AllenOK
Executive Chef
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Here's the subject of today's dinner:
Those Turkey Legs were brined overnight in 3 qt water and 6 T salt. This morning I removed them from the brine, dried them off, and rubbed them, then let the legs sit, uncovered, in the fridge to develop the "pellicle", or a sticky, tacky, coating, which helps the smoke adhere to the meat.
Here's fire-grate of my SFB, all cleaned out for max airflow:
And my cooking chamber, also cleaned out. You'll notice a foil pan below the cooking grate, acting as a drip pan.
Here's the charcoal chimney loaded and ready-to-go. For those of you that remember my last pictoral post on smoking, you'll remember that jug of starter fluid. Well, look hard at this pic. That's newspaper under the chimney! I'm kind of in a hurry to light this thing, as I'm hearing thunder in the background.
Here's the chimney all fired up. It could have gone another 10 minutes, but it's starting to rain a bit (notice the wet spots on the paint job). Also, at this time, I realized that I FORGOT to pull out the tray and get the chimney going "outside" the SFB, which is how I normally do this.
And here's my mixed load of lump and briquettes all laid out in the fire grate.
I had a bunch of small sticks that needed to be used, so I threw them on the charcoal as a "starter", to preheat the smoker. These sticks are a mix of dead-fall Oak and Hickory. Yes, they are actively burning. I'm trying to generate some BTU's to preheat my cooking chamber.
And here's a shot of my rain-soaked thermometer just after I closed the smoker up tight. It's hard to read, but, it's registering 75 degrees F, which just happens to be the air temp outside at this time. I'm thinking my thermometer is fairly accurate because of this. Of course, I haven't checked it with a more reliable thermometer, so I'm not totally sure.
Here's the subject of today's dinner:
Those Turkey Legs were brined overnight in 3 qt water and 6 T salt. This morning I removed them from the brine, dried them off, and rubbed them, then let the legs sit, uncovered, in the fridge to develop the "pellicle", or a sticky, tacky, coating, which helps the smoke adhere to the meat.
Here's fire-grate of my SFB, all cleaned out for max airflow:
And my cooking chamber, also cleaned out. You'll notice a foil pan below the cooking grate, acting as a drip pan.
Here's the charcoal chimney loaded and ready-to-go. For those of you that remember my last pictoral post on smoking, you'll remember that jug of starter fluid. Well, look hard at this pic. That's newspaper under the chimney! I'm kind of in a hurry to light this thing, as I'm hearing thunder in the background.
Here's the chimney all fired up. It could have gone another 10 minutes, but it's starting to rain a bit (notice the wet spots on the paint job). Also, at this time, I realized that I FORGOT to pull out the tray and get the chimney going "outside" the SFB, which is how I normally do this.
And here's my mixed load of lump and briquettes all laid out in the fire grate.
I had a bunch of small sticks that needed to be used, so I threw them on the charcoal as a "starter", to preheat the smoker. These sticks are a mix of dead-fall Oak and Hickory. Yes, they are actively burning. I'm trying to generate some BTU's to preheat my cooking chamber.
And here's a shot of my rain-soaked thermometer just after I closed the smoker up tight. It's hard to read, but, it's registering 75 degrees F, which just happens to be the air temp outside at this time. I'm thinking my thermometer is fairly accurate because of this. Of course, I haven't checked it with a more reliable thermometer, so I'm not totally sure.