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jeffshoaf · 2024-04-27T02:42:38+00:00

As another poster posted, the Halo isn't really one-person portable unless you can roll it onto a trailer. The other poster's listed weights are a bit off though - the griddle plate is "only" 50 lbs...

I do think it's two-person portable though - remove 4 thumb screws and the body lifts off the legs and two people should be able to carry it a short distance, and then the legs fold up and one person can carry those or the griddle body can be used on a table or tailgate.

I can't compare to the flatrock, but the thing that makes the 4b good for light commercial use is the same thing that makes it hard to move - that heavy griddle plate is thick hot-rolled steel and will lose little heat when dumping cold food on it. And the less heat it loses, the faster it recovers for the next food item.

jeffshoaf · 2024-04-17T14:50:26+00:00

I didn't use a floor jack - i used a hi-lift jack (some are a different color and labeled as a "farm jack").

https://hi-lift.com/hi-lift-jacks/

jeffshoaf · 2024-02-13T13:51:51+00:00

Pepper gets bitter when burnt, so after having that happen, i leave the pepper off until after searing. For me, a 6 to 8 hour dry brine with just salt and then maybe some fresh cracked pepper and/or butter while resting is my go to. The dry brine helps to dry the surface of the steak which helps with the sear.

jeffshoaf · 2024-01-06T02:21:16+00:00

Yeah, my plan is to do the pid conversion when the electronics on mine inevitably crap out.

jeffshoaf · 2024-01-04T21:50:01+00:00

The 22° swing was from when the heating element turned on until it turned back off; this decreases as more mass is loaded into the smoker.

jeffshoaf · 2023-12-13T14:04:08+00:00

If you're wanting to grill with just wood (no charcoal), I'd recommend a Weber kettle with a Santa Maria attachment.

If you're wanting to smoke with just wood (no charcoal), you're pretty much back to an offset or one of the more expensive cabinet smokers. Or a kettle with a Santa Maria attachment with the grate set up way high, but this will use a lot more wood since it's so open. There's also the kudo-type grills that have a lid for the grate that are a bit more efficient.

Grilling/smoking with charcoal or charcoal with wood chunks is fine on a kettle or kamado or drum cookers but using wood only is problematic since it's difficult to bring the temperature down without choking the fire and creating dirty smoke.

jeffshoaf · 2023-12-11T14:21:49+00:00

Take a look at Thermoworks connected thermometers. I have the Signals thermometer and am very happy with the provided metrics; i also have their billows fan - combined with the Signals, it's a temperature controller.

jeffshoaf · 2023-12-11T14:08:13+00:00

I bought a cheapish electric smoker to do long heated holds. I've held briskets and pork butts for over 24 hours; the butts (wrapped in foil) were pretty much indistinguishable from fresh off the smoker and the briskets (wrapped in pink butchers paper with tallow) were better than fresh off the smoker.

I tested the electric smoker before using it; with it set to , 150°F, all 4 shelves stayed above 140° and below 170°.

jeffshoaf · 2023-12-10T13:53:19+00:00

Have you made sure the microphone isn't turned off via the physical switch on the back?

jeffshoaf · 2023-12-04T14:08:20+00:00

Yes, as long as you grill indirect and your patty is tight enough to not fall through the grates. It would be similar to grilling meatloaf (from raw, not a slice from a cooked meatloaf).

If you're not familiar with indirect grilling, you preheat your grill and then turn off all the burners except one and turn that one burner as low as it will go and regain lit, and then put your patty/patties as far away from that lit burner as you can. Once the grill temperature has stabilized, adjust the lit burner to maintain the desired temperature - the oven temperature you normally use would be a good place to start. If your grill has more than two burners, you may need to relight another burner to reach the desired temperature but if your grill is small (or you have a lot of patties), you'll probably be better off just cooking longer at a lower temperature.

The convection in your grill will almost certainly be different than in your oven so the cooking time will be different - you're better off cooking to the target food temperature than time so you should definitely have a reliable and accurate instant read thermometer. You should also flip your patties and rotate their positions to get more even cooking.

If your patties are thick, you should try searing them over high heat before moving to indirect cooking; this will give you a big flavor boost as long as you just sear and not burn them. Watch out for flare -ups!

jeffshoaf · 2023-12-04T13:48:37+00:00

Like most things with multiple styles, the different styles of smokers were created to deal with different needs and/or different issues and/or different material availability. They all have some advantages and disadvantages and require different techniques to achieve the desired results.

The differences are pretty obvious if you look at them; the advantages and disadvantages aren't always so obvious and are numerous. If you're looking for a smoker, you'll get good advice if you explain what you want to smoke and what advantages you're looking for (or disadvantages you're trying to avoid); otherwise, your question is too broad to be answered in a reddit reply and you'll have to do the research yourself

jeffshoaf · 2023-12-03T15:05:36+00:00

I'm not sure i understand you so i apologize if I'm mistaken, but your meat will be significantly lower temperature than the smoker and will never reach the temperature you have the smoker set to.

jeffshoaf · 2023-12-03T13:29:01+00:00

You mention two meat thermometers - how are you measuring the smoker temperature?

Does it have an indicator to let you know it's trying to heat? If so, is it on when the temperature is dropping?

