 degrees F and under for ‘cold’ smoking. ‘Low and slow’ is a mantra embraced by smoking aficionados and it is this type of cooking process that can turn tougher cuts of meat like shoulders and ribs into melt-in-your-mouth tender morsels. During the smoking process, food is cooked via the heat generated by the smoker and flavored by the smoke generated from wood chunks or chips that are added to the smoker.

The hardest decision for me was choosing the type of fuel to use – electric, gas or charcoal. At work we use a commercial grade electric smoker that functions like an oven and it produces some really great products. It has a thermostat that controls the temperature and a small basket that holds enough wood chips to provide about an hour’s worth of smoke (which can be reloaded as many times as necessary during the cooking process). It’s a snap to use, allowing it to produce a very consistent product time and time again. However, the way I see it, there are a few issues with electric smokers. First off, they need to be plugged in to an outlet, a factor that limits their portability. Second, I was not very happy with the build quality of the electric smokers that were in my price range – they all seemed a bit flimsy to me. Third, as I’ve learned at work, while the quality of the food produced in an electric smoker can be very high, it doesn’t produce the same type of ‘bark’ (the dark, crusty and incredibly flavorful outer layer found on the cooked meat) or smoke-ring that a charcoal-fired cooker will produce.  Propane would’ve solved my first two issues but not the third and so in the end, I opted for a charcoal-fired smoker and a little over a week after placing my order, she had arrived and was ready for her first cook.

Initially, a charcoal fired smoker will probably have a higher learning curve than a gas or electric model because the user will have to learn the fine art of temperature regulation without simply relying on a thermostat or adjustable heat control switch. I figured that spare ribs would make for a good first cook in the smoker because I felt like they would do a good job of withstanding some of the wilder temperature fluctuations that a novice smoker like myself would subject them to. Additionally, I didn’t feel like I had to cook them to a specific temperature, rather, I was going to shoot for a 4-6 hour cook at 250 degrees F and see how good of a job I could do at maintaining that temperature for such a time period.

Here are the racks as they appeared when removed from their packaging – a little over 7lbs of meat.

The night before cooking, using a microplane, I made a paste of a few garlic cloves and a shallot and rubbed that all over the ribs, followed by a light sprinkling of salt and pepper.

Then I liberally applied a rub that I made from paprika, crushed bay leaves, ground cumin, ground coriander and white pepper.

I let the ribs sit in the ‘fridge overnight, uncovered, until the next day.

Firing up a charcoal smoker is a bit more complicated than just flipping a switch. I used a chimney starter to fire off a smaller amount of charcoal, about 20 briquettes worth. You may notice that my chimney starter is inverted – I had read a tip on the internet that said it was easier to light a smaller amount of coals in an inverted chimney (these things hold a lot more than 20 briquettes) – so I thought I would give it a shot. I formed a donut out of two pieces of brown wrapping paper (I’d normally use newspaper but I didn’t have any handy) and wadded that underneath the charcoal, then lit the paper and waited for it to ignite the coals.

While waiting for the coals to ignite, I took apart the smoker in order to add charcoal to its bottom section.

You can fit a tremendous amount of charcoal into this smoker – I’ve read that it can easily hold an entire 20lb of Kingsford charcoal, which could provide enough fuel for a 12+ hour smoke. Since I only wanted to smoke the ribs for up to 6 hours, I partially filled the bowl with charcoal – about 80 briquettes worth. In these pictures, you can also make out two of the three adjustable vents in the bottom of the smoker. It is these vents that allow the user to control the amount of air that circulates through the cooker; open vents introduce more air to the smoker which causes the fire to burn hotter while closed or partially shut vents restrict the flow of air, thus taming the fire (and heat) within.

I also added a few chunks of wood at this point – two each of mesquite and hickory.

This particular smoker also comes with a massive water pan. The purpose of the water in the cooker is twofold – the water supposedly helps to create a moist cooking environment while also serving as a heatsink that helps regulate the temperature in the cooker by minimizing temperature fluctuations.

The water pan sits in the smoker about a foot and a half above the charcoal. I foiled the bottom of the pan in an effort to minimize its post-cooking cleanup.

About 15 minutes later, the charcoal in the chimney starter was ready…

…so I dumped the lit coals over the unlit coals and next to the wood chunks.

Over the course of the next few hours, the lit coals would trigger the unlit coals to light, providing a constant source of heat throughout the cook. The heat from the coals would also cause the wood chunks to burn, unleashing their flavorful smoke upon the ribs. With the coals in place, I reattached the middle section of the smoker…

…then put the water pan in its place.

It is at this point where water would normally be added to the pan. The internet had also suggested that I could use a heavy clay saucer in place of the water in the water pan, which I did. Over the course of longer cooks, it might be necessary to replenish water that is lost due to evaporation – use of a clay saucer negates the need to add additional water during a long cook.

Note that I foiled the clay saucer to aid in my cleanup efforts but I failed to foil the part of the water pan that the saucer rests in, which wound up collecting a fair amount of drippings from the ribs and made for a difficult cleanup anyway.

With the water pan and clay saucer in place, the two cooking grates are put in place.

Finally, it’s time to add the meat. Note all the smoke that has already begun to billow out of the smoker.

The last thing to do is thread in the probe from my wireless thermometer so that I could monitor the temperature of the cooker from the comfort of the living room sofa.

After 5 1/2 hours, we have ribs! After taking about 30 minutes to reach ideal smoking temperature, I didn’t have too much difficulty keeping the smoker running in the ‘sweet spot’, though I did experience a few weird temperature spikes during the cook. I’m not exactly sure what caused those spikes – when they happened I either pulled the lid off for a few seconds to let some of the heat escape and/or closed the bottom vents to temporarily cut off the supply of air to the fire. Eventually, the temperatures dropped back down to the preferred range. I also wound up adding a few more briquettes and smoke wood a little later in the cook, a task made easy thanks to the massive door on the side of the smoker.

Look at that bark!

For my first attempt at using my smoker, I was definitely pleased with how the ribs turned out. They were moist and tender and had a good amount of smokey flavor. If I were to make one change for my next ribs cookout, I’d mop the ribs with a some kind of vinegar/mustard solution – the ribs are quite rich and I think they would’ve benefited tremendously from the addition of a little bit of acidity and a mustardy bite to help round out their flavor.