food First smoke of the season

Blister

Blister

Hello all,

I haven't had much time to lurk around here as I have in the past. Seems like work and life are getting in the way of all my hobbies! We're only in May and we're already being hit with hot dry days. So much so that we're already battleing forest fires around the area.

Since it's a long weekend here in Canada (Victoria Day) I decided to bust out the Bradley Original Smoker and get my first smoke of the season going! Picked up a pork shoulder yesterday and whipped up a batch of Jerk Pork sauce.

Pork shoulder.



Jerk Pork sauce with 9 J-MoA's I had frozen from last year. I've been saving these for exactly this moment! I was surprised they still had a bite despite being frozen. I was picking them out of the bag with my bare hands and decided to give my finger a test lick. Near instant heat and a moment later it felt like someone punched me in the diaphram.



Into a large ziploc bag with jerk sauce to marinate over night.



Out of the bag and onto a rack. Made sure to put the extra sauce on it.



Into my Original Bradley Smoker. I picked it up last year and have only a cuple of smokes under my belt before I had to put it away for the winter. Hoping to give it a good go this summer! It's too shiney for my liking.



Now to sit and wait. I don't think I have enough beer to last me the weekend. Especially for a day of smoking. There ain't much in life that's better than a cold beer and poking meet on a grill, in a smoker or on the Q!

Neil
 
It's up to 150f and I've given it a few sprays of apple juice. The Mrs. wants to do a pulled pork, but I'm pretty hungry...
 
Blister said:
There ain't much in life that's better than a cold beer and poking meet on a grill, in a smoker or on the Q!
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Damn you, Blister, and your poor spelling. That was about to be my next signature!!!
 
 
 
(awesome looking butt. I hope you take pics of the process of dirtying up that smoker this summer!)
 
frydad4 said:
 
Damn you, Blister, and your poor spelling. That was about to be my next signature!!!
 
 
 
(awesome looking butt. I hope you take pics of the process of dirtying up that smoker this summer!)
Click to expand...
I blame it on the beer and android auto correct! :lol:

Neil
 
Blister said:
on the Q and in a convention oven.

Neil
Click to expand...
 
Wait. In a conventional oven, or convection? Not sure what convention is, unless you are having a bunch of people over and speaking. :lol:
 
The Hot Pepper said:
 
Wait. In a conventional oven, or convection? Not sure what convention is, unless you are having a bunch of people over and speaking. :lol:
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Awe sheesh! There's only so much one man can blame on android and auto correct...
 
Awe sheesh is right! Plenty of people call a "regular" oven a "conventional" oven, to differentiate between convection ovens and such. Is it proper to say such? Who cares?! Do I say "conventional" oven? Nah - I'm lazy - "oven" is sufficient. 
 
But…… I wanna see a smoked butt!!!!!!!!!!!!!  ;)
 
Conventional yes as I said lol.
 
But a convention is a seminar of sorts. ;)
 
I'll take it you meant conventional. 
 
Roguejim said:
Can you tell me about the Bradley?  How long can it go unattended?  Does it hold temp well?
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I really like the Bradley so far. It's basically a bar fridge that has a heating element in the back of it. It has a smoke box with an element on it that will auto advance a new wood bisquette every 20 minutes. It holds around 25 bisquette's (pucks) and will push the old burnt ones off the burner and into a water bowl to stop it from burning before it turns into white ash. Apparently this prevents you from having a bitter tasting meat. This equates to about 8.25 hours of unattended time should you want to smoke something that long.

In terms of it's ability to hold heat, it was "OK" in the early fall. Cooler temps and winds really rob it of heat. I'm talking about 10c down to 0c. Today it was around 18-20c and the smoker easily held 225-250F. The version I have is a simple dial for the heat adjustment, but you can go full on digital if you want. It allows you to control the temperatures for x amount of time before changing it to something else an hour later. My dad has this one and I can live without it. I just don't need it. You are limited to the Bradley bisquette's, but it's not really something that bothers me. They have a variety of pucks in what seems like all the varieties you'd need for fish to beef and game.

I have the 4 rack version and it does the trick for me and my small family of 3. We've never run more than 2 racks of chicken at one time. Bigger families or larger batches of smoked goods may require more space. I'm hoping to try making some jerky in it at some point this year and would think that I could use more space. Won't know until I try though.

Given that it is electric you can't let the digital box get wet. For some reason electric components and water don't get along... I had concerns about this until I read about members of the Bradley forum that had stored their smokers outside for 10 years and had replaced their smoker covers 3x's over that span. They've never had a problem. Seemed durable enough for me.

I'm a northern Canadian boy and have no experience with "real" smokers from down south, but this seems to do the trick for me. I tried the offset smoker and had a heck of a time with controlling the heat. By comparison, the Bradley is really quite simple to use. In fact the selling point for me was a podcast I had listened to where a blind man gave his experience on it. Heck if he can get decent results with it, I should be able to as well. It's almost to the point of being set it and forget it. There are modifications for adding a second element for more heat should you want/need it. That said, I'm guessing that during the summer time I'll probably have more trouble keeping the heat low enough as opposed to keeping it up to temperature.

With all that said, this is how the jerk pork turned out. Temps read at 170f and juices ran clear, but it was still fairly pink. I think I'd leave it in for a bit more time on my next go round.



It was crazy juicy and really tender.



