Santa was listening to me this year AND I guess I was good, because he gave me my very own Bradley Smoker. :) I'm off to smoke out the neighbors!
And what did I do on New Years Eve? Well, my brother brought over a freshly caught Northern Pike and we set to filleting it with the help of a few back-woods YouTube videos. It went surprisingly well (what would we do without YouTube) and all the bones were successfully removed. Then the pike went into the brine for an overnight spa treatment.
The next morning my brother and I moved onto the smoker assembly. Really there wasn't much to it, take it out of the package, attach the smoker box to the tower and plug in the cords. So we did that and were rewarded with an E1 error message and a seriously annoying beep. Fabio! So we looked through the forums and followed all the recommended fixes but to no avail. Armed with the receipt we went back to the store and returned it for a brand spanking new one.
Take two. We went through all the same steps and breathed a sigh of relief when we didn't get the E1 error message. But our celebration came to an abrupt halt when we noticed that the door seal seemed flawed. Frig! We figured that maybe it would improve once the rubber had a chance to warm up, so we took it outside and began the seasoning process.
There were a few more bumps that we had to go through but eventually we did put the seasoning behind us and we could move onto the pike. It had been air drying under a fan for a couple of hours and it was ready. So in it went. My brother went home and I was happy as a clam that everything was working. Then I when I checked on it the temp wasn't climbing?! It was staying at about 80. What?! I bundled up and went outside to discover that the door was open about an inch. And it wouldn't stay closed. Friggin' frig. Okay fine. I could deal with this - duct tape. It worked like magic and although it took until midnight, the fish turned out great.
Next time I'll change the brine 'cause it came out too salty for me, but the smoke was perfect and the texture was moist and not chewy.
Given my success from last night, this morning I moved onto spare ribs and a chicken that I rubbed and refrigerated overnight. I smoked the ribs at 200-225 for 3 hours with 1 hour of heat and then I removed them, wrapped them in foil with a slathering of bbq sauce and put them in the oven at 250 for another 4 hours. The chicken also hit the smoke and then finished in the oven. The picture from above is the pulled chicken and a bit of bbq sauce.
I didn't stop there though. Right after the ribs and chicken I took advantage of the cold weather and cold smoked some white and medium cheddar cheese. Whew what a day. Anyone want dinner?
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