Progress in the world of smoking…
These last few years, I've been trying out a Kamado Joe smoker.
It's been challenging.
There are a number of things that make them completely different to a normal barbecue. I previously had a simple Weber barbecue. It worked fine for hot and fast cooking and after a bit of burn-down and ash-over, you could easily do a few low & slow things as long as you kept your expectations within an hour or two. There was no thermal insulation to speak of, except for a dome of steel with an adjustable outlet.
A smoker of the sort similar to a Kamado Joe (there are plenty of them…) is a different animal all together.
The first thing to know is this: refractory bricks stay hot for up to 24 hours.
The insides of these types of smokers are modelled similarly to the best pizza ovens and metal refineries. Heat dissipates, and that's bad, if you need to make something hot. It means you need to keep supplying fuel to keep things hot.
That's where refractory bricks come in: they reflect heat back from where they came from.
The outside of a Kamado Joe needs to be running for quite some time before it even gets slightly hot, because of these bricks.
This presents 2 problems:
- If I want something to cook low and slow for a long time, I need lots of fuel.
- If I ignite a lot of fuel, everything will get very hot and generally have a texture like leather.
So what's the solution?
I found 2 helpful procedures that, after experimenting with them, I can verify they do help make things a lot easier:
The “minion method”. This entails making a semi-circular chain of charcoal with smoking chunks positioned above each section, such that when lit at one end, it slowly burns through the entire chain, a bit like a very slow fuse.
A tray of water. This is so obvious in retrospect! Ideally, the internal temperature should be in the 120-150°C range. Water will have a beneficial feedback effect: too hot and the steam will suppress the burning, too low and it won't do much except act as thermal inertia.
A combination of the 2 above hints, allowing the first burn to properly ash over, and not moving the air inlets/outlets too chaotically has led to much more predictable outcomes.
Today's bounty was:
- Totally bodaciously tender pork shoulder with brown sugar, mustard and left-over Nong-Shim Ramyun spicy instant noodle powder rub.
- Tender-as roast chicken from the last 2 hours of the above pork cook, prepped with lemon zest, smoked paprika and oregano rub with olive oil and smoked salt.
- Purple Japanese sweet potatoes wrapped in foil with olive oil, pepper and salt.
- Smoked long, sweet peppers
- Baked and smoked aubergine.
One of the things that made all of the above much, much easier was having a decent temperature probe. I have a Meater probe, and it's worth every cent.