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 »

Goodbye rust, hello paint (and a thin layer of lard)

The other week, I mentioned in a Canadian online barbecue forum that I was interested in acquiring an offset smoker even though they’re almost impossible to come by in my neck of the woods (unlike our American cousins, my Canadian brethren seem to be relatively slow to turn onto real barbecue). Within a day I had a gentleman who lives very close to me offering to sell me a used offset for the low, low price of $20. And, since the seller has a pick-up truck and a job very near my house, I managed to get free delivery, too.

My wife & I figured it was a great entry level price and, if nothing else, could serve as an acid test to see if I had any aptitude for offset smoking to justify a more expensive unit.

Read the rest of this entry »

Brined Chili Lime Chicken

So, it’s recently come to my attention that everything I know about barbecue is wrong. In fact, it told me so on the front cover of Gary Wiviott’s book Low & Slow: Master the Art of Barbecue in 5 Easy Lessons.

I’m currently working my way through the lessons one at a time with some really great results, partially because I took Chapter 2: Lighting the Low & Slow Fire as a lesson in itself. To me it was one of the most important lessons I’ve yet to learn on the barbecue. Once I learned when to add the burning elements to my firebox I was pretty much set.

Read the rest of this entry »

Our turkey after a couple of hours in the smoker

Ah, Canadian Thanksgiving! That festive time of year again. It’s so much more than just fodder for jokes on How I Met Your Mother.

It’s pretty much like American Thanksgiving, except we do it on a weekend in October instead of on a Thursday in November, thereby actually aligning with the harvest for which we are thankful while not screwing up the work week. If we’re lucky, it might even be unseasonably warm so I can spend hours fussing over a smoker in nothing more than a t-shirt and a hoody (on top, anyway).

Read the rest of this entry »