Would Jäger bombs and a steak do?
Whats for Dinner? 2010
- Thread starter Jim
- Start date
Would Jäger bombs and a steak do?
Last night I made subs with mayonnaise, guacamole, turkey breast, lettuce, tomato, cheese, salt, pepper, and oregano. Yum!
So for the past week I've been assembling an electric terra cotta smoker (put together for ~$50 with parts from Home Depot and Walgreens). It would've been up and smokin' sooner, but I had to do a bit of minor rewiring on a hotplate for the heat source. Here's a pic:
For size reference, the trash can behind it is about mid-thigh (standard tall kitchen can), those are full size chicago bricks it's set on.
I finally fired it up yesterday and gave an 8 hour hickory smoke to a 5 lb boston butt. Pictures follow.
A few hours in, and it's smoking well.
8 hours later, the lid finally came off.
Close up -- a beautiful butt!
Starting to pull it. Soft as buttah.
Finished pulling.
Fed 6 with leftovers. Made an east carolina-style vinegar based sauce (that's it in the background of the last pic). Phenomenal. Tender, moist, and smoky. Served it up with some steamed broccoli, corn on the cob, cinnamon applesauce (not homemade this time), and green bean casserole. I'd say it was a success for my first smoke in a homebrew smoker
For size reference, the trash can behind it is about mid-thigh (standard tall kitchen can), those are full size chicago bricks it's set on.
I finally fired it up yesterday and gave an 8 hour hickory smoke to a 5 lb boston butt. Pictures follow.
A few hours in, and it's smoking well.
8 hours later, the lid finally came off.
Close up -- a beautiful butt!
Starting to pull it. Soft as buttah.
Finished pulling.
Fed 6 with leftovers. Made an east carolina-style vinegar based sauce (that's it in the background of the last pic). Phenomenal. Tender, moist, and smoky. Served it up with some steamed broccoli, corn on the cob, cinnamon applesauce (not homemade this time), and green bean casserole. I'd say it was a success for my first smoke in a homebrew smoker
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Wow, that looks delicious. If you do not mind me asking, how did you make that smoker?
Fried chicken
Corn
Mac and cheese
Spinich
Corn
Mac and cheese
Spinich
No problem. There's a few instructables around for similar designs (www.instructables.com, just search "terra cotta smoker"), but they're all pretty much based off an episode of Good Eats with Alton Brown. I believe the episode is called "Q." You can watch it on foodnetwork.com, he builds one pretty similar to mine. Mine's a bit different from those, though. I'll probably have an instructable up in the next few days on how I did mine.
Briefly, I just found a giant unglazed pot, a lid that fit the rim of it with no gaps, and a circular grill grate that sat a few inches down in the pot. Then I added a thermometer on the top and a hot plate to the bottom with a pan on top for wood chips.
Anyway, a more detailed analysis follows. The parts list (I guess it adds up to more like $60):
22" 'heavy rimmed terra cotta pot' - Home Depot (~$21)
21.5" 'terra cotta saucer' - Home Depot (~$6)
16.5" charcoal grate - Home Depot (~$10)
Replacement grill thermometer - Home Depot (~$8)
Single burner, adjustable temp. hot plate - Walgreens ($9.99)
"Chicken roasting contraption" - Walmart ($4)
A lot of the designs you'll see use another pot set upside-down on top of the first one. I thought about doing that, but that would've been another 17 bucks or so, and I wasn't sure how well this one would work. The only benefit to the larger pot (that I see) is that you have more vertical space above your grill, so you'd be able to roast whole chickens or turkeys standing up. I'm not sure if mine will fit a rack of ribs vertically (like in a rib rack), but I'll be measuring soon. It'll fit a fryer chicken on its side no problem, and an entire pork shoulder with room to spare (the butt was about 1/2 of the shoulder I bought). Because of this I opted to just find a saucer to set on top, which gave me plenty of room for a test run rather cheaply. The other benefit to using the saucer is that your thermometer will be closer to the meat you're grilling (unless you use a probe thermometer, which I will probably upgrade to later), so you have a more accurate gauge of what temperature is surrounding your meat.
As for the charcoal grate, this was just the cheapest stainless steel circular rack I found at HD that fit inside the pot. You want one that will sit a few inches down in the pot -- far enough to give you headroom for the meat, but well above the heat source in the bottom. I believe mine is a replacement for one of those cheap charcoal kettle grills.
The saucer I bought didn't have a hole in it (while another pot would), so I pulled out a masonry drill bit roughly the size of the grill thermometer's probe and went to town, making sure to keep it wet while drilling (didn't want to inhale terra cotta dust, or worse, crack the lid).
For the hot plate, which was actually the hardest thing to find (ooo-rah Walgreens!), mine had a huge square base that didn't fit down into the bottom of the pot. So I took the screw out that was holding the burner down and disconnected the wires that ran to the heating element. The idea was to set the hot plate down under the smoker, and run the wires up through the bottom of the pot (which conveniently came with an airvent hole pre-installed
) to where the circular burner sat inside the pot.The wires weren't quite long enough, so I added a bit to them (I can go more into detail if you wish, but this will all be in my pending instructable). Depending on your build you may/may not have to do this.
The "chicken roasting contraption" was basically a stainless steel pan that had an attachable metal frame so that you could stick a beer can in the pan and a chicken vertically on top of the frame. I got it since it was cheap and the perfect size to throw my hickory chunks in. As I was walking out I saw the "smoker box" that I was initially looking for (basically a metal box that you throw your wood in to smoke on a gas grill), maybe I'll try that out soon. You could probably get away with aluminum foil for this, but with aluminum being poisonous and all, I'll stick with steel.
From there, it's just a matter of propping the thing up on some bricks so that the hot plate bottom isn't crushed, adding your soaked wood chips, preheating and throwing on the meat. The adjustable temperature was really nice - I was able to find a sweet spot that kept it at exactly 200 degrees
.It's actually an ingenious idea (I wish it were mine!) the terra cotta is an excellent insulator; it helps to hold in AND regulate the heat. This baby will outperform ANY of those cheap-*** metal smokers on the market. Not to mention the best part: the ONLY thing that can break (the hot plate) costs $10! It can even be taken out and stored indoors to further discourage rust! I suppose the thermometer *could* go bad, too, but that'll be a long while. I haven't personally used one of those fancy Big Green Eggs, but for $600, I'll build 10 of these and out smoke 'em all.
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I've been wondering about the terra cotta smoker since I saw the episode of Alton Brown, good to hear it works. SWMBO demands we make one now... who am I to argue?
Thank you. I will have to try this out sometime.
Great writeup surfreak. Looks like you had wonderful fun.
Tonight I made schnitzel with a potato salad. Simple, but tasty.
Potatoes, Romaine and beans all from my garden. Added in some chicken and it was nice, food you grow always tasted a bit better.
My wife made some wonderful pork adobo tonight....yum...yum!
Chicken kebabs with leeks and rice.
I made two tourtière yesterday. So I got to indulge two nights in a row.
Had a leftover smoked chicken from last night, so smoked chicken casserole, roasted broccoli tossed with lemon, parmesan and pine nuts, and baked sweet potatoes.
Biscuits
Bacon
Pancakes/Maple Syrup
Scrambled Eggs (I ain't skeered)
Bacon
Pancakes/Maple Syrup
Scrambled Eggs (I ain't skeered)
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