Wintertime cooking

[radiodome21]

My Grilla Silverback has never had an issue in the cold. I did some cowboy Ribeyes last night and no issue. I did a pork butt a few weeks ago and it was awesome. I use my pellet smoker more than my kettle and WSM in the winter because it’s so convenient. It’s also a Bears fan too which helps and knows how to pull through late in the cook.

[glitchy]

Most years I actually smoke more food in the winter than the summer. Like others, wind is usually more of a concern than cold. Generally as long as it’s at least 10° I’m OK, but have cooked outside a couple below for holidays. One of those subzero cooks was on the WSCG, but it’s usually the MAK so I don’t have to stay outside for long.

[Spinaker]

So it did come up to temp, but it took almost 1.5 hours to come back up to 275 F. That is not great. I did not even have it loaded down that much. I only had about 10 lbs of pork belly in the smoker. It has the capacity to cook way more than that.

[Andrrr]

I am far from an expert but that long of a recovery has not been my experience.

[Skip]

I'm only 2 hours south of you Spinaker and I've used 3 different Pellet Grills in more than 20 years. I started with a Traeger around 2004 that was still made in Oregon, in 2010 I got a Memphis Pro, and in 2000 I moved on to a MAK 2 Star. All 3 worked well and the temp recovered pretty well in colder weather as long as it was out of the wind. I wonder about the controller? I'd be inclined to try a different grill and/or controller.

[Spinaker]

yeah, I am not sure what issue is. It is almost like the fan is blowing too hard and sucking in too much cold air for the size of the firepot. Or it does not have enough pellets in the firepot at all times. When I preload it with pellets, then it get s HOT. But once I let the auger do its thing, it struggles to recover or even come up to temp.

[Draznnl]

I tend to cook outside more in the winter than the summer. Winter weather is generally perfect for smoking. Summer, on the other hand, tends to be too hot, humid, rainy, and occasionally hurricaney.

[Ace]

Pit Barrel just sent me this article about smoking in the winter. Might be of help to some of our PBC pit masters.

https://pitbarrelcooker.com/blogs/lifestyle/how-to-smoke-all-winter-long-even-in-cold-weather?utm_campaign=CopyOfNl-1%2F6-A_base&utm_source=attentive&utm_medium=email&externalId=nkt4t

[dpearce]

Add to that a welders blanket, and my PBC runs pretty perfectly even in single digit temps!

[RichieB]

Got it today too. Good advice.

[jfmorris]

Well, I've been tasked to smoke a Boston butt for someone who is laid up, that my wife signed up to bring a meal to tomorrow. If I smoke one butt I might as well smoke two, and we can eat off one this weekend ourselves. With it being around 20f tonight, I figured I'll run the SNS Kamado on an overnight cook, rather than the kettle+SNS combo.

My bigger concern was the Thermoworks RFX system I've started using, but it claims an operating temperature range of -13 to 122°F (-25 to 50°C). They don't state anything about the Billows fan, but hopefully it won't care about running in 20F weather...

Tonight will be a good test for the kamado and the Thermoworks gear...

[jfmorris]

And the kamado and Thermoworks RFX + Billows laughed at the 20F low overnight. Rock solid grate temp around 225F throughout the night, with minimal fan time needed to stoke the fire.