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hey do you guys find that there is good hardwood lump charcoal and bad? i got this stuff called selva from armitage produce and there are alot of small pieces in there which may be unavoidable with the natural stuff, but also it sparked up a ton when i dumped out the chimney. is this normal?

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Yes and yes.
I think you'll find some useful info in this thread: Charcoal woes

I normally use Royal oak but I also like Frontieras well as Wicked Good..I like Wicked Good a lot but its not easy to find
about the only lump ive tried and didnt like was Cowboy

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First Place BBQ Sauce - 2010 NBBQA ( Natl BBQ Assoc) Awards of Excellence

Like Red, I also use Royal Oak (and Kingsford Competition). But most often I use "real" wood.
For many years my cousin made lump from the trees felled on his woodlot. Sadly, he's now too old to continue.

I am leery of foreign-sourced stuff as it often is "sparky" and burns way too fast.

Original Charcoal Co was one that sparked quite a bit when lighting but it burned a long time ..some of the best lump Ive ever used..nice size pieces along with some incrediibly large pieces as well..sadly cant find it at Costco anymore

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First Place BBQ Sauce - 2010 NBBQA ( Natl BBQ Assoc) Awards of Excellence

Cowboy sparks, pops like mad and burns unevenly. Wicked Good is, well, wicked good, but not available in Chicagoland without a serious up-charge. Royal Oak has held me in good stead for the last decade or so.

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Sauce on the side, always, implied, axiomatic..........never a doubt, BBQ sauce without.

Low & Slow

so perhaps the sparking is not necessarily an indicator of bad quality then i think i am getting from y'all. the quality is better assessed on length and evenness of burn . . .

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Might I suggest you spend some time on the Lump Charcoal Database.

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Sauce on the side, always, implied, axiomatic..........never a doubt, BBQ sauce without.

Low & Slow

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this is my blog

I feel enlightened now after reading that, lol!

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Fettuccine alfredo is mac and cheese for adults.

i see that there is a used blue-tiled Kamodo for sale near here this weekend. I won't know til I get there what the asking price is, but I suspect the organizers don't know what they've got; they've described it simply as a "tiled grill." Probably still out of my price range, but just curious, what would be a good price for a used one? Are there any things to look for to determine whether or not it's still functional? Could it possible be nonfunctional? It looks okay on the outside, but I've only got one fuzzy photo to go by. I see similar models on the Komodo Kamodo website, but I don't really know if this is a smoker or a grill or if that's a stupid question (if they do both). The model in the photo looks similar to Ronnie_Suburban's, but a lighter blue tile and I think a little narrower in diameter.

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"I would gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today."

New ones run about $3,500.00, from what I hear but I haven't confirmed that.

Look for, among other things, cracks in the ceramic interior or lots of tile loss. For me, those things would be deal-breakers at any price. In theory, the tile can be repaired. I doubt the same is true of the ceramic.

=R=

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I just wanna live until I gotta die. I know I ain't perfect but God knows I try. --Todd Snider

Twitter: ronniesuburban

Jim, just wondering, did you (or anyone else here) ever try out the propane Brinkman? I saw one at Home Depot today that reminded me of your earlier post on this. I realize it's not real smoking if it's not using wood or charcoal, but I'm afraid my only options for the time being are a propane or electric smoker. (Don't bother telling me wood/charcoal's the only way to go: it's already been vetoed.) Of the two, I'd prefer propane over electric, for the reason others have mentioned: real fire.

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"I would gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today."

I wish I knew what that one I saw ended up going for. But even at a fraction of the cost of a new one I couldn't have gotten it anyway. I will say though that the exterior of it looked pretty worn - basically the same style and color as yours, Ronnie (maybe an older model? seemed skinnier in the photographs), but looked much older and not well cared for.

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"I would gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today."

That style of grill, known as a kamado, has its origins in Asia and was loosely patterned after the shape of early clay cooking pots. There are several brands of kamados and even Big Green Eggs emulate them. I have a Kamodo, which is made in Indonesia. The company is owned and operated by Dennis Linkletter, grandson of Art, the famous tv personality. He actually started it as a hobby because of his passion for the cooking method.

In any case, the pre-purchase research I did led me to believe that while not cheap, the Kamodos were the best of the lot . . . consistent and durable. That's certainly turned out -- after 3 years -- to be true. It cooks very consistently, holds temperature a long time even in very cold weather and gets really hot for grilling (because of the shape and air flow). I've gone over 24 hours on one load of fuel one more than one occasion. And it doesn't hurt that the thing is just beautiful to look at. But I realized as soon as I bought it that it would probably get beat up by the weather elements here, so I bought a very high-grade cover from a third party and it's worked out great. Fwiw, they were considerably cheaper 3 years ago, when I bought mine.

Here's a pic of my Kamodo Kamado . . .


Kamodo Kamado

=R=

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I just wanna live until I gotta die. I know I ain't perfect but God knows I try. --Todd Snider

Twitter: ronniesuburban

24 hours on one load of fuel...DANG!!
What were ya burning and how much went in her?
Nice smoker love to smoke several pounds of tips and hickory on that blue cooker!

Anyone out there running any ugly drum type set ups? I am thinking bout rolling with one of these http://www.whitearcsmokers.com/ Dudes out of Gary IN.