Neil
 
Blister said:
I really like the Bradley so far. It's basically a bar fridge that has a heating element in the back of it. It has a smoke box with an element on it that will auto advance a new wood bisquette every 20 minutes. It holds around 25 bisquette's (pucks) and will push the old burnt ones off the burner and into a water bowl to stop it from burning before it turns into white ash. Apparently this prevents you from having a bitter tasting meat. This equates to about 8.25 hours of unattended time should you want to smoke something that long.

In terms of it's ability to hold heat, it was "OK" in the early fall. Cooler temps and winds really rob it of heat. I'm talking about 10c down to 0c. Today it was around 18-20c and the smoker easily held 225-250F. The version I have is a simple dial for the heat adjustment, but you can go full on digital if you want. It allows you to control the temperatures for x amount of time before changing it to something else an hour later. My dad has this one and I can live without it. I just don't need it. You are limited to the Bradley bisquette's, but it's not really something that bothers me. They have a variety of pucks in what seems like all the varieties you'd need for fish to beef and game.

I have the 4 rack version and it does the trick for me and my small family of 3. We've never run more than 2 racks of chicken at one time. Bigger families or larger batches of smoked goods may require more space. I'm hoping to try making some jerky in it at some point this year and would think that I could use more space. Won't know until I try though.

Given that it is electric you can't let the digital box get wet. For some reason electric components and water don't get along... I had concerns about this until I read about members of the Bradley forum that had stored their smokers outside for 10 years and had replaced their smoker covers 3x's over that span. They've never had a problem. Seemed durable enough for me.

I'm a northern Canadian boy and have no experience with "real" smokers from down south, but this seems to do the trick for me. I tried the offset smoker and had a heck of a time with controlling the heat. By comparison, the Bradley is really quite simple to use. In fact the selling point for me was a podcast I had listened to where a blind man gave his experience on it. Heck if he can get decent results with it, I should be able to as well. It's almost to the point of being set it and forget it. There are modifications for adding a second element for more heat should you want/need it. That said, I'm guessing that during the summer time I'll probably have more trouble keeping the heat low enough as opposed to keeping it up to temperature.

With all that said, this is how the jerk pork turned out. Temps read at 170f and juices ran clear, but it was still fairly pink. I think I'd leave it in for a bit more time on my next go round.



It was crazy juicy and really tender.



Neil
Click to expand...
Thanks.  Is the smoke flavor strong, minimal, somewhere in between?  My gripe with my Traeger (wood pellets) is with the delicate smoke flavor, almost non-existent.
 
The Bradley is exactly like my electric smoker in many ways. Pork looks great! I bought the side smoke unit for mine to allow cold smoking and unattended smoke for very long periods of time. I can't speak for the Bradley but using woods chips in mine allows a very good smoke flavor to come through. 
 
That looks fantastic!  So juicy, and you must have ninja knife skills or used a slicer to get such thin uniform slices.  Well done!
 
Roguejim said:
Thanks.  Is the smoke flavor strong, minimal, somewhere in between?  My gripe with my Traeger (wood pellets) is with the delicate smoke flavor, almost non-existent.
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Jim,

I had only used 6 pucks (1hour 40 minutes) for this butt so the smoke was probably a bit light for most peoples taste. When I was looking around for cook times I had seen that most people smoke their butts for about 4 hours. The flavour could also have been a bit mild given that I used 4 pucks apple and 2 pucks hickory. I'd say that's another nice thing about the Bradley. You can layer in different woods to give you different flavours and still not have to do much more than stack different pucks in the feeder.

I can tell you that the smoke is strong enough that when you open the fridge, you can smell the pork throughout the kitchen.

My dad did ribs in his Bradley and found that you certainly can get a deep smoke flavour that's to the point where it's overpowering. I believe he used hickory.

I smoked up a block of cheese just before winter last year. I found it a bit too overpowering for my liking. Interesting idea though. Some people on the Bradley forum do cheese by the smoker load. Good thing I don't really care for it because that would be a few $100 here in Canada given how expensive it is compared to the US.

I had also seen a post where a guy put a wide pan of cream into his smoker and used a cold smoke box to give it a light flavour before using it to make ice cream. I have no idea how that would be, but I'd like to give it a try with my Vanil-hab ice cream and see what it's like.



I really like how easy it is to maintain a temperature. I just couldn't get the hang of it with the offset smoker I got from my grandpa. One other thing I'll mention about Bradley is that I've seen people post in their forums about a bum element or switch. It seems as though they respond very quickly and send out the parts needed. You're allowed to open the box and do the repairs yourself without voiding the warranty. I just hope that the product they've put out is reliable enough to not worry about repairs for a long time.

JoynersHotPeppers said:
The Bradley is exactly like my electric smoker in many ways. Pork looks great! I bought the side smoke unit for mine to allow cold smoking and unattended smoke for very long periods of time. I can't speak for the Bradley but using woods chips in mine allows a very good smoke flavor to come through.
Click to expand...
  

Thanks JHP! The Bradley sounds very comparable to the one you have.

JayT said:
That looks fantastic!  So juicy, and you must have ninja knife skills or used a slicer to get such thin uniform slices.  Well done!
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Thanks Jay! It was crazy juicy. Last night I used my Shun 8" chefs knife on it. A sharp knife really helps. Especially since it was so tender. I'll be running it though a slicer today now that it's had a chance to cool and stiffen up a bit in the fridge. I like it so thin that it only has one side. That way you can pile it high without making it hard to bite into.

Neil
 
Blister said