valve90210

Hi All I recently had a holiday in Bulgaria and, although the resort was a typical tourist trap, i have to say I saw some cooking equipment at a few of the restaurants that I really rather liked, and I was constantly catching the glorious waft of meat cooking over wood and charcoal! A lovely charcoal kebab cooker the spits lay across the width and you can just about see the gearing that rotated them all. This place smelt wonderful! The next three pics are all actually different restaurants but with essentially the same kit in each of them, a water mill (via tap and hosepipe) powered Rotisserie Anyone up for making one of these in their garden? 🤩

It's good enough for me, not that I had cut down anyway but this might make people a little less judgmental about eating meat!

As it was going to be a nice weekend, I decided to defrost two joints of meat that have been knocking about in the freezer for a while. A nice silverside of beef and a pork shoulder. I also figured as there would be space I'd also cook a pastrami style brisket I had from Morrisons. Only my second actual cook with the SmartFire (SF) and for this one I had actually already managed to get some playpit sand for the Callow, so my first time using sand instead of water. I setup the same as the previous testing and cooking. 7 lit Heatbeads added to the opposite side of the firebasket to the SF. the rest of the basket filled with Heatbeads and a nice couple of handfulls of fruitwood mix pellets. After about an hour the Callow was up to my desired 110C and in went the meat. As you can see from my SF graph things went pretty swimmingly really. A few points on the graph which look like they could be issues but are actually nothing to worry about. 1) temp drop caused by me changing probes having realised I'd used a food probe for the pit initially. 2) temp drop while lid off to put meat in the Callow 3) 4) & 5) spritzing meat with cider 6) Wrapping Food 3 (Brisket) 7) Removing brisket and Food 1 (Pork) Yep I did drop the food 1 probe into the really hot bit of fat on top of the foil of the sand hence the sudden big temp spike! 😎 wrapping Food 2 (Beef Joint) 9) All done After a good bit of resting I sliced and bagged up the beef and pork (and forgot to take photos!) Both were delicious! I did remember to take a couple of quick snaps of the brisket though. It was delicious, great texture and a very pleasing smoke ring!

How did you get on with modding this?

I'd love to see more details about this, it looks great!

I shall have to have a look and see if they have anything in the store near me... not that i really need another smoker....

Nice, they look fab, are they on clearance? How would you say build quality compares to the ProQ?

I've only just caught up with this build, it looks amazing!! such an impressive looking piece of kit and I'm sure you'll be doing some amazing cooks with it for a long time to come!

I've only got the 7 bbqs... More than enough really but I'd still love a full size weber and I can't help but love the look of an offset smoker....

Nothing like a proper wood fire pizza....not like those phoney gas ones!!!🤣

Are there any updates on this? How did it turn out, are you making more?

@sotv I just do them exactly as I would in the oven, peel and par-boil. Let them dry off and then put into pre-heated oil in foil trays in the smoker at high temp. In the Davy Crockett I used a pellet tube to add some extra smoke as the pellet smoker doesn't produce much smoke at high temperature. In the past I've done them in a kettle bbq, again at high temps and with hickory pellets which has given a better smoke flavour. I always make sure to turn the potatoes in the oil when adding them so they have a coating all over for the smoke to stick to. They will need turning in the oil as per normal roast potatoes to get the lovely crispiness. I've never done them in with anything else as really you need the high temperature to get the oil nice and hot to essentially fry the outer to get the golden crisp outer. (that's why I need 7 bbqs right?) Oh and if you can get them, King Edwards all the way

I really must do this with my Davy Crockett, as well as getting the wifi sorted...

I'm fairly sure It was Steve on here who said about using white bread. cover the whole of the cooking area and see which bits get toasted/burnt first

Oh lovely, I'll have to pick up some of the wonderful Kentish cherries asap and get some of these made, they were lovely!

Great to meet you and Lee, such a good laugh, adn what can possibly beat drunken sausage cooking at 2am?? 😂

Just racking my brains to think if there's anything I could offer to go into the raffle...

I wouldn't normally be so far away, yesterday was only a test while I was elsewhere dancing.

I was very impressed indeed, and being able to monitor it from 40 miles away was great. Now if I could just get the wifi working properly on my GMG that would be magic!

Yesterday I finally managed to find time to give the smartfire a whirl. I decided to test it with my Callow (Gen 1 with modified fire basket (Thanks @Wade)) The cake tin adapter fitted onto the Callow vent perfectly so no worries there. I have noticed that the getting the SF into the adapter is quite a tight fit, I may end up gently sanding the adapter slightly to make it a tiny bit looser but we'll see. As has been suggested above I went for an offset minion with the lit coals added opposite the SF. I added 7 lit heatbeads to the basket and, because I couldn't be bothered to traipse to wickes to get sand I added 1 1/2 ish inches of water to the pan. the two bottom vents that weren't in use were fully shut and, as suggested, the top vent I had about 1/4 closed. I was aiming for a nice steady 110C. Lid on, and SF connected I left it. After about an hour it was up to temperature and about 30 minutes after that I went out for the afternoon to dance over in Eltham. The Callow was safely away from anything flammable and the SF and powerbank I was using to power it were covered to protect from rain should it come while I was out. I continued to monitor the temperature in between dances and was very pleased to see it remaining within a couple of degrees of the target temp. There as one small blip where the the temp dropped a little but the fan kicked in brought it back up and then it settled where it should be again. Sadly at 5.17pm (ish😉)the SF went off line and I had to continue dancing whilst wondering what had happened. When I got home it turned out the powerbank had run out of power and the SF was off, so nothing too major (Anker pwerbank on order for delivery today! lol). I'm pretty confident that had the SF remained powered on it would have kept the temperature where I wanted it until the coals burnt out. All in all a good initial test. Higher temperature test with be done at some point when I get time. Below is the graph from the test.

I'll certainly think about it, a bit more limited on space this year as I've changed my car. Also I'm not sure quite what I'm going to cook, so not sure what I'll want to bring. I really should put some thought into it...

I'm contemplating bringing it but wondered if it might not be in the spirit of the event what with being able to essentially hit go and leave it...😂