I'll be doing my first smoke in my new PBC this weekend...it's actually my first smoke ever. I've been around for smoking with some friends and my fiance's father, but this one is all me. I'm doing a few chickens following Meathead's Sweet Georgia Brown recipe and since we love our skin crispy, I will be taking the skin off of at least one bird to make some cracklins. I'm planning on leaving the skin on one bird to test it out.
I've been reading A LOT on here the last week and feel pretty good heading into it and can't wait to get my first cook under my belt.
Ya got a thermometer? you really need to get the temp above 300 to cook chickens I prefer 325 plus. after you preheat the PBC put the lid on and maybe wait another 5 or 10 minutes before you hang the chickens that will make sure to give you a good start up to temp because those birds bring a lot of moisture to the game
My toys:
Weber Summit Charcoal Grilling Center (WSCGC) aka Mr. Fancypants
Pit Barrel Cooker (which rocks), named Pretty Baby
Weber Summit S650 Gas Grill, named Hot 'n Fast (used mostly for searing and griddling)
Weber Kettle Premium 22" named Kettle Kid, eager to horn in with more cooks in the future
Camp Chef Somerset IV 4-burner outdoor gas range named AfterBurner due to its 30kBTU burners
Adrenaline BBQ Company Gear:
SnS Low Profile, DnG, and Large Charcoal Basket, for WSCGC
SnS Deluxe for 22" Kettle
Elevated SS Rack for WSCGC
SS Rack for DnG
Cast Iron Griddle
Grill Grate for SnS
Grill Grates: five 17.375 sections (retired to storage)
Grill Grates: six 19.25 panels for exact fit for Summit S650
gasser
Grill Grates for 22" Kettle
2 Grill Grate Griddles
Steelmade Griddle for Summit gas grill
Fireboard Gear:
Extreme BBQ Thermometer Package
Additional control unit
Additional probes: Competition Probes 1" (3) and 4" (1), 3 additional Ambient Probes. 1 additional Food Probe
2 Driver Cables
Pit Viper Fan (to pair with Fireboard Fan Driver Cable)
Pit Viper Fan new design (to pair with Fireboard Fan Driver Cable)
Thermoworks Gear:
Thermapen MK4 (pink)
Thermapen Classic (pink too)
Thermoworks MK4 orange
Temp Test 2 Smart Thermometer
Extra Big and Loud Timer
Timestick Trio
Maverick ET 73 a little workhorse with limited range
Maverick ET 733
Maverick (Ivation) ET 732
Grill Pinz
Vortex (two of them)
18" drip pan for WSCGC
Ceramic Spacers for WSCGC in Kamado Mode: 2 sets each 1/2", 1", 2". The 2" spacers work best with the 18" drip pan. The 1+1/2 inch spacers work best with the 14 inch cake pan.
Two Joule Sous Vide devices
3 Lipavi Sous Vide Tubs with Lids: 12, 18 and 26 quarts
Avid Armor Ultra Pro V32 Chamber Sealer
Instant Pot 6 Quart Electric Pressure Cooker
Instant Pot 10 Quart Electric Pressure Cooker
Charcoal Companion TurboQue
A-Maze-N tube 12 inch tube smoker accessory for use with pellets
BBQ Dragon and Dragon Chimney
Shun Classic Series:
8" Chef Knife
6" Chef's Knife
Gokujo Boning and Fillet Knife
3 1/2 inch Paring Knife
The night the PBC arrived we were having some chicken thighs...I got excited and tossed some of the All Purpose on a few of the them and really liked it. I'm sure doing it in the PBC will make it even better.
I dry brine my chickens for 24-48 hours with PB's AP rub, putting it both under and on top of the skin. Then the birds sit uncovered in the fridge until showtime. Do a (just a bit of) cooking oil rubdown right before adding the bird to the PBC. Yum.
Kathryn
Fzxdoc's statement about dry brining is spot on. Almost nothing helps the taste of a bird more than getting a little sodium down deep in those muscles.
First of all JTK, welcome to the addicting world of cooking dead animals with fire and smoke and watching friends and family fall in love with you all over again. Your PBC was a wise choice. Don't get too anxious, things will turn out good the first time, and better and better every time.
Sustaining 325 will mean cracking the lid. However, I usually let the cooker and chickens settle into a steady temp before cracking the lid. If you lite your PBC correctly, let the pre burn go for the prescribed time (don't wait too long with the lid off, it doesn't help), and then get the birds on, eventually the temps will fall down and settle in the upper 200's. If you crack the lid too soon, you might have kind of runaway temps.
Maybe someone else thinks otherwise.
Best of luck. Take pics.
