I took a run at smoked mac 'n cheese over the weekend, which is pretty much the first time I've intentionally went over 225 degrees. Pretty sure a large portion of the smoke was due to burning off accumulated grease in the bottom of the smoker. The drip pan has about a tablespoon of grease so far, after 6-8 fairly full smokes, so I'm going to say that isn't exactly working according to plan.
I assume pulling out the water pan and cast iron skillet I'm using in place of the chip pan and firing it up to a fairly high temp for half an hour or so to burn out the grease won't cause any problems down the road? I'd definitely prefer my future mac 'n cheese to be wood smoked, not grease fire smoked. Wasn't a terrible batch, but I'm pretty sure it was a complete wasted of hickory chips.
I also need to adjust my carriage bolt legs on the skillet - after adding lock washers I didn't have handy when I started this project, it's too close to the flame and I'm pretty sure is contributing to the smoker going out frequently due to suffocating the flame. This weekend was way too much exercise running up and down the stairs as the smoker was alternating between blast furnace and extinguished...
I assume pulling out the water pan and cast iron skillet I'm using in place of the chip pan and firing it up to a fairly high temp for half an hour or so to burn out the grease won't cause any problems down the road? I'd definitely prefer my future mac 'n cheese to be wood smoked, not grease fire smoked. Wasn't a terrible batch, but I'm pretty sure it was a complete wasted of hickory chips.
I also need to adjust my carriage bolt legs on the skillet - after adding lock washers I didn't have handy when I started this project, it's too close to the flame and I'm pretty sure is contributing to the smoker going out frequently due to suffocating the flame. This weekend was way too much exercise running up and down the stairs as the smoker was alternating between blast furnace and extinguished...
