Quote:
Originally Posted by KC Tattoo
I really wish I knew this. I did marinate overnight but some bites are tender but not throughout the steak some of it is tough and that's disappointing but I got great flavors. The smoking is fine and I can use hickory wood chips as well. Just when I use charcoal it doesn't stay hot enough long enough and I have to keep constant heat to cook. I've never used a water smoke grill so some things I'm going have to learn but I'm really liking all the possibilities with it.
|
Look up the minion method.
Dump a half a bag of charcoal (unlit) in your base. Mix a bunch of chunks of wood (not chips; water cannot penetrate deeply enough into hardwood chips to matter so they just burn off and you run into similar creosote problems. Chunks will smolder) in with the unlit charcoal. I'd say 5 fist-sized chunks should be sufficient.
Toss a handful of lit briquettes = maybe 10ish - onto the top of the unlit charcoal and give it about 10 minutes. You'll start to see heavy smoke. DON'T PUT MEAT ON YET. Fire has to get hot enough to burn off the impurities in the smoke. That heavy grey smoke is full of shit you don't want to eat. Once the internals temp on the smoker hits about 250-275, put your meat on. The big, cool piece of meat has enough thermal mass it will drop your internal temp and bring you down to 225 or so.
Now this is all based on a smaller smoker. My big WSM take about 80% of a 20 lb bag to fire and run correctly.
Oh, and never ever EVER close your top vent. Ever. If you have a smoker that doesn't have a top vent like a Brinkman electric or something, drill holes in it. You cannot under any circumstances let that smoke linker in there. Smoke isn't a marinade - it should hit and get gone. Otherwise you're just making a creosote bath for your meat. Finally, don't worry about keeping smoke on the whole time - meat stops taking smoke at 140. Thos shanks probably needed to go to 200 or more to get soft enough to eat. Anything past 140 and you're just flinging impurities at the meat for no benefit.
Go to the virtual bullet website and look around. There appear to be a lot of things you aren't real sure about.