We’re just past Memorial Day weekend. I have to say that I’m a bit saddened that Memorial Day isn’t really observed for what it’s meant to honor, which is fallen U.S. soldiers. I don’t go out of my way to do a lot for the day, but I do think about the sacrifices made by others. Unfortunately, I saw a lot of other celebrations going on, too, that had nothing to do with that; people are just confused, I guess.

On Saturday, Pat of Patrick’s BBQ held his annual customer appreciation event by cooking anything that he could fit in his smoker (which is a whole lot). While there, I noticed a field of wildflowers, and I had to wander down to get a better look.

It is a long weekend, and it unofficially denotes the start of summer. We had incredible weather for Saturday and Sunday, with Monday not too awful. On Sunday, my dad and stepmother were in Ohio, and they spent the afternoon and evening with us, which was all the excuse I needed to put the XL Big Green Egg through it’s paces, just to see how it did with a variety of tasks.

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We had some really nice weather last week, ending with a gorgeous May Saturday, highs around 70, lots of sun, so it was a perfect time to try out my new toy.

A lot of you reading this will know what a Big Green Egg is, though a lot of you may not. It’s pretty simple; a Big Green Egg is a green ceramic cooker. I can’t call it a grill or a smoker because it’s great at doing both.

Well, I finally have one! There are multiple sizes, from a tabletop ‘mini’, to the original and most popular ‘large’, to what I got, the ‘XL’. Though carefully engineereed, the unit itself is simple; ceramic shell that’s very well insulated, firebox, firering, fire grate, cooking grate, lid and exhaust. What’s so great about that? The cermic allows great insulation, meaning I don’t have to worry much about weather affecting my cooking, the cooker can go for hours and hours and hours with very little interaction, and it can also grill at about 800 degrees F when opened up.

Most will recommend a ‘large’ size, but I wanted the XL for the quantity of food it can hold. The cooking grate is 24″ in diameter, versus 18″ on the large. That’s 452 square inches vs. 254 square inches!

For Mother’s Day, I wanted to do my first cook, and I am a proponent of using smoker’s capacity when I do cook, so I planned on 2 brisket flats, 2 Boston butts and 2 pork tenderloins.

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The Smokehouse is coming to life as I type!  We got our hands on it Sunday, and we were able to do a few things.  First, we figured out that it takes a bit of effort to get up to temp, but that was easily fixed.  We just put a lit chimney in the main chamber and let it bring everything up, then the firebox had no problem keeping the temp where we wanted it.

It’s still a bit crude in that it’s a prototype, but our using it will give us the tweaks we want to get it just about perfect. 

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While we’re in the middle of building a new smoker, I have ideas floating around in my head for innovations that I haven’t seen yet.  As proven this week, it’s not that nobody else has thought of them yet; I just haven’t necessarily seen them yet.

Case in point:  I called Mark up on Saturday to talk about an idea for multiple temperature probes that connect to a smoker-mounted RF unit that transmits to a laptop to be able to control and monitor temps using the laptop or the RF unit.  Then yesterday, I look at the BBQ-Brethren forum and see a post about Rock’s Barbeque Stoker System.

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I have FINALLY gotten my partner, Mark, to write up something for the blog!  It only took, well, 5 months, but he finally got me some good stuff!

As some know, we’re building a smoker; Mark has been very hands-on with it… He’s also included a few pictures of it… You can get an idea of the size of the main chamber.  We’ll add more pictures as it gets completed.  The picture with Martin sitting in the cooker gives an idea of scale.

Here’s Mark’s blog entry…

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This is actually pretty easy to answer… None of them are the best.
Well, maybe all of them are the best.  It all depends on what you’re needs are.  Some people like to set up their smoking session and leave it until it’s done; some like to play with fire and tinker with the fire now and then.

The choices for smokers are pretty varied, from large to small, from electric heat, gas, charcoal or wood, from bullet style, kamado style, horizontal, vertical, reverse flow, etc., etc., etc.

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