Food For Thought

Ugly Drum Smoker

2010-11-17T20:33:00.000-08:00

So you want a smoker? I am sure if you have looked around you have found that there is a wide range of prices. That old adage you get what you pay for is generally true with smokers. Sure, you could go to Walmart or Home Depot and pay less than $200 for a horizontal offset smoker that looks like what most people associate with a smoker. But, you will end up with something you have to modify to minimize hot and cold spots not to mention the thin metal that won't retain heat let alone trying to feed this inefficient beast. You could spend a little more and get something far superior in a Weber Smokey Mountain vertical smoker. Or you could build your own for about $100 and a few hours of your time.

To start off with, you will want a metal 55 gallon drum. There are drums to avoid however. I highly recommend getting one with an open top. That can save you some money when it comes time to figure out what to do for a lid. If you are going to use a food grade barrel try to avoid one with a lining. The linings are notorious for being difficult to remove. Also ignore drums that held dangerous chemicals or solvents. You, your relatives and your friends are going to be eating food you prepared in this thing. There is no need to take chances. I have found Craigslist to be an excellent resource for locating drums.

I ended up using a drum that had housed motor oil for my first. Unfortunately it was a closed top drum. So my first step was to break out my air chisel to remove the top. This could also be done with an angle grinder or even a hammer and chisel. Once the top was removed I drilled a 2" hole roughly 1 1/2" up from the bottom for my air intake. There are many ways to do this and going forward I would use 4 3/4" holes using pipe nipples with caps except for one that would have a ball valve on it to control the airflow.

After my hole was drilled, I drug home a few pallets from work that a buddy and I cut up into smaller pieces. We used these to burn out the drum. Since mine had previously held motor oil, I burned mine out a couple times to make sure all oil residue burned out. You want a nice hot fire that will burn off the paint on the outside of the drum.

Once the drum is burned out, give it a thorough cleaning. I used degreaser followed by Simple Green. I wasn't going to take any chances.

Next fit in your air intake(s). For this build I chose a 2" piece of pipe with an elbow so I didn't have to bend down quite so far to adjust the airflow. I used two conduit nuts (one on each side) to lock the air intake into place and then used RTV silicone to seal around it so I didn't have any leaks.

Next, build your charcoal basket. We will need this to be in place so we can locate our racks properly. Lowes sells Weber replacement parts. Pick up a 18.5" charcoal grate some 3 - 4" long 1/2" grade 8 bolts, washers and nuts, and some 3/4" expanded metal. Use zip ties to wrap and hold the expanded metal around the charcoal grate to form your basket. If you have a buddy with a welder, bring him a 6 pack of beer and ask him to weld it up for you. If that isn't an option for you, you can always use some stainless steel hardware to bolt everything into place. The zip ties are just to hold things in place while you work on your charcoal basket. You do not want to burn any material with them in place. Then use the grade 8 bolts to keep the bottom of the charcoal basket above the bottom of the drum. This is necessary for air flow and for ash to fall away from the basket.

Now that we have a charcoal basket built, put it in the bottom of your drum. Measure 24" from the bottom of your basket and that is where your first cooking grate will be. Place three stainless steel bolts equidistant from each other around that height on the drum using a nut on the inside with locking washers to hold your cooking grate.

If you have room for another rack above your first one with consideration for your lid, mark that as well. It might be a tight squeeze if you are using a removable top for the lid. To give yourself some more room you can use a Weber kettle or similar lid that is domed. That will give you more than enough room to take full advantage of two racks or to place a drip tray under a turkey or roast beef.

Once your racks are placed, we can fit the lid. If you are using an open top drum lid, you could simply thread in a piece of pipe for your exhaust stack. If you are using a Weber kettle lid, you are already done.

What about monitoring temperatures in the drum? There are several ways of doing this. You can simply use a an electronic probe placed inside or even a stem thermometer. You do not want to have to open the lid to see what the temps are (If you're looking it ain't cooking.). I drilled a 3/8" hole 1" below my first rack, then drilled a hole the same diameter as my stem thermometer through the center of the bolt, slid the bolt through the 3/8" hole and used a locking washer and nut to tighten it into place. I now have a way to insert and remove a stem thermometer without having to worry about how I am going to get the charcoal basket out.

We are now ready for a seasoning and test run. To season your drum, spray the inside with cooking oil so you have a light coating. Load up your charcoal basket with charcoal and a couple of wood chunks (not treated lumber) and put it in. Use a charcoal chimney to start about 1/4 of a chimney of charcoal and place a half dozen glowing coals onto your charcoal basket. Put your cooking racks in and put the lid on with the exhaust fully open.

