Praise for the Weber Smokey Mountain smoker

[dgaddis]

If you're considering getting into smoking, looking around at all the options can be daunting. You can spend a BOAT LOAD of money on a smoker. But you don't have to. I present the case for the humble but highly effective Smokey Mountain cooker from Weber.

They offer three sizes, 14", 18", and 22" - the size being the diameter of the cooking racks. Each has two cooking racks FYI.

I've got the 18" model. It's well made, ceramic coated steel just like their iconic kettle grills. I've made a few mods, added a hinge to the lid so it stays attached, made a larger charcoal ring so I can put more fuel in it. It goes for $300 before the mods - WAY cheaper than a ceramic komodo (that has a lot less capacity) or a good offset smoker or a pellet cooker.

This weekend I fed over 60 people with my WSM! The local MTB club hosted a gravel race and I cooked the post-race food.

I fired it up Friday night at 10:30pm, loaded it with lump charcoal and chunks of cherry wood. Instead of using the water bowl I put a pizza pan in it's place - the water bowl is deep and doesn't fit with my larger charcoal ring. And, if you know how to set the vents right you don't need the water bowl to keep the temp down, and you're not wasting energy boiling water, so you get a lot longer burn time.

I set the vents to dial in the temp around 225*F - top vent about half open, one bottom vent 1/4 open, the other two bottom vents closed. Put the meat (30lbs of pork butts) on at 11:30pm, and the smoker was at 200*F and the temp was still climbing slowly, but from my experience I was pretty confident it would settle where I wanted it. So I went home.

The smoker was left unattended at a park overnight - 7hrs without anyone touching it, and no idea what it was doing. Thankfully, no one stole it!

6:30am I roll into the park, slightly nervous. I've never just walked away from it before without knowing what's it's doing haha. She was sitting at 230*F - PERFECT. For the next six hours the I didn't touch the vents at all, and the temp slowly yo-yo'd between 220-240*F. Then I opened up the vents to crank the temp up to 350*F to finish off the butts (riders were starting to finish and I didn't want a hangry mob on my hands!). After pulling some of the butts off I put a few chicken halves on.

Around 3pm we were done cooking, and it was still chugging along at 350*F. I took it apart and dumped the remaining coals so it could cool off and we could pack it up to take it home.

In summary, on a single load of charcoal (with my DIY extra tall charcoal ring) it ran for 13hrs at 220-240, then another 2.5hrs at 350*F - and there was still a few hours of fuel left! And the lump charcoal produced a shockingly tiny amount of ash.

Didn't get any pics of the food, too busy running timing and pulling pork. But it was DAMN GOOD! Organic hormone/antibiotic free butts donated by Rocking Chair Ranch. Got a ton of compliments and lots of 'best BBQ I've ever had' comments. All I did was put Butt Rub on it and let the time, temp, and smoke do it's magic.

Right after firing it up and dialing in the temp.


Next morning. Puffing along.


Ms Luca - not my pup, but shes a sweetie.


Beautiful day for a bike race.


My DIY charcoal ring on the left vs the stock piece on the right.

[bking]

They are good units. I started out with the 22 several years ago then gave it to a son in law after building my first stick burner. How many lbs of raw pork did you cook for 60 people?

[dgaddis]

They are good units. I started out with the 22 several years ago then gave it to a son in law after building my first stick burner. How many lbs of raw pork did you cook for 60 people?

We had 30lbs of pork butts, 4 butts in total. We didn't pull the last one till the very end of the day, and 3/4 of it was split up and taken home by a few folks. I also cooked 3 chicken halves.