Smokers

<body topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 marginheight=0 marginwidth=0> <table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 border=0 height="100%"><tr> <td valign="top" width=168 BGCOLOR="#000000" TEXT="#F7F7FF" background="c0f146e3.gif"> <div> <A HREF="id207.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Hunting"><U><IMG SRC="e440d0d0.gif" border=0 width="13" height="13" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></U></A> <FONT SIZE="2" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" ><B>Hunting</B></FONT></div> <bR> <div> <A HREF="id185.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="National BBQ Month"><U><IMG SRC="e440d0d0.gif" border=0 width="13" height="13" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></U></A> <FONT SIZE="2" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" ><B>BBQ</B><B> </B></FONT></div> <bR> <div> <A HREF="index.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Cantrell Family Website"><U><IMG SRC="e440d0d0.gif" border=0 width="13" height="13" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></U></A> <FONT SIZE="2" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" ><B>Home</B></FONT></div> <bR> <bR> </td> <td valign="top" BGCOLOR="#000000" TEXT="#F7F7FF"> <div> <FONT SIZE="5" COLOR="#FFFFFF" FACE="Arial" ><B>Cantrell Family Website</B></FONT>     |   <A HREF="index.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Cantrell Family Website"><U><B>home</B></U></A></div> <bR> <div> Smokers</div> <bR> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <IMG SRC="e50c2530.gif" border=0 width="450" height="339" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></div> <div> Curing and Smoking</div> <bR> <div> Venison lends itself well to corning, curing, drying, smoking, and summer or smoked sausage making, when mixed with approximately 50% fat pork trimmings or bacon scraps. The following suggestions regarding procedures for corned venison, dried venison, and deer sausage are provided as found in The Meat We Eat by Romans et al. </div> <bR> <div> <B>Corned Venison </B></div> <bR> <div> Use boned shoulders and cut into 3- to 4-pound pieces. Place the meat in a stone crock. Dissolve 1-1/2 pounds of salt, 1/2 pound of cane or brown sugar, 1 ounce of cream of tartar, 1 ounce of baking soda, and 1 ounce of pickling spice in 1 gallon of hot water. Allow the brine to cool before pouring it over the meat. Make enough pickle to cover the meat and weight it down with a clean polyethylene cutting board and a rock. Cure for several weeks. </div> <bR> <div> <B>Dried Venison </B></div> <bR> <div> Cure the muscles of the round separating them into inside, outside, and round tip. Rub them with a mixture of 3 parts of salt and 1 part of granulated sugar for three consecutive times at 4- 5-day intervals. Place the rubbed meat on a table or shelf in a cool cellar during the curing process, and at the end of three weeks brush off any remaining salt and hang the meat to smoke for three days. Hang the smoked venison in a dry place for a month to dry, after which it can be sliced similar to dried beef. </div> <bR> <div> <B>Sausage </B></div> <bR> <div> One taste of sausage made from the less tender cuts of venison ground with fat pork trimmings will assure anyone that no part of the venison carcass should be wasted. Mix the venison and pork in equal parts and season the same as sausage (6 ounces of salt, 1 ounce of pepper, and a pinch of sage for 20 pounds of sausage). It can be stuffed in hog casings and smoked for 8 to 10 hours at 110° F and held the same as cured pork, or it can be made into patties and canned. In case the sausage is to be frozen or stored, wrap the unseasoned sausage tightly in laminated freezer paper, freeze, and store at -10° F. Thaw and season it just before using. Unseasoned sausage will maintain its fresh taste for five or six months, but seasoned sausage will turn flat and rancid after 60 days. </div> <bR> <div> A good meat loaf consists of 2 pounds of salt pork ground with 20 pounds of venison. </div> <bR> <div> <B>Deer Jerky </B></div> <bR> <div> Jerky is made by cutting venison into strips about 1" wide x 1/2¾ thick x 6 - 12" long. The strips are frequently held for two days in a solution consisting of 1 pound non-iodized salt to three quarts of pure water. After removal from the brine solution, the strips are hung in bright, direct sunlight to dry. Cheesecloth covering should be used to protect the jerky from insects. </div> <bR> <div> <B>Smoked Venison </B></div> <bR> <div> Cured venison should be washed and permitted to dry at least 12 hours prior to smoking. Smoking facilities involve an enclosure to keep the smoke on the meat. A container that is "smoke tight" will be satisfactory. An electric hotplate with a thermometer, two pieces of thin metal such as chimney flashing, two wire racks similar to those in a stove oven, and a few bricks will provide a smoking facility. </div> <bR> <div> It is necessary to cut a hole in the center of the top of the smoker. By covering the hole with a flat piece of metal, exposure through the opening will control the rate of smoke generation. Another hole just large enough to accommodate the diameter of the thermometer should be made for this specific purpose. The thermometer should be placed in the opening so the gauge from 90° and upward is visible. Putty or tape should be used to seal around the hole. </div> <bR> <div> Meat may be hung or placed on racks inside the smoker. Nonresinous wood, willow, cherry, apple, maple, or hickory should be used to produce the smoke. Soft woods will produce