Smoking/BBQ

[Doug Campbell]

Sounds like your scraping your hogs Skinner, hard to get em that way anymore around here, less you do it yourself. A couple years ago we roasted one and had a guy suggest stuffing the body cavity, then sewing it back up, then roasting. We stuffed it with deer and elk sausages, with all those sausage juices rolling around inside that hog it turned out awesome. Looked cool when we took it out too without the cavity gapping open.

[Skinner]

Sorry Guys.  I forgot about this.

Matt E - Yes.  We are using an enclosed smoker.  Ours was a custom made Klose smoker that we modified into a trailer.

All our meat just sits flat on a rack.  We do not use any kind of spit to rotate the meat.  Whole hogs we keep the ham ends towards the fire box and then turn it end for end when our hams reach temperature.

 


I usually always rub my pork with mustard.  As I mentioned it helps the rub stick to the meat, gives you a little bit of a crust/bark to the meat and helps tenderize it as well.  There is no mustard taste left at all.  Mind you, we just rub it down.  We don't put it on so thick that you can't see the meat.  Here's some pork ribs we did on Friday.  We rubbed these down with mustard as well before we seasoned.  Note:  There is a second adjustable height rack under our top racks here loaded with ribs as well.  The adjustable rack (you can see the handles sticking up on either end of the cooker) is what we cook our whole hogs on.  Just pick up the rack by the handles and move it wherever you want.


 

Never used the propane torch trick.  Using offset heat, you don't get "cracklings" like you do when you cook over direct heat.  The skin is really tough.  I usually slice it up, scrape off most of the fat and my dogs get one heck of a treat.


And just for the "nifty" factor, I have my tail gater BBQ Smoker as well.  Can't feed the amount of people as I can with the Klose, but it sure is alot of fun.

 

Oh yeah, here is the "before pic" of some of those pork ribs pictures above.  I hope you enjoyed the post.  Skinner

 

[Al Dente]

Nice Klose.  How does the temp hold in it?  How much wood/lump does it go through for a full comp set-up (brisket/shoulder/ribs/chicken)?

I'm looking at a Lang 84 Deluxe for next year.  I checked out the Mr. Kloes' unit online, but  Texas is too far for me to drive to pick  up.  Georgia is a lot closer.

Keep smokin'!!!!

[Skinner]

Hi Al.

The temp holds good in the Klose.  This unit is made of 3/8" plate.  Real easy to control heat with all the dampers.  My little trailer hitch unit dosen't have a damper between the fire box and the cooking chamber.  It is harder to make and control heat (when just using charcoal) as compared to the Klose.  It is made of 1/4" material and I have made several modifications to the unit to suit me.  It is not near the quality of the Klose (But neither was the price!)

Once we are cooking and have all our dampers set, we usually have to re-fire once every hour.  (Don't have to make any further adjustments, your fire will only burn so fast.  Craftsman ship of the firebox is darn close to an airtight wood stove on the Klose)

We usually mix both lump and bricks together.  I use wood for cooking but the other 2 guys I am in partnership with on this rig, are not big wood guys.  They just prefer to use just charcoal.  They find that wood give it too much of a smoke taste. - Personal preference I guess.

My wifes boss had this unit custom made a couple of years ago from Klose.  He cooks competition as a hobby.  This was his first purchase and it was mounted on 8" casters.  It weighs the better part of 900 lbs and was a real pain to move around.  Since then he has bought 2 other units off Klose, a trailer unit off someone in PA (60 X 30" cook surface) and a rib cooker with a flip rack (not sure who made that unit).

He offered the unit to us at a good price and that's why we bought it.  We then mounted it on the trialer ourselves to make it more portable.  We do the odd function but try not too.  We made it mostly just for a reason to get together and drink some beer.  I was also looking at the Lang before this unit came along.

Skinner

[Ray Hammond]

guys, I cook lots of whole pigs. I do it a little different than you...there's lots of ways to skin a cat, as they say.. we split the spine all the way through, and lay the skin side of each half down, ham toward firebox if you don't have coals UNDER the pig - the skin gets real crispy, making "cracklin's". Some people like them chopped up and added to the 'cue in the South.

We make a mixture on the stove of apple cider vinegar, red pepper flakes, and salt..and use a sponge to 'dab' the hog with that while its cooking for around 16 hours at 275 degrees.

The meat pulls off the pig easily..hence the term "pig pickin' in the South...and boy is it great. We serve it with potato salad, cole slaw, brunswick stew (a real thick chicken pork stew made with potatoes, corn, and other tasty vittles to be like a thick chowder) and hush puppies. Make sure you got soda pop with foam on top, or iced tea to wash it down.