New Groups to Help Everyone on Smokers

[akdave]

I have found that if I spray my racks with Pam or any spray Canola oil spray before I use them … that it definitely help them clean up easier. As for cleaning my racks I soak them in hot water with lots of dish soap and scrub them with a stainless steel BBQ brush. I wish I could find an easier way and am sure glad I have installed a deep sink in my shop for clean up. The worst is when I do smoked fish with a lot of brown sugar in my brine, it is brutal

[Jonathon]

Another option is Smokehouse Cleaner also works really well. This is the non-caustic version that we now carry. I’ll do a little video at some point of how it works. I’d imagine that the gallon bottle would last any home user a good long while.

[calldoctoday]

akdave Yes, those are the times when you have to do a scrub. I believe if we were not spraying the racks first it would be much, much worse. When we have to do the scrub down like that, we just do it outside for easy cleanup. Keep it simple.

[ggrussell]

Well I have two different smokers and there both electric but very different. I’m looking for a sausage seasoning to smoke and then freeze. But I don’t want to totaly cook done in smoker so I can through on grill later. Got any ideas on seasonings.

[glen]

Finishing on the grill is a great way to go for some meats

[Jonathon]

ggrussell What flavors do you normally like? I would also point you to USDA appendix A and I’d recommend you go at least to 130 before you pull it from the smoker. I’m not saying you need to keep it there for 2 hours if you are going to cook it up to 160° F when you grill it.

[samc]

I cured some bacon and tasted it before smoking it and it was super salty it was in the cure for 8 days. Will smoking help get some of the saltyness out ?if not is there a cure? Don’t want to throw away 20 pounds of pork belly.

[TexLaw]

samc You should be able to get some of that salt out just by soaking it in plain water for a few days or so, even just a day or so would help. Change the water every day or two to help leach the salt back out.

Now, getting just as salty as you want it is the trick. I’m afraid I can’t help with that. However, you could just keep sampling it to see if you get it where you want it.

Also, you can just reserve that bacon for seasoning instead of just straight up eating. Twenty pounds is an awful lot for seasoning, but you could maybe save some of it out for that. I’d love to have a ready supply of 1/2 pound seasoning bacon packs ready to go in the freezer. Talk about making a bunch of beans and greens!

[s.a.m]

Think I’d start by soaking in water for an hour then see where you are at.

[skibumben]

samc out of curiosity what was your cure recipe? How much salt?

[samc]

1# salt 8 oz sugar 56 gm pink salt per 5 pounds of belly

[skibumben]

I’m curing an 11# belly now for bacon and went with 3% weight in salt and 1.5% weight in sugar. I went with 8g Cure #1. Definitely way less on all.

[Jonathon]

samc I am doing some conversions and double checking right now, please DO NOT EAT THAT! I’m having someone double check me but it looks like too much pink salt (sure cure in our world) and salt were used. Maybe I can’t do the math this morning or am brain dead so please don’t throw it out yet either!

I’ll have more very shortly.

[Jonathon]

samc Did you mean 5.6 grams?

[cattleman54]

Jonathon I have a Bradley 6 rack I’ve been using for 15 years. Always lacked in the heating. I recently put a new 900 watt 1200 degree heating element and a squirrel cage fan. It really brought it up to speed. )

[Jonathon]

cattleman54 Didn’t post the pic, feel free to email me at jonathon@waltonsinc.com and ill post it!

[samc]

The cure I used is the one in the Charcuterie book by Ruhlman page 39. It has worked before I have no idea why it was sooooo salty this time. I am now soaking the bellies overnight in water and brown sugar. That seems to be working just a little slow. Hopefully I will be able to smoke tomorrow

[glen]

I show about .5 lb salt and 22.7 grams cure#1 for 20 lb bacon
Water will leach some salt out but I am not sure on the nitrite
(Edited to show nitrite instead of nitrate)

[Jonathon]

samc Sorry, I’m not familiar with that book. What glen is saying is what I am more familiar with. If you have the time and want to you could snap a pic and email it to me at jonathon@waltonsinc.com ? I don’t think posting a pic from a book here would be right but I’m curious as to what this is.

Actually, when I was looking the book up on Amazon (got awesome reviews by the way) I think I see part of the issue, I was able to view the first few pages of it and I think I see an issue. On page 2 or 3 under “THE BASIC DRY CURE” he says to use 2 oz/56 grams of the mixture for 5 lb of meat, it seems he would be talking about using 2 oz of the mixture he is talking about below that paragraph for 5 lb of meat, not use that entire thing for 5 lb of meat. That would be closer to what we would recommend as the total mixture there would be 26 oz with enough cure in it to 50 lb of meat. So for 5 lb divide that by ten and you get 2.6 oz, so not exact but pretty close.

I swear I’m not trying to come down on you hard here or anything, we all make mistakes, and it’s possible I am wrong here… but 2 oz of pink salts (a common name for what we call sure cure) for 5 lb of meat is so over the top that I can’t reconcile it in my mind. Dry curing isn’t my specialty and with Charcuterie in the title maybe he is talking about a different method I am unfamiliar with but when we did some lomo and some dry cured sausage we were still using 1 oz of sure cure to 25 lb of meat.

This is a good example of why we recommend premixed seasonings, it eliminates or at least reduces issues like this popping up. I know of no way of removing nitrites from the meat once they have been introduced.

[JerkyIsMySalad]

ClaytonD I agree. Some people have propane or electric. Some people might have a small electric smoker and some people might be in the commercial business.