It is important to start with a small fire and adjust your airflow as needed. If you start with too much lit charcoal, you will struggle to get your temperatures down. For smoking we want to run in the 210 - 250* range. Low and slow.

Now is the time to mess around with airflow and see how it affects your drum. Keep in mind that when you add meat to your smoker, it will behave a little differently because the meat will be absorbing the heat but you can teach yourself the basics with your seasoning run.

Run your drum for a good 4 or 5 hours to season. When that is done, it is ready to cook on.

What's The Rub?

2010-11-15T18:58:00.000-08:00

Dill, that is the rub. This is an interesting rub I concocted about a month or so ago specifically for chicken. It especially works well with hickory smoked chicken. My original goal was to produce a rub that had some of the same flavor qualities as traditional stuffing but with a bit of a dill flavor to it. What I ended up with was much better than I anticipated.

This will make enough for 6 oz of total rub.

4 tbs kosher salt
1 1/2 tbs dill weed
1 1/2 tbs onion powder
1 tbs mustard powder
2 tsp garlic powder
2 tsp black pepper
1 1/2 tsp ground celery

Mix all of the ingredients together well and then sprinkle or rub onto all sides of your chicken about an hour before throwing it on the grill or smoker. A friend of mine tried rubbing it 24 hours ahead of time and found that it had a little too much of a dill taste for him.

It is important to note that this will make enough rub for plenty of chicken and that you most likely will not use it all. Store in a mason jar in a cool, dark place to keep it fresh.

Enjoy!

Living Cheaply

2010-11-14T20:02:00.000-08:00

Not long after Maya and I got married in 1995, she was no longer able to work. It put a tremendous burden on us but we somehow managed to scrape by. This created some good memories and also some bad ones. It also fostered some good habits.

We have been married long enough to know what our food preferences are and I use that to our advantage. I watch the local stores for specials on foods that we eat with regularity. When the opportunity presents itself I will buy a store out of whatever they happen to have on special within the limits they confine the customer to. Tonight happened to be just such a night.

I know that next weekend I am planning on making a whole bunch of gyro sausage (which will be an upcoming post) and it just happened that the store I had stopped at had a sale on lamb and beef. While loading up on both I noticed that they had turkey on sale. 39 cents/lbs if you had a $35 purchase. I like turkey and so does Maya so I picked up enough cheap beef and lamb (that I would have bought anyway) to qualify for the $35 and then grabbed two turkeys totaling almost 40 lbs.

Chances are pretty good that we won't get around to eating those turkeys until spring or summer. But that is why God invented deep freezes. So for now my birds will live in my chest freezer for a few months until I have time for them. My guess is those same turkeys would have cost me upwards of $1/lbs when we finally eat them.

So I ended up with...

2lbs of lamb
15lbs of beef
40lbs of turkey

And my final cost was $57. Yup, roughly a dollar per pound for all that meat. Keep an eye on your local store specials and buy what you can when you can. This will have a significant impact on your grocery bill.

Building A Smoker Out Of Plywood

2010-11-14T17:07:00.000-08:00

About a year ago I stumbled across this thread and was fascinated by the simplicity of a smoker built out of plywood. http://forums.mathewsinc.com/archery-4/stickies-29/smoker-plans-41686/

At the time I had been looking at more expensive options that would give me more capacity for smoking sausages, jerky, cheese, etc. The cost to build this smoker was well under what I was willing to spend so I called up a couple buddies and we decided to build it.

We went to Lowes and picked up 2 full sheets of 3/4" hardwood plywood, some wood screws, water resistant wood glue, casters, dowel rods, biscuits, hvac vents, hinges, and a couple handles. Pretty simple list of materials really.

We cut the plywood to the dimensions we wanted and then came the drilling. We wanted to make 6 rows of dowel hangers. We employed the use of a forstner bit to drill the holes in the plywood and then ripped the plywood to size.

We then attached the dowel hangers to the future sides of the smoker using our wood glue and a couple wood screws.

We then began assembly.

And here is what we ended up with.

I then did a couple of seasoning runs at 250* to make sure any harmful chemicals or glues were given a chance to burn off. And then it was game on. I have two ways to power my plywood smoker. I picked up a couple 1000W hot plates from Walgreens for about $10 that I use for cold smoking. And when I do hot smoking I use a propane burner with a needle valve that I picked up as part of a fish cooker kit from Bass Pro Shop.

