Grill Maestro

It’s not as pretty as a trash can smoker (I say that in jest of course) but one of my favorite blogs, Life as a Vegas poker dealer, built himself a smoker out of two terra cotta planter pots! The basics are the same as any other homemade smoker (hot plate, tray to hold chips, [...]

Ever wonder why smoked meats have a pink smoke ring? I’ll explain. Now that you’ve learned the difference between barbecue and smoking, let me tell you about the pink smoke ring. Once you’ve smoked a piece of meet, say a brisket or some ribs, you’ll notice a distinct pink ring around the outside of your [...]

I emailed Don the other day to get the Smokenator 1000 to review and he kindly agreed. From what I can tell from the Smokenator 1000 site, the Smokenator is the best way to augment your Weber grill so that you can get your smoke on without buying an actual smoker. From what the site [...]

Okay, a ridiculously nice smoker is expensive but I ran into a coworker at Costco the other day, where he picked up more pork chops than I could eat in a month because he was about to embark on an 8 hour smoking session with some maple shards he cut down himself, and he told [...]

Oh, believe it… people have built smokers straight out of trash cans for a total cost of under fifty bucks. Before you say: “Yuck! Smoking my food in a trash can???” you must realize that you’re going to use a trash can only for smoking, so it’s basically a big metal container. Anyway, the basic [...]

With grilling, you sear and cook the meat at high heat over a relatively short period of time. You do get a bit of the smokiness, more so if you’re using charcoal, but not a tremendous amount in part because of the high temperature (searing the meat prevents the smoke from becoming infused in the [...]

Grilling with wood chips is one of the great secrets in barbecue and getting that smoky flavor into the meat is something most weekend grill maestros don’t often do. That being said, grilling with wood chips in charcoal is a relatively easy task – you simply sprinkle the chips in with the charcoal and the [...]

I know nothing about “smokology,” my new favorite term of the day, and hopefully a copy of this 224 tome on the topic by Richard W. McPeake, one of the top instructors at the The Culinary Center of Kansas City (a claim made by the owner of The Culinary Center); will educate me on the [...]