I tried out the block this weekend. We had guests coming over for the game Saturday, so I decided to do some wings and also a lemon pepper pork loin. For the wings I tried Cosmo's wing dust for the first time. You don't do any pre-cook seasoning and just shake the dust on the wings when the come off the smoker.
The pork loin came out fantastic and both the boneless and bone in wings were very good too. I still prefer my traditional wings with buffalo sauce, but many of my guests really liked the dust. Since the breast meat was skinless and boneless, I did dry brine them to try and keep some moisture in. I did not dry brine the bone in wings.
I followed the pork loin recipe of Malcom Reed ( http://howtobbqright.com/2017/05/15/...per-pork-loin/ ) except I didn't make his mayo and didn't use pesto. I made up some jalapeño mayo and some sriracha mayo. The jalapeño mayo was probably the biggest hit of all of it. Guests seemed to love it on the pork sammies.
I was worried about the blue tooth signal reaching the block due to the heavy steel of my Yoder, but our dinning room table is about 4 feet away, so it wasn't an issue. I didn't try to move the block and see distance it would actually reach, but my biggest fear was releived with this cook.
The fist thing I noticed during the cook was how far off the ambient temperature was compared to what I had my Yoder set at. The Meater was registering around 160, the Yoder was registering around 275. I believe the problem is how I positioned the probe. I was definitely in the cool zone area around the HOM and the meat was also setting in a pan which sheilded the probe from the heat source. I positioned it the way I did due to the fact that the probe has to be inserted to a specific depth to avoid damaging the probe. If I wanted to get as close to center mass as possible, that's how it needed to be set up. The wings on the bottom shelf also impacted upper shelf temp. The wings were done in about 1 1/2 hours, and the pork loin took 2 1/2. When I removed the wings, the upper shelf temp rose immediately.
More experimenting to come in the future, but so far I have no complaints with my block.