Been on the fence since winter on which smoker to get, and went with the 4 rack digital BTDS76P. Needless to say, I am looking forward to it, and it'll be here tomorrow! Woo hoo! Now, what to make first? Thinking some brisket for me, and a turkey breast for Zelda. We'll see! Cheers!
W E L C O M E to the Forum njfoodies!
Enjoy your new smoker.
Welcome to the fourm
Lots of great information and people here
Mike
Welcome njfoodies
also from NJ you will love the smoke I have the 6 rack. Looks like you fell on the right side of the fence.The site is the best. ::)
Thanks everyone! Truly looking forward to it, and it will be a great addition to the backyard. Now, just need to figure out what to make on it first! If I need to season it. Do I add the PID? Etc, etc. Lots to read on this forum, so I look forward to taking advantage of it.
Once I figure out what we'll make first, need to figure out what kind of vino to pair with it! ;-)
Congrats njfoodies. Welcome to the fun! A great place to hang out. You have only begun your journey down the road of smoking nirvana. There may be bumps along the road, but if you get down on your knees and look at those bumps closely, you'll notice that those bumps are nothing but the bark forming on your smoking experience! Cherish them. Remember there are no mistakes in smoking just opportunities to experiment! and maybe to buy more toyools!
Brisket is not hard, just a long first smoke. Might try chicken or babybacks or a chucky for a shorter first smoke.
Welcome to the forum njfoodies
Again to all your invited to the NEPA Smokeout on June 26, starting at 10 am or whenever you get here ;D The more the merrier. Pool is warm and hot tub going ;D food, drink (adult) and soda.
North
East
Pennsylvania
Welcome aboard nifoodies,
Good luck on your first smoke!
Welcome njfoodies. I too would suggest something a little less difficult on your first smoking attempt. Pork butts are a long smoke but very forgiving. Chicken might be a good first choice too. Just remember to keep that vent good and open so the moisture given off by the meat will get out of the tower. If it gets trapped in there two things are likely to happen. It will condensate and rain black icky stuff on your food. Zelda will not be impressed! With moisture trapped in the tower, it will also knock the heat down so keep that vent open!
BTW, you will definitely need to season it before smoking something to eat. The seasoning instructions are very easy and included in the owner's manual.
Welcome NJfoodies to the Forum and to the smoking fun. You are already getting good info from the folks here.
Welcome and glad to have you with Us.
You might want to check out our FAQ's
http://www.susanminor.org/forums/showthread.php?p=748#post748
recipe site:
http://www.susanminor.org/forums/
Try this link to get your pictures going.
http://www.susanminor.org/forums/showpost.php?p=768&postcount=11
P.S. Nice website!
Welcome to the forum njfoodies, you'll get plenty of good smokes out of that new toy!
Welcome NJ - butt is pretty easy as are ribs. Being in Texas, I of course suggest brisket!
Thanks again for the warm welcome! Really looking forward to the arrival of this, and really interested in finding a good chicken or turkey recipe for our first smoked meal with the new toy! I'll keep looking through the forum until I find something awesome, and I can't wait!
Try this http://www.susanminor.org/forums/showthread.php?35-Smoked-Chicken-From-mws&p=46#post46
Well, tomorrow I think I will season it as directed when it arrives, but doubt we'll have time to smoke anything after that...unless of course we want to eat dinner at 3AM, but you never know.
Thinking some kind of chicken on Thursday, so we'll see! Will definitely consider the link that FLBentRider posted, but not sure we'll have enough time to do a whole chicken.
This is definitely going to be a great learning experience that I am looking forward to!
Can't wait for brisket and pulled pork though! Cheers!
Welcome to the forum njfoodies!
Welcome, you're gonna love it here. When I got my smoker, I couldn't wait to use it. By the time I set it up and seasoned, it was getting to late to make anything that requires a huge amount of time. After a look in the pantry, I found a tub of cashews and thought to myself, why not. Within an hour, I was able to taste real homemade smoked flavor. Pretty soon, you'll be tossing everything into the box. And I mean everything!!!
Good luck
Cashews! I like it! What a great idea! I just may have to do that after my seasoning round tonight just so I can try it out! Great idea, so thanks for the tip!
Yep, nuts are a quick smoke. Maybe try some MOINKS (bacon wrapped partially frozen meatball) to practice with.
Those are quick 2 hour cooks..
Welcome guys! You'll love it, As a newcomer I can tell you if you listen to the seasoned veterans here (not me) you'll get expert advice and guidance. Follow their counsel and you will do very well and be a happy smoker.
Oh, and nice blog!
Hi njfoodies and welcome to the forum. I've done the nuts before - a little smoke, salt and cayenne. You might want to throw some peanuts in too as long as you're smoking.
Cashews and peanuts are both on my list. Hopefully the commissary here has something good, but I am guessing I am stuck with canned nuts. HMMM. Wish I had time to make a Whole Foods run after work for some good, bulk, raw nuts.