The first smoke was great! It seemed like a bumpy road during the cook but the final result was awesome. I started out with the mindset of keeping the temp up around your recommendations of 300-325...once I started the cook I had a vision in my head of all the times I've seen people say to try it the way Noah recommends and then tweak the process down the road...so I figured I would just close the lid and let them go for 2 hours. With 3 split chickens hanging, the temp on the cooker steadily dropped down to 200 at which point I panicked and cracked the lid to bring it back up. I felt like I was taking crazy pills...I kept bouncing between Noah's "put it in and let it go" method and Jerod and Doc's recommendation of "300-325". The graph on in the iGrill2 cooker temp is a stream of up and down spikes. However, the meat was a steady climb up to 165. After all my messing around and temp lows and highs...the chicken was awesome.
I also bought 4 pounds of pork belly and started curing it to smoke this weekend...I'm hooked.
Well done sir! I bet it was awesome. What a good feeling.
Now, you need to find out what it was you did that your PBC temps would fall to 200. First, where did you hang the probe? What lighting method did you use (full basket vs half basket, starter fluid vs chimney, number of coals, amount of fluid, time to burn without lid, etc)?
Good luck with the weekend cook.
My toys:
Weber Summit Charcoal Grilling Center (WSCGC) aka Mr. Fancypants
Pit Barrel Cooker (which rocks), named Pretty Baby
Weber Summit S650 Gas Grill, named Hot 'n Fast (used mostly for searing and griddling)
Weber Kettle Premium 22" named Kettle Kid, eager to horn in with more cooks in the future
Camp Chef Somerset IV 4-burner outdoor gas range named AfterBurner due to its 30kBTU burners
Adrenaline BBQ Company Gear:
SnS Low Profile, DnG, and Large Charcoal Basket, for WSCGC
SnS Deluxe for 22" Kettle
Elevated SS Rack for WSCGC
SS Rack for DnG
Cast Iron Griddle
Grill Grate for SnS
Grill Grates: five 17.375 sections (retired to storage)
Grill Grates: six 19.25 panels for exact fit for Summit S650
gasser
Grill Grates for 22" Kettle
2 Grill Grate Griddles
Steelmade Griddle for Summit gas grill
Fireboard Gear:
Extreme BBQ Thermometer Package
Additional control unit
Additional probes: Competition Probes 1" (3) and 4" (1), 3 additional Ambient Probes. 1 additional Food Probe
2 Driver Cables
Pit Viper Fan (to pair with Fireboard Fan Driver Cable)
Pit Viper Fan new design (to pair with Fireboard Fan Driver Cable)
Thermoworks Gear:
Thermapen MK4 (pink)
Thermapen Classic (pink too)
Thermoworks MK4 orange
Temp Test 2 Smart Thermometer
Extra Big and Loud Timer
Timestick Trio
Maverick ET 73 a little workhorse with limited range
Maverick ET 733
Maverick (Ivation) ET 732
Grill Pinz
Vortex (two of them)
18" drip pan for WSCGC
Ceramic Spacers for WSCGC in Kamado Mode: 2 sets each 1/2", 1", 2". The 2" spacers work best with the 18" drip pan. The 1+1/2 inch spacers work best with the 14 inch cake pan.
Two Joule Sous Vide devices
3 Lipavi Sous Vide Tubs with Lids: 12, 18 and 26 quarts
Avid Armor Ultra Pro V32 Chamber Sealer
Instant Pot 6 Quart Electric Pressure Cooker
Instant Pot 10 Quart Electric Pressure Cooker
Charcoal Companion TurboQue
A-Maze-N tube 12 inch tube smoker accessory for use with pellets
BBQ Dragon and Dragon Chimney
Shun Classic Series:
8" Chef Knife
6" Chef's Knife
Gokujo Boning and Fillet Knife
3 1/2 inch Paring Knife
Congrats on a delicious-looking first cook, JTK. I did the same thing you did for my first one, following Noah's method all the way. It took about 2.5 hours to get those birds cooked at an ave PBC temp around 220.
Then I began researching better lighting techniques and temperature maintenance tricks which have been discussed here. I think that the PBC is so forgiving that you can follow Noah's recommendations exactly for a long slow cook or tweak them to suit you (and use higher temps especially for poultry) and you'll still get a good meal out of it.
My learning curve took about 4 chicken cooks to get chickens just the way we like them with the time/temp profiles that I think work best. It was delicious learning curve no matter what!
The key, as Voodoo says, is to get a good light in the first place, though. Noah makes it look easy but it doesn't always happen that way. Sometimes I wish Noah would talk about the smoker temps he gets with the cooks on his videos, but that complicates his simple "set and forget" approach, I guess.
Thanks Kathryn, I did read your lighting techniques page a few times before I did it and it sounds like I'll have to go back and study it a few more times. I followed Noah's directions for lighting a full basket, I didn't use a chimney, and then put the lid on and let it go another 10 minutes on Jerod's recommendation. I have to find which method will work best for me but that sounds like half the fun...smoking more meat.
Comment