Love Our Smoker!

[murratj]

At a barbecue last summer the host served the best pulled pork we've ever had. We assumed it was catered, asked him where he got the meat and were stunned to learn he made it himself in his 1400. We were hooked and knew we had to have one. So we bought a 1400 at Sportsman's Warehouse as an early xmas present to ourselves and we LOVE it! So far we have smoked a pork loin and baby back ribs with apple wood, a beer can chicken with hickory and prime rib with hickory. The taste is out of this world! Get yourself a wireless thermometer so you don't have to open the oven to check doneness. You can run the probe wire out the smoke hole on the top of the oven. It has been very cold in Colorado this winter and we're wondering how much the cold air outside has affected the cook times, which have been longer than we expected. We won't know till we can compare cook times this coming summer. To give you a good example, we knew we wanted to smoke about 12 pounds of prime for Christmas dinner, so we did a test run a few weeks ahead of time on a 4.2lb roast. Following the cookbook that came with the 1400, we smoked it at 200 degrees. Outside air temp was in the mid-20s. At 5.5 hours it hit a wall and the roast got stuck at 154 degrees internal temp, so I cranked the oven up to 250 and 1.5hrs later it was at 160 degrees internal temp. Our cook time to 160 was 1:40/lb, much longer than the times quoted in the cookbook. For xmas we smoked two larger roasts together on one rack: a 6.2lb and a 6.5lb. That's a lot of meat. We put the temp probe in the bigger one. My wife wanted it cooked to 155. I put those puppies in at 4:15am on xmas morning, oven temp 200 degrees, outside air temp a balmy 2 degrees. We hit a wall again at 2pm, this time at 146 degrees internal temp. By now it was 30 degrees outside, our max for the day. I cranked the oven up to 250 at 2:40pm and we reached 155 degrees internal at 4pm. The total cook time for the 6.5lb roast to 155 was 1:50/lb. As expected, it took longer per pound for two large pieces compared to the per-pound cook time for the smaller piece. The meat was the best we've ever had. We just rubbed the outside with salt and coarse ground black pepper. We also injected Tony Chachere's Roasted Garlic and Herb but nobody could taste much of it (I could taste garlic in the 4.2lb roast we did before xmas, but my wife swears she couldn't, and I couldn't taste it in the larger roasts on xmas.) But man was it good, and everybody loved it! Oh, one footnote about the beer can chicken, I'm not embarrassed or ashamed to admit I couldn't figure out how to separate the chicken from the beer can after it was done cooking (the beer can was full of 170-degree beer, too hot to handle.) This video shows a very clever trick that I would never have figured out on my own: http://www.ehow.com/video_2336183_serve-beercan-chicken.html
Enjoy!

P.S. Updated Nov 6, 2010 - I know why our xmas prime rib (and everything else) took longer than expected. With the control knob at 225 I discovered our 1400 runs at 196 degrees. Can't hurt to do your own calibration check and mark any corrections on the temp control panel. Smoking a 6lb pork butt tomorrow, can't wait! And I'll bet this year's xmas prime rib will cook faster now that I know where to set the control knob for a true 200 degrees.