a smoke responsible for a bitter taste of the cured product. Fine shavings and sawdust produce the best smoke. Sprinkled wood or sawdust in a pan used with the smoker with the aid of the hotplate will generate smoke in a short time. Smoke movement and interior temperature are controlled by advancing or retarding heat from the hotplate by adjusting the opening of the smoke-hole in the top of the smoker. If cold smoking is desired, the interior temperature should not rise from 100° F during the three days of smoking. Smoke cooking involves smoking until the internal temperature of the product reaches 155° F. </div> <bR> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <IMG SRC="e2f9cbb0.gif" border=0 width="412" height="443" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></div> <bR> <div> The essential function of a top-notch barbecue smoker is to keep the meat entrusted to it comfortably separated from flames and direct heat and yet in the path of the hot air and smoke that give it its flavor. Big Baby does this by burning a hardwood fire in her bottom barrel and using the top barrel to contain the meat and direct the smoke. The top barrel also serves as a big, self-contained drip pan that catches meat juices. And the vents and dampers located all along the air path mean that the fire can be precisely controlled, keeping it from dying or flaring up.</div> <bR> <div> Besides two 55-gallon drums, the "trick" to the smoker is in making use of wood-stove kits designed to convert such drums into cheap stoves for heating storage sheds and such. The kits come with a cast-iron door, cast-iron legs on which to mount the smoker, cast-iron supports to connect the bottom drum to the one above it, plus flues to connect the two drums. From a hardware store or wood-stove shop, you toss in some dampers and a couple of neat little smokestacks for each end to let the smoke escape from the top drum.</div> <bR> <div> <B>Building Big Baby</B></div> <bR> <div> Before you get started, make sure you have the stuff you'll need. The drums you should be able to find for about ten or twenty dollars; the stove kits (it takes two) are available at hardware and wood-stove stores or by mail order from Northern Hydraulics, 801 E. Cliff Rd., P.O. Box 1219, Burnsville, ME 55337, for less than forty or fifty dollars. The two twenty-two-by-fifteen-inch grill surfaces can be had at a barbecue supply house for twenty-five dollars or so. Add some bolts, brackets, hinges, smokestacks, fire bricks, paint and such, and you're up to a total expense of about a hundred and fifty dollars, more than the price of a simple covered grill but considerably less than the cost of a B1 bomber, which, by the way, does a simply horrible job on a rack of ribs.</div> <bR> <div> The steps are simple: Paint the barrels first, then start cutting them with your saber saw. Use a fresh metal-cutting blade (ask the guy at the hardware store or tool rental place for one), and prepare yourself for a violently annoying noise roughly akin to five hundred colicky babies with the croup. Cuttin through a hollow drum with a bussing saber saw makes enough racket that you may want to consider earplugs. Or suicide. But persevere, and cut a hole for the fire door at one end of the bottom barrel and matching holes in both barrels for the flues that connect them. Cut the top barrel in half horizontally, setting the top half aside. Then do your drilling and mounting and bolting, referring to the directions in the wood-stove kit whenever appropriate. Basically, you want to mount the bottom barrel on its legs (and we recommend connecting these to a couple of two-by-fours for a sturdier base), and then mount the fire door to it, followed by the connecting supports and the two flues (remember to insert the dampers before you bolt on the top barrel). Then you add the top barrel, bolting together the supports and flues between the two. At this point, lay the top half of the top barrel in place and mark holes for the hinges and handles. After the lid is in place, you can drill holes and bolt in place a small chain to keep the lid from falling over backwards. About now you can use the saber saw one last time to cut holes in either end of the bottom half of the top barrel and mount the two smokestacks (again, don't forget those dampers). Drill a hole for your thermometer (an inexpensive dial-type candy thermometer works fine, and even includes a clip that will hold it in place). Line the bottom of the bottom barrel with fire bricks, which keep it from burning through. Then drill and mount the brackets that support the grill surfaces, slap those puppies in place, and call one of those fellows who delivers wood. You're ready to barbecue!</div> <bR> <div> It's best to operate this smoker over a nonflammagle surface, from something as basic as packed dirt to concrete. The Babe sits a bit low to the ground, and her firebox gets more than a mite hot, so she will send any grass in the area to Turf Heaven almost immediately. For a neater look, you could put down gravel and even border the area with bricks.</div> <bR> <div> <B>Cooking With Big Baby</B></div> <bR> <div> Big Baby is designed to burn real wood, not charcoal. She'll be happy with just about any hardwood - hickory, oak, mesquite, whatever - but stay away from soft stuff like pine. Build a good-sized fire in the bottom barrel and let it go for a while, maybe an hour or more, until it has formed a healthy pile of hot coals. Avoid cooking over a "fresh" fire, since such fires send up a lot of soot and creosotelike goo. Go for a hot bed of coals onto which you can toss the occasional log, keeping the temperature as even as possible. Barbecue is not set-it-and-forget-it food; cooking it requires almost constant tinkering and tending to keep the heat even over a period of hours. But with a big base of coals for consistency and the proper combination of damper settings for the wind and outdoor temperature, the Babe will chug along at a constant heat for an hour at a time, certainly time enough to go out for more beer or cassette tapes.