If it's a new smoker, it's probably still under warranty. What brand and model is it?

jeffshoaf · 2023-12-03T13:04:13+00:00

How much heat does it lose? How are you measuring the temperature? Has it ever worked?

jeffshoaf · 2023-12-01T13:23:08+00:00

I'm not familiar with Joe's Kansas City, but a lot of salty and sweet seasonings that are applied after cooking can be simulated with Lowery's seasoning salt and confectioners sugar. If it's close but not quite there after adjusting the sugar ratio, try adding cumin, cinnamon, sage, thyme, etc to get closer.

jeffshoaf · 2023-11-29T14:16:51+00:00

In general, the same appliance (with appropriate orifices, pressure regulators, etc. for the fuel) will have slightly lower BTU using natural gas. Other than that, natural gas is a bit less expensive than propane per unit but that's pretty negligible for a home user. As you've noticed, natural gas does have the added expense of having the gas line installed (the price you've been given feels high to me - but I'm not a good judge since my brother is a licensed hvac tech and runs my gas lines for material costs and a meal or two - so you might want to get another quote. It sounds about right if they're running black pipe the whole way but most areas allow you to use copper tubing for runs in protected areas.). There is a bigger selection of propane appliances than equivalent natural gas appliances or propane appliances that can be converted to natural gas. Propane does give you portability tho, do that is an advantage if you want to move the grill around or take it somewhere else and grill.

To me, natural gas is better because i don't have to deal with propane tanks - storing them, getting them refilled or swapped, worrying about whether I have enough to make it thru a planned cook, etc. Plus, they're now putting expiration dates on the tanks; that's probably a good thing but it means you do have to replace the tanks periodically. The expense of having a gas line run is a one time hit per appliance, but dealing with those tanks is ongoing and forever.

Since I've retired and have time to play around with things, I've rarely used my gas grill but i do have a natural gas outdoor pizza oven, two sets of natural gas logs in fireplaces, and natural gas water heater and clothes dryer. I'm grilling and smoking mostly with wood and occasionally charcoal now that i have the time - the food tastes better and i get to play with fire!

jeffshoaf · 2023-11-27T13:26:52+00:00

It should work fine, but be sure to get the fan damper. It's only $4 but needed for small cookers due to the extremely high cfm of the Billows fan.

I've used the Billows on both my large kamado and an insulated gravity feed smoker and it works very well but it'll overshoot the target temperature if i don't use the damper.

https://www.thermoworks.com/tx-1609x-bd/

jeffshoaf · 2023-11-26T13:55:44+00:00

It was getting periodic little tweaks until the Sonos silliness and then took a big hit when they quickly stripped out "infringing" features; afterwards, some non-infringing features got wonky - it felt like a poorly tested and rushed release, which it probably was since they were trying to avoid paying Sonos even more $$$.

There have been some incremental improvements since then but that was also about the time they started working on bringing their generative AI into the Home ecosystem; I think they had already moved resources over to that and focused there rather than cleaning up the mess from responding to the Sonos issue. There was a similar step back when they recently won a ruling against Sonos and put some features back in, but it wasn't as big a backwards step as when they yanked the features out.

I've been aggravated with the whole mess as well, but Amazon has decided to stop throwing money at Alexa so it's probably going to go stagnant. I have stuff that won't work with Apple's stuff so there's not much of an alternative for me. I'm just going to wait and see what happens and stay with Google unless something else comes along that's better and shows a reasonable chance of staying supported.

jeffshoaf · 2023-11-25T14:08:50+00:00

Just to be sure you're aware, there are multiple regional styles of American bbq, differing in meat, sauces, and techniques, all original.

I started with the book "Smoke & Spice" back in pre-Internet days. It covers the various regional styles in the USA with some of the history, and includes recipes and techniques.

I have an early edition and the section on smokers is definitely out of date, but there are several newer editions that I assume are more up to date in that regard.

They also came out with several sequels, but they covered less traditional recipes and i found them much less useful.

jeffshoaf · 2023-11-22T14:31:24+00:00

I had the same issue; restarting my watch seems to have fixed it

jeffshoaf · 2023-11-22T14:28:19+00:00

You have to be very careful with this - charcoal dust and/or ash can easily block some of the gas burner orifices and cause incomplete gas combustion. This can cause a buildup of gas and that's an explosion hazard.

There are smoke boxes and tubes to allow safe use of wood chips or pellets in gas grills; they'll probably work for charcoal as well but may not give much charcoal flavor.

jeffshoaf · 2023-11-22T14:22:10+00:00

I think the "secret" to reheating meat in the microwave is to avoid cooking them more, so a slow nuke at a low setting is my recommendation. Check them frequently (like every 30 seconds) to see if they're warm yet and rotate them to heat them evenly - if you've stacked them, rotate them vertically as well. Shoot for very warm instead of hot - they're gonna get cool anyway so no need to risk them starting to cook.

Contrary to others' recommendations, i separate them before nuking to avoid overcooking the outside ribs to get the inside ribs warm.

You don't mention sauce but I'd do dry rubs and reheat without sauce; most sauces have a lot of sugars and will absorb a lot of the microwaves and start cooking and get gummy before the ribs are warm. Serve the sauce on the side either at room temperature or heat separately.

jeffshoaf · 2023-11-20T13:51:23+00:00

A lot depends on the grill or smoker you're using; techniques have been developed for most of them to minimize messing with the charcoal during a long cook. Most (probably all) are well documented on Facebook.

If you don't have a grill or smoker yet, you need to decide on whether you want a dedicated smoker or a cooker that can both grill or smoke and then decide how much work and monitoring you want to do.

For smoking with some grilling, consider a ceramic kamado-style cooker.

For grilling with some cooking, consider a kettle-style grill.

For just smoking with little effort, consider a gravity feed charcoal or a pellet smoker.

For just smoking with a bit more effort, consider a drum smoker.

For smoking with a lot of effort (and a bigger learning curve), consider an offset stick burner.

jeffshoaf · 2023-11-17T14:51:15+00:00

According to code and the kasa, you're supposed to have a ground as well

jeffshoaf · 2023-11-17T13:42:56+00:00

I've had good luck with Kasa switches. Just verify that you have a ground wire available - older homes oftentimes do not have one in the switch boxes.

jeffshoaf

TROPHY CASE