My name is Ben Fort. I live in the southeastern area of Minnesota near Rochester.
My dad and I actually started smoking sausage, hot dogs, and bologna when I was very young. I have over the years enjoyed learning what he has learned. Now as I am getting older we run ideas back and forth as well as offer different ideas; new ideas on tried and true recipes usually fall a def ears though ;-). All of the smoking my Dad and I have done thus far has been cold smoking and then hot bathing to bring the core temps up. This is true for all the meat we did/ do. For years we used (he still uses) his home made 4'X3'X8' concrete smoke house. It was set up with the the stove on the out side and piped in the smoke. This design worked well, but it would not hold heat at all. Even in the summer I could not get the house over 190 for any length of time. This bothered me because I wanted to try hot smoking; as well as try different types of meats and recipes.
About a year ago I started a new smoke house of my own design. I ended up using a 300 Gal Sunset Stainless Steel Bulk tank as the main house. With the design I made I gained the ability of cold and hot smoking. Learning to cold smoke in the house I built is tricky since it holds heat so well. Since I have built the new house I have tried a couple of things. First out of ​the new smoke house was a pork butt. It turned out OK, but nothing to wright home about.
A friend of mine that had been offering up advice about hot smoking turned me onto this web site. After A LOT of reading I fired it up again. I put in another butt with 3 racks of ribs. I wasn't brave enough to try and make a rub, but the one I did go with... Well, my wife kids and I are absolutely in love with ribs. Since then we have been using the Memphis Dust- Last supper rub on this web site. Cant say enough good things about this site.
Here are a couple of pics of the smoke house I built...before its first run.
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