</div> <bR> <div> There will be very little in the way of barbecue that Big Baby can't handle, from a suckling pig to three twelve-quart stockpots of smoky chili. But she's more than a simple smoker.</div> <bR> <div> Big Baby is a sculpture in basic black, a life-style statement, a conversation piece, a badge of honor, and a joy forever. And on a hot summer day, even when you're not cooking anything, it still smells like barbecue.</div> <bR> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <IMG SRC="e3040ab0.gif" border=0 width="320" height="427" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></div> <bR> <bR> <div> <B>Pastrami</B></div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <div> Here's one that I modified from DTM's original recipe.  It has a bit less salt, and I added some spices.  You'll need a meat injector/brine pump like the "Cajun Injector".  This pastrami is really tasty.  Remember, it's basically a gently smoked corned-beef, not a heavily smoked brisket, so easy on the smoke.</div> <bR> <div> Brine Pump</div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <div> 3.5 C. Good Clean Water (such as spring water) </div> <div> 2 Tbsp Tenderquick </div> <div> 2 Tbsp Brown Sugar </div> <div> 2 ts Granulated Garlic or Powdered Garlic (try not to use Garlic Salt) Combine above ingredients and warm to dissolve.  Then, refrigerate until very cold (about 40° F).</div> <bR> <div> Meanwhile, back at the ranch, trim out an 8-10 lb brisket*. (you can even use a flat if you want)</div> <bR> <div> (*note: these are new pics from my attempt with a London Broil rather than a brisket...came out good, but brisket works better)</div> <bR> <div> Try and leave a very small fat cap...like 1/4" or so...maybe even 1/8".  We want it to keep the pastrami moist, but lean.  When your Brine is cold, inject your brisket every 1", all the way around...top and bottom, sides, corners, behind the ears, etc.  Try to get it to accept as much brine as it will hold. (hint, your brisket must be defrosted well or it will be too frozen to absorb)</div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <div> Rub #1</div> <bR> <bR> <div> 3 Tbsp freshly ground black pepper </div> <div> 1 Tbsp ground coriander </div> <div> 1 ts ground thyme </div> <div> 1 Tbsp ground dehydrated onion or onion powder Mix the above rub, take out 2 Tbsp to mix with Rub #2.  Save remainder of Rub #1 for smoking day.</div> <bR> <div> Rub #2</div> <bR> <bR> <div> 1/4 C. Tenderquick </div> <div> 2 Tbsp Brown Sugar </div> <div> 1 Tbsp Paprika </div> <div> 2 Tbsp Garlic Powder </div> <div> 2 Tbsp Rub #1 from above After the brisket has had its fill of brine (hopefully all of it), pour out excess brine from pan and coat it all over with completed Rub #2...use all rub #2.</div> <bR> <div> Cover & Refrigerate for 3-5 days, turning at least once a day top to bottom...(it's gonna look smell really good).</div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <div> Smoking Day</div> <bR> <div> Take out the beautifully cured "corned beef" (because that's what it is at this point), and wash off the beautiful rub we put on 5 days ago.  Then, put it in some clean water to soak for an hour.  Go light your pit.</div> <bR> <div> Rub #3 (what can I say, I like rubbing my....uh, nevermind)</div> <bR> <bR> <div> Remaining Rub #1 from Day 1, almost 4 Tbsp </div> <div> 1 ts Paprika </div> <div> 1 ts Garlic Powder </div> <div> 1 Tbsp Freshly Ground Coarse Black Pepper (or more, if you like it really peppery on the outside) Remove your corned beef from the bath and pat dry with some paper towels.  Then, coat all over with remaining rub.</div> <bR> <div> Smoking Tips</div> <bR> <div> This is one of those things that work better in a water smoker like a WSM or ECB.  If you're using an offset, you'll need to gently spray it every hour or so, so it doesn't dry out. (I dunno, apple juice mixed with water should work...maybe a little cider vinegar too)</div> <bR> <div> Smoke it at 200-240 until internal is about 160-165.  Due to curing, this piece will cook faster than a regular brisket so start taking readings after 1 hour/pound.  My favorite woods for this is a mix of pecan and oak 3:1. (I believe DTM prefers maple)  Just remember, this ain't a Texas brisket so EASY on the smoke, COWBOY (btw, I LOVE Texas brisket but this ain't it.)</div> <bR> <div> Serving Suggestions</div> <bR> <div> Let it rest for a few minutes at least before carving.  If you can, wrap it in foil and stick it in a cold oven for an hour even.  Carve against the grain, in the thinnest shavings you can make (hint: sharp knife).  Serve warm, on good dark rye bread, dill pickles, deli mustard, cheddar or swiss cheese, and saurkraut. (OH-MY-GOD...this stuff is good!)</div> <bR> <div> I know I asked you to do a lot of maneuvers with the rubs, but I promise you it's worth it.</div> <bR> <div> Enjoy,</div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <A HREF="id207.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Hunting"><U><IMG SRC="d7496320.gif" border=0 width="150" height="50" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></U></A></div> <bR> <bR> </td> </tr></table></body>