Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Modifications to make meat better -- eventually

My wife thought that once her family room floor had been overtaken for an evening by the grill assembly team, that she could start planning on gourmet ribs the next evening. Ha!

I mentioned that I like to do research and I found a couple of modifications -- consistently -- across a number of websites that, if I did them now, would save me time, expense and some stress on my first smoke. I was scared, by a thousand other bbqers online about maintaining heat constant at 225 degrees F, don't let it get too hot, keep the temperature even across the grill, don't let it get too hot, don't use too much smoke or you'll ruin your meat, don't let it get too hot, etc. So, armed with my fear, I went about making some mods.

1) The thermometer is junk. Everyone agrees. And it's true. You can invest a lot in an electronic thermometer which beams the temp to a receiver inside the house, and there's even a thermometer which will talk to your iPad or iPhone. (If you look at the iGrill app in the App Store, people are pretty unhappy with it.) I picked up a $15 thermometer at Wal-Mart and it seems pretty good for the time being. My smoker is right off my screen porch which is right off my kitchen, so it's about 15 feet from the house. Even in cold weather, it's a short walk. If you have further to go, you might want to get a fancier one. But my limited experience is consistent with others -- ignore the thermometer that comes with it. Some people drill new holes in their grill for a temp probe, I just slid mine through a small hole in the side of the lid, near the grates.


2) I built a baffle from the firebox to the center of the grill. A baffle is just a piece of sheet metal of some length to redirect the smoke and heat from one place to another. Here's a pic of one, not mine, but it might give you some ideas http://media.photobucket.com/image/recent/swamprb/100_1465.jpg. Mine is probably closest to this, but a little longer.http://txbbqking.com/images/old%20offset/baffle1.jpg I'll post pics of mine here soon. I used an 8x24 piece of dryer vent pipe, unrolled into a kind of crescent shape, and then secured at the corrugated end to the side of the grill nearest the fire box. Here's what I used: http://www.homedepot.com/h_d1/N-5yc1v/R-100145866/h_d2/ProductDisplay?langId=-1&storeId=10051&catalogId=10053. It was about $5 and easy to work with. It's easily cut with snips and pretty bendable. Man Card Alert! Use gloves so you don't slice your hands open on the sharp edges. I also drilled about 10 holes along the length to vent it some. After testing it, I'll probably go back and cut some larger vent holes though as I think I directed too much heat and smoke up and out of the grill. I may also cut it shorter. Right now it runs about 2/3 of the length of the grill, I think I'll cut that back to 1/2.

3) While in the dryer aisle at your favorite home store, also pick up a piece of bendy aluminum dryer pipe for about $10 for an 8-foot section. I used 4-inch and crimped the end to fit over the three inch chimney pipe. Then I secured with a 4-inch pipe clamp. That brings the chimey down almost to grill level. Here's the reasoning: Out of the box, smoke and heat move from the source of the fire (firebox) to the highest point as quickly and as easily as possible. So one side of your grilling surface, the right (depending on where your firebox is located), will be significantly hotter than the left side. And you'll have huge temperature issues. Here's my very crude diagram:


In this case, the bulk of the smoke and heat goes right past your meat and out the chimney. 

Well, we don't want that, so we want to force the smoke and heat to meander around a little inside your smoke box (where your meat is artfully arranged) and you want something looking more like this. 


That's the way it's supposed to look. But on my first cook I was getting plenty of smoke, but my topmost temperature seemed stuck under 250 degrees F and my meat was smoking, but wasn't cooking past about 120 - 130 degrees F. It was a cold day, but still. Well my buddy Dave came over and said he saw two problems. First, my fire was too small to get enough heat into the smoke box on a cold, windy day. Secondly, he thought my holes in my baffle plate were too small and I was directing too much heat/smoke across the bottom of the grill and out the chimney, leaving the right side cold. So I over compensated and ended up with something like this: 



Too small a fire, directed too sharply across the bottom and out the chimney. So I think I'm going to work on cutting larger/more holes in the baffle and perhaps cutting it back six inches or so.

Next, time to season....

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