Campground Smoking: The Portable Smoker Debut Part 2 of 2

After the somewhat disappointing debut of the Brinkman on the ribs, I was extremely hesitant about smoking pork shoulder for both of our parents for Alicia's birthday. Pork shoulder is one of those items that takes a long time to smoke, and if not done properly can come out in a manner very opposite of what you have anticipated. Also, my buddy Jacob had recently purchased the Brinkman and told me that his Boston butt had not come out good. Needless to say, I had some reservations about doing this for an occasion of this magnitude.

Campsite Smoker Setup

That said, I decided that since the ribs had not turned out like I intended, I would start the smoker early - about 8:00am, and that I would use the Texas Crutch the entire time. For those of you not familiar, the Texas Crutch is when you wrap your cut in aluminum foil tightly to prevent any loss of moisture. It almost steams the meat with its own juices.

I'll be honest - I'm not a big fan of the Texas Crutch from the beginning because I don't like soppy food, and to be honest, it feels a little bit like cheating. Also, if you use the crutch from the beginning, you lose essentially all of the bark that you get when you smoke without it. Some people don't like bark - particularly those who think big chains have good BBQ. I on the other hand am a big fan, and felt as though using the Texas Crutch was essentially taking the lesser of two evils in this case.

Anyhow, with the smoker going, I gave a small dose of mesquite chips once everything was up to temp. I tightly wrapped the butt and threw it on the smoker. I was a bit nervous, but it was Alicia's birthday, so we spent the day boating around the lake, fishing, and spending time together in the beautiful weather. I came back to check on the meat a couple of times, at four hour intervals. The Brinkman held it's temp surprisingly well.

At about the six hour mark, the coals had begun to die off, and the meat was far from done. This is where the largest shortcoming of the Brinkman is. It has a tiny trap door you see, on the side, under the water pan where the charcoal goes. This is just big enough to be annoying, because you can see the area you'd like to add coals to, but there is hardly anything you can do with it. The other problem is, in order to remove the ash and old coals, you have to take the entire smoker apart; ie - remove the meat, remove the rack, remove the water pan, and then you are stuck reaching 2 feet down into a hot smoker trying to pull out a tray of hot coals - Not your best option!

So, I took a gamble, lit a chimney, and let it get to temp. I then, carefully (read: painstakingly!) removed the coals from the chimney one by one and placed them into the remaining small gaps in the charcoal basket with long tongs. Several times my hands got very hot and I had to take a break because I didn't have mitts since we were camping. I did however manage to get basically all of it in there after about 30 minutes.

While I did lose some cooking time there, the temp had not fallen off completely, and it was back up to operating temperature almost immediately after the charcoal transplant procedure. At this point, people were starting to come over to our campsite and socialize. I told them dinner would be ready around six.

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Despite it's definite downfalls, it came through for me this time!

I was finally able to pull the butt off the smoker at around 6:30. There was no bark. It instantly reminded me of a pot roast. I was mortified. My initial thought was to put the meat directly on the smoker and ramp up the mesquite one last time to try to give it some consistency. The problem was the meat was so tender it was falling apart and that wasn't going to work. Instead, I chose to unwrap the aluminum foil, leave just enough for relocation purposes, and smoked the heck out of it.

After about 20 minutes of this, I pulled the meat off and let it rest for a brief period of time. Once I began to pull the meat, it literally shredded apart like nothing was holding it together. Further, the induction of the final hard smoke outside of the aluminum foil had firmed it up enough and wicked away enough moisture that it no longer felt like a pot roast.

We served the pork with homemade cucumber salad, garden salad, and macaroni and cheese. The pork was served with my Western NC BBQ sauce, normal and spicy versions, and with my Eastern NC BBQ sauce which is what my dad prefers - it is vinegar based.

It was a big success, everyone liked the BBQ, and to be honest, I thought it was awesome. Despite all the anxiety I had over using the Brinkman and under or overcooking or over or under moist were thrown to the wayside when people came back grabbing more BBQ and more sauce. They were amazed that all the sauce we had was homemade because it was so good they said!

The day was a success, and the Brinkman really pulled through. With some painstaking procedure, and a little ingenuity on my part the Brinkman really pulled it out. I'd design a few things differently, things that probably would even raise the cost of production much, but for a cheap smoker it really did great. I was more than surprised that everything came out as well as it did.

Most importantly, Alicia had a wonderful birthday, and our parents first meeting was a great success. They got along really well and I think everyone had a good time. Maybe next time we meet we should do BBQ again, just to make sure everyone stays in a good mood :)

Till next time folks!

Campground Smoking: The Portable Smoker Debut Part 1 of 2

Alicia's birthday was just a few weeks ago, and we decided to take a few days off work and have a nice long camping trip. We had friends come and go while we were out there visiting, but on her big day, both our sets of parents came out to meet each other for the first time! Before you think this is a blog on the knot, and that I have forgotten what universe I am in, I'll let you know now that everything went great at their first meeting, and leave it at that.

Back to what you are here for: the food. Well, prior to this trip, against my better judgment I purchased the Brinkman Smoke N' Grill from Walmart.  For some reason, the price right now is substantially higher than what I paid, which was less than $40. I figured if it was terrible I could at least use it as a raw project and make it the way I wanted by modification. I was primarily concerned with the fact that it had no options for modulating temperature as there was no damper for either air intake nor exhaust. I was a bit worried since I was smoking a small butt for our families and this was to be the only entree for Alicia's birthday meal, and the smoker was completely untested. We devised a plan before we went camping, and I decided to make some ribs the night before I did the butt.

Ribs take substantially less time to cook properly than a Boston butt, and my hope was that I could get at least a good feel for the smoker with our test run. I started with a rack of pork spare ribs, rubbed down in my rub blend, and let the smoker get up to temp. Well, up to temp in whatever sense of the phrase there was, since the only 'thermometer' on this thing is a "Warm-Ideal-Hot" gauge that is almost worthless.

Anyhow, I got the ribs going, and they smoked for about 4 hours. I had no temp gauge on the smoker and forgot my meat thermo, so I had to eyeball it. I applied my Western NC BBQ sauce to the ribs about 30 minutes before I pulled them off.

A couple of observations about the smoker: 1) It is not large enough to fit a single rack of ribs - so I had to cut them in half, a thought I despise. 2) Despite the lack of temperature control through dampers, I honestly think the temperature was roughly where it should be, and it just stuck there. 3) The saving grace of the unit is the water pan, it's the only thing that prevents the incredible heat from the charcoal from scorching your food; which makes 4) the unit useless as a two rack unit. It can be setup with two racks for food, but I don't see how it's possible to use it with two racks and not destroy the food on the bottom rack.

Anyhow - so we ate the food and...

Unfortunately, it felt as though the meat did not thoroughly break down to sufficient levels while on the smoker. It was definitely done, but the ribs felt a bit rubbery, and lacked the normal consistency which I am accustomed to on the home smoker. They tasted okay, they seemed to lack some smoke for the amount of wood chips I had put in, but they were edible, and I learned some useful information for the next day.

Anyway, enjoy the pictures, and please stay tuned for the conclusion of this Two Part Series on The Portable Smoker. You won't want to miss it.