Cold smoking cheese:

I am sure you are wondering how safe or even smart it is to place burning wood inside a wood box. To solve that problem, I use some cheap cast iron pans that I picked up at Harbor Freight to burn my chips and chunks of wood. I put the material in the pan, then cover it with aluminum foil and poke holes in the aluminum foil to allow the smoke to come out without allowing enough oxygen to cause the wood to actually catch on fire.

I use that same technique for the propane burner as well.

My total investment in the plywood smoker is about $250. Far cheaper than anything I could have bought with the same capacity.

50 lbs O' Summer Sausage

2010-11-13T22:40:00.000-08:00

Last weekend I had a couple buddies come over and we decimated a 28lbs chuck roll and a 22 lbs chuck roll. We managed to cut, grind, mix and stuff it all in under 4 hours. We made 30 lbs of regular and 20 lbs of jalapeno. Regular summer sausage is on the left and jalapeño summer sausage is on the right. I put a single additional knot in the jalapeño so I can tell which is which.

Loading up the plywood smoker.

Three rows deep.

Care to guess what I am sending out as Christmas presents this year?

Here is the recipe I use for summer sausage. It started off as one of Len Poli's recipes but I have made a few changes to accommodate my flavor preferences. This will make a 10 lbs batch.

10lbs ground chuck

1 1/2 cups nonfat dry milk

4 tbs salt

3 tbs corn syrup solids

2 1/2 tbs dextrose

5 tsp phosphate

5 tsp soy protein concentrate

2 tbs paprika

2 tsp cure #1

2 heaping tsp minced garlic

1 tbs ground white pepper

2 tsp encapsulated citric acid

2 tbs mustard seed

1 tsp ground celery

1 tsp coriander

1/2 tsp nutmeg

1 tbs onion powder

2 tbs cracked black pepper

1/2 cup dried jalapeno (optional)

2 cups ice water

The process for making summer sausage is as follows:

Grind up your meat. I like to use a 3/16 plate for summer sausage. Then put it back in the refrigerator.

Mix up all of your other ingredients thoroughly, then bring the meat back out, and pour the mixture over the meat.

Mix thouroughly! I know your hands are freezing (and nasty if you aren't wearing gloves) but it is very important that the meat is mixed up thoroughly.

Then place the meat into a refrigerator for 24 hours. This is to let the flavors develop and the cure to go to work. It is very important that you do not regrind the meat since we are using encapsulated citric acid.

After the 24 hour period is up, stuff into fibrous casings. The size is up to you, but the larger the casing the longer it is going to take to cook.

Hang the stuffed casings in a 100 - 130* smoker/smokehouse to dry for about an hour.

Once the casings are dry, apply smoke. I like to use a mix of hickory and pecan for summer sausage. Bump the temperature up 10 degrees every 30 minutes to maximum of 180* in the smoker/smokehouse.

When your summer sausage hits around 160* internal, it is done. Pull out immediately and pace into an ice bath to stop the cooking process and bring the temperature down.

When the internal temperature is down to about 90*, hang at room temperature for about 2 hours to dry and the meat to bloom.

Refrigerate for 24 hours. Then you can package your summer sausage however you wish. I prefer to vacuum seal and freeze whatever won't be eaten immediately.

My Chipotle Powder Factory

2010-11-13T22:21:00.000-08:00

The last batch of chipotle powder has been processed for the year. I use a lot of chipotle so it only made sense to make my own. Here is how to do it.

First, I smoke the ripe (red) jalapenos with mesquite for about 4 - 5 hours. I do a heavy smoke using a 10" cast iron pan full of mesquite chunks over a 1000W hotplate in my plywood smoker. After smoking, I put a small fan in the bottom of the plywood smoker and fully open the vents for airflow. During the warmer months it will only take a week to dry the peppers out. When temps drop below 70* I add a hotplate to keep temps around 90*.

I use some stainless steel racks during the smoking and drying phase to keep the peppers from rolling up and trapping moisture on the inside.

When they go into the smoker they are butted up against each other. You can see how much they shrink during dehydration.

And into the "spice mill" (really a coffee grinder) the dried and smoked peppers go.

After a couple grinds we end up with chipotle powder.

Packaged up to share with a friend.

Welcome!

2010-11-13T22:01:00.000-08:00

This is my first blog. While I am extremely opinionated and never afraid to share those opinions, I have never blogged before. My purpose with this blog is to share my food adventures with the rest of the internet. I hope you enjoy it.