I typically use a mix that's mostly lump, about 10-15 Royal Oak Food Service natural briquettes and 4-5 good-sized chunks of apple or hickory. All in all, I'd say it's about 1.5 Weber chimneys worth of total fuel. Ideally, I like to burn at about 250 and with appropriate vent control -- bottom vent open just a sliver -- it'll go a long time on that one load of fuel. Because of the thick ceramic walls, the thing holds consistent temperature (too consistent for some people ) for a long time, even in cold, windy conditions.

I love my WSM too and frankly, I use it more often than the KK. But there are times when the KK is perfect. Just yesterday, for example, I had 2 wagyu briskets that I'd cured and needed to smoke into pastramis. I set up the KK, deposited the briskets side by side on the top rack and just let it go. I checked it a couple of times in the first 90 minutes and the temp was holding steady at about 250 F. After that, I just "forgot about it" for a while. 7 hours later, I took the pastramis off and the cooker was still at 250 F. I'm sure it burned for a long time after that but it was too damned cold to go out and check.

p.s. The pastramis turned out great.

=R=

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I just wanna live until I gotta die. I know I ain't perfect but God knows I try. --Todd Snider

Twitter: ronniesuburban

had the klose pit down at fair oks farm from a event 2 weeks ago.
so yesterday brought it home & fired it up smoked 2 shoulders(11 lbs)ea.
they where great

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philw bbq cbj for kcbs &M.I.M. carolina pit masters

I've built a couple of them and like them quite a bit. It looks like that guy knows what he's doing, that's a great straightforward smoker that appears to be well built. The price isn't bad at all, I was actually surprised at how little he's charging.

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It is VERY important to be smart when you're doing something stupid

- Chris

have to agree on his pricing ..heck his charcoal basket alone is a steal at 25..I used to get 45-50 bucks for them back when my neighbor was kicking them out in his garage

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First Place BBQ Sauce - 2010 NBBQA ( Natl BBQ Assoc) Awards of Excellence

Snow on the way late tonight...anybody smokin' anything this weekend?

How did the smoke go buzzd? I hope it warms up a bit next week to burn some lump and Hickory and do 2 slabs of babys!

Some baby back ribs in January, I love it! Two out of the three kids had a bad case of rib face

dan

sorry for the delay in reply--bone in pork loin may be my new favorite cut of pork to roast/smoke/grill---cooked at 200deg until reached 135°internal---then cranked the temp to about 600deg on the BGE to 'sear' the outside--sliced off pork lollipops--melt in the mouth tender from end to end with crusty pork goodness on the exterior and juicy sweet on the inside---downside is that these cuts are hard to find in this neck of the woods!

We had something slightly different in mind - just plain old roast brisket, not smoked (but my justification for posting here is at threadsend.) We got one at Harvestime on Lawrence. Had really no idea what we were doing. They showed us a 7-lber, but said it'd be a lot smaller after they prepped it. And it was. They came back with 3 lbs of meat, and it was only after googling a bit and coming here that we realized what had happened - I'm pretty sure they gave us only the flat.

It worked well - it was the perfect amount of meat for our small extended family (tonight was a very late "Christmas" and we served brisket to reflect our mixed family ) We slow-cooked for 4 hours, cooled overnight, cut and rewarmed. Probably we should have either turned the temp down a bit in rewarming (it started at 200) or made sure we really ate when we expected to (ended up rewarming for 1:45 rather than 1:15 as we'd planned.) It had been slightly moister when we tasted it before rewarming, but it was still pretty good when served.

I post mostly by way of saying that Harvestime has brisket, seemingly the full cryovac packer cut, and though they whittled it down without prompting, I bet you could ask them to give you the whole thing if you were less clueless than we were. I look forward to trying it again.

A start weight of 7/lbs is in all likelihood an untrimmed flat, not a full packer cut brisket.

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Sauce on the side, always, implied, axiomatic..........never a doubt, BBQ sauce without.

Low & Slow

Thanks. Can you elaborate a bit, or is there more discussion up-thread somewhere? I did try to do the research, but this is a very long thread, and there are loads of unpromising references to brisket in the search (well, promising in many ways, but not in helping me figure out what the Harvestime cut was when it was still 7 lbs.) What you suggest does sound more like what they told us, but when they carved 4 of the 7 lbs away, I started to think that they must have done something more than just trim fat. I guess what I'm curious about - was there 4 lbs of fat? Or are they also trimming some of the meat and/or cartilage or bone?

When I bought my full packer cut, I opted for the smallest one since it was only 5 of us eating it. It was still 11lbs. I cut off about 2-3 lbs of fat and still left a nice fat cap on the entire brisket but there was still another 1-2lbs of fat. As you read upthread (or somewhere else), there are two pieces to the brisket - a flat and point. The packer cut contains both pieces. I'm guessing that they separated the flat and point, showed you the flat (@ about 7lbs) and then trimmed the excess fat away to make a trimmed flat for braising or roasting. If you were to smoke it for 10 hours, you'd want more fat to keep it moist so they probably wouldn't have trimmed all the fat off. There is a lot of fat on the full cut but it comes in handy when you smoke it. When you buy a trimmed, cryo'd flat at Costco, for example, it'll be around 4-5 lbs. Next time, you could ask for it untrimmed and cut the fat off yourself to see what you get but I think what you bought was a typical trimmed flat. There are more experienced people on here and they can chime in as well but I hope this helps.