Sunday, June 26, 2022

Want a smoke?

No, not tobacco (or something more potent), I'm smoking a Boston butt on my gas grill.  I'm using something like this:


 

Napoleon 67011 Stainless Steel Smoker Pipe.  It looks like there are plenty of options, but I have wood chips and a lot of the tubes are for pellets.  Might work the same, I don't know.  So far things look like they're going pretty well, but the proof of the pudding and all that.  Here are the key points for smoking on a gas grill:

1. Start normally, with a good soak in a brine.  I did 24 hours.  There are a million brine recipes - the one I had uses Sprite instead of water.  And then a good rub.

2. Only one of my four burners is on, and it's down around it's lowest setting.  I took the grates off so that I can swap the smoker tubes - when one has given its all for King and Country I swap in the other which is loaded with fresh wood chips.

3. Soak the wood chips.  Dry chips are gone in 10 minutes in a huge cloud of smoke; soaked chips last 45 minutes with wisps of smoke surrounding the meat the entire time.

4. Indirect heat, baby.  I have the far left burner on with the smoker tube on it, the butt is over on the far right hand side of the grill.

5. 250 degrees is the magic number for the grill thermometer.  Remember, that thermometer isn't very accurate, which leads us to the next item:

6. A probe thermometer will tell you when you're ready to pull the meat off.  I still have an hour or two to go, but the grill is steady at 250 and you can smell (but not see) smoke.  That's what you want.

7. Don't keep opening the grill.  As they say, if you're lookin' you;re not cookin'.

We'll see how this comes out, but it's been pretty straight forward so far.

4 comments:

michigan doug said...

Please keep us posted so we know if it's worth buying.
Thanks.

Sarthurk said...

I have something like that. It's a 6 sided SS perforated tube And I fill it with smoker chips and soak it in a bucket of water for about a half an hour. It sure does make a difference.
Big ass steaks for dinner tonight!
Glad I bought that half 'O' beef last fall, what with Bidenflation and all. Got another half of grass fed Black Angus reserved for this fall.

Wayne said...

Steph Curry and the Golden State Warriors smoked some Boston butt recently.

AlexHenzel said...

I have been smoking on my gas grill for years. I go a bit less expensive route. I still use only the one burner farthest from the meat , remove the grates and place soaked wood chips in aluminum mini meat loaf pans. when one burns out you just get your tongs and put another one in right on top of the lava rocks, cement stones or what ever your grill has. they can be reused and when they burn out, you can replace them for about 40 cents apiece.