Thanks again to everyone for the warm welcome, and I am looking forward to years of fun with the Bradley! I have a feeling we are going to be a lot of smoking in the future, and I can't wait.
The forum has been a huge help so far, and I look forward to trying to make some jerky as well. So many interesting threads, and so many choices. UGH! Cheers!
As I was afraid of, now raw nuts at all on base at the commissary, and I really don't want to have to battle Route 1 traffic in Princeton today to get to Whole Foods or Wegman's. Bummer! Guess I will have to see what else we can smoke.
We did however get some good cabbatge and lettuce yesterday from our CSA. Hmmm....LOL! -mJ
Costco! Kirkland brand cashews. There about 14$ for 2.5 lbs here in Canada. After talking about it, I decided to throw some on last night. These are done with hickory and Memphis Blues style rub. The Rub turned out to have a bit to much of an onion flavor but there still pretty good.
(http://i977.photobucket.com/albums/ae259/stickydan/photocashews.jpg)
Those look tasty! Now did you use any heat at all, or just smoke?
I'm still experimenting with that. I've used heat and cold smoked also. The cold smoke isn't bad however I find the heat gives a little more crunch. I've actually burnt some in the past so I'm still trying to figure out the magic number. Last night I used about 210 deg for an hour. Makes me think that I really should start keeping a log.
Well, the way I see it, I am starting with Planters, so I am at a disadvantage anyway. Figure I can do my break in while we go to the Farmer's Market today, and was figuring about 2 hours at 200 or so as my first experiement. It'll really be hard to judge as these nuts are canned, but I really want to smoke something tonight. LOL! Thinking a little sea salt, pepper, and some cayane. Or maybe I will do some dried garlic from my garlic grinder thingy. Or who knows, maybe I will go the hot sauce route. I keep changing my mind. LOL! Regardless, I am smoking some nuts tonight!
Welcome NJfoodies!
Nuts are a good smoke. Pistachios are really good - -here are some that will be making an appearance at the NEPA smokeout on Saturday http://forum.bradleysmoker.com/index.php?topic=12800.msg199684#msg199684
These almonds are good too http://forum.bradleysmoker.com/index.php?topic=10050.0
If you are free Saturday you should come to the Nepas smokeout, pm Nepas (if you haven't already)
Deb
Wish we could make the NEPA smokeout, but unfortunately, this weekend is my "one weekend a month" with the Air Force. Thanks for the invite.
Unfortunately, there was no "break in smoke" tonight as FedEx didn't deliver my smoker as promised. Stink! Hopefully it will get here tomorrow as it appears as though it never left Indianapolis this morning after arriving there from TX. We'll see!
Cut and pasted from our blog at: http://jerseyfoodies.blogspot.com/ See the blog for pics as I'm not sure how to upload them here.
Well, after much thought on buying a smoker for the last year or two, I finally broke down and ordered my smoker, and today it arrived! A day late, but worth the wait, and at least it is here!
I have read extensively about smokers, and everyone swears by one method or another. Some swear that you only need to cook with the heat of the wood, while others swear by their charcoal smokers. Yet others say that the best way to smoke is with a propane or electric smoker. So in doing my research, I found a million and one opinions, but you know what they say about opinions. "Everyone has one!"
I wanted something that wasn't going to take up a ton of space, and something that didn't involve me messing around with vents and dampers, adding wood or coals, etc. I didn't want to be stuck at home all day gazing boringly at smoke coming out of a vent, so I went the electric route. Sure, a lot will say that this isn't smoking, and I will never get that true smoke flavor from an electric smoker. Maybe they are right, but I took my chance.
With that said, I ordered the Bradley 4 Rack Digital Smoker Product Code BTDS76P as I mentioned in a post a couple of days ago. You can read more about the specs and what not in that post below if you chose.
So when I got home from work tonight, I read through the manual and decided to "season" my smoker tonight. I mean really, what guy doesn't want to play with a new toy? So after finding the box that FedEx left behind my gate, I took it into the backyard and started to unpack it.
Let me say that the smoker is packaged very nicely in the box, and everything is packed securely with cardboard, styrofoam, and plastic. Packing was easy to discard, and everything that was supposed to be included with the unit was there.
The smoker was very easy to put together. The smoke unit/bisquette injector/computer just slides into place, first inserting the bisquette track into the side of the smoker, then sliding the control box onto the two screws on the side. After this, I unwrapped the metal water bowl, drip pan, drip pan catcher, and the racks, and washed them as directed. I also wiped down the inside of the smoker to make sure it was clean, and we were ready to break this bad boy in.
Per the directions, it said to run the heating element at 150 degrees with smoke for one hour. This would take 3 bisquettes, but I decided to double that and shoot for two hours. I would assume that a longer break in can't hurt, and this was actually recommended by fellow Wine Berserker John Gardner, so that is the route I took.
The directions for the seasoning smoke were easy enough, and with the click of a few buttons, we were starting to season the Bradley. For seasoning, I went with the Special Blend bisquettes as I have a rather large box of them, but there are many options that I could have gone with. The bisquettes come in the following flavors: Alder, Apple, Cherry, Hickory, Maple, Mesquite, Oak, Pecan, Special Blend, and a Jim Beam varietal that is made from old Jim Beam whiskey casks.
As a test measure, I inserted both probes of my Maverick ET-7 temperature gauge, one on the top, and one on the bottom, just to see how accurate the temperature setting was on the Bradley. Needless to say, once the smoker got to the 150 degrees that I set it at, the probe on the top was reading 163, and 159 on the bottom probe. This was a lot closer than I had expected, and I was pleasantly pleased. I am sure the variation and temperature swings will be a lot different when I start loading this up with meat and poultry to smoke, but that will be in another post.
I will say that 2 hours is a long time to wait, and I spent a lot of that time out in the yard smelling the smoke, looking at the oven, and watching the bisquettes being injected onto the smoke burner every 20 minutes. What a great feature.
In the meantime, I couldn't let the night pass without smoking something! Unfortunately, I didn't want to be up until 6AM to smoking a brisket, so I opted to try to hot smoke some peanuts and cashews once the break in smoke completed, so I got these ready to go.
For the cashews, I wanted to try something out of the ordinary, so I put them into a stainless steel mixing bowl, added a bit of olive oil, a few drops of truffle oil, and then pulled out my spice grinders. First I added some dried garlic and sea salt, and I then added some dried garlic and peppercorn. I am very excited to see how these turn out! For the peanuts, I pulled some hot sauce from the fridge, added some salt, pepper, and cayenne pepper, and mixed those up as well. See the picture at right.
Meanwhile, Zelda and I enjoyed our stuffed breads from the Bordentown City Farmers market last night, and waited for the two hours to pass. By the time we had finished dinner, we were ready to go, so in went the nuts. Unfortunately, I haven't found a screen or anything to put on the racks yet for smaller item to keep them from falling through, but this is something that I need to do as this will help the smaller item absorb more smoke. In the meantime however, aluminum foil will have to do, and I poked several small holes in the bottom for the smoke to penetrate.
Being a complete newbie, I have no idea how long to smoke these for, so I went with 2 hours at 200 degrees with full smoke. We'll know in an hour or so how they come out. I have the vent open about 1/2 way to help trap some of the smoke, and to keep the smoker hot inside to help dry out the nuts. I will report back shortly, but much more to come!
Nice post.
2 hours sounds about right.
The nuts may be a little soft from the heat, but they will firm up when they cool.
Hopefully the two hours works! We'll see! On the last bisquette now, so much more to come after the cool. They are definitely a bit chewy and mushy right now!
Try this link to get your pictures going.
http://www.susanminor.org/forums/showpost.php?p=768&postcount=11
Thaks for the link classicrockgriller. I will be sure to check it out this weekend!
Quote from: njfoodies on June 25, 2010, 05:37:26 AM
Thaks for the link classicrockgriller. I will be sure to check it out this weekend!
You can just upload your pics to your blog, and link to them from here.
Just wrap the 'img' tags around them.
(and use the 's800' size)
[img]http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_QbB0wS30L5s/TCPrPLjyUOI/AAAAAAAABv4/mKYCXGnis_c/s800/IMG_5106.JPG[/img](http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_QbB0wS30L5s/TCPmBaWrqmI/AAAAAAAABvo/N0ia9B_pz5E/s800/IMG_5103.JPG)
(http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_QbB0wS30L5s/TCPrPLjyUOI/AAAAAAAABv4/mKYCXGnis_c/s800/IMG_5106.JPG)
I would use cheesecloth instead of the foil.
Sounds like your on the right track. Curious to know how it turned out. FYI, I find the smoke flavor on cashews gets better with time. Usually good the first day, better the second and even better after 3 or 4 days - if they last that long.
Squirt you had me worried there. I saw those pics under your name and said to myself - I thought he was a regular smoker, that smoker is way too clean. Then I realized you posted their pics. ;D
Quote from: KevinG on June 25, 2010, 07:12:56 AM
Squirt you had me worried there. I saw those pics under your name and said to myself - I thought he was a regular smoker, that smoker is way too clean. Then I realized you posted their pics. ;D
Yeah, my OBS hasn't looked that shiny clean since last Summer!
Great info on how to post the pics! Thanks a million! Unfortunately, our blog is blocked here on our work server, but at least I can do it from home!
The cashews and peanuts were wonderful. I enjoyed the cashews more than the peanuts, and they had great smoked flavor. Unfortunately, they didn't last very long, and I only got to taste them with as much as 24 hours of smoke on them. LOL! Needless to say, I picked up another 5 pounds today and will try to smoke those soon. Will try a different flavors bisquette this time, and maybe bump the smoke up to 3 hours. We'll see.
Also picked up a corned beef brisket and a regular brisket today to smoke, so we'll see when I can get around to those. Thanks to all for all of the great info! Cheers!