Big trailer rig outside Smokin' Mule in Cortland, NY

We spent last weekend visiting friends who live near Ithaca, New York, and on the trip, I decided I’d do a little informal barbecue research along the way.

Being a Canadian boy, the only other Canuck I know to have ever owned an offset smoker is the guy I bought mine from. I know there must be a few others, but traditional BBQ doesn’t really have a visible presence in this country.

So as we drove through the semi-rural & small town neighbourhoods in the Finger Lakes region, I peaked into people’s yards to see what they were using to cook with outdoors.

To my delight, I saw lots of evidence of live fire cooking, with a surprisingly high number of offset smokers (some of them quite fancy, too). Sure, there were an awful lot of gas grills, as one would expect, but it seems as though the phenomenon of real barbecue – once thought to be limited strictly to the Southern states – is definitely making its way North.

Read the rest of this entry »

Three Thermometers in Question: a fancy digital probe, an old-fashioned oven model, and a grill model

When I acquired my second-hand offset smoker, the seller was quick to tell me not to trust the simple thermometer on the lid. It was fairly standard advice for most BBQ thermometers, especially ones like this that only specify if the temp is warm, ideal, or hot.

I soon learned just how untrustworthy this particular unit’s temperature gauge was when I tried to cook my first meal on it. When I had the fire built and closed up the system to start cooking, the needle on the thermometer slowly rose until it was just covering the “w” in warm. Half an hour later, after a non-stop wind blowing right through the firebox vent had whipped my coals into a raging inferno and almost all the water in my water pan had boiled off, the needle was now firmly covering the very same first letter on the dial. How’s that for sensitivity?

Read the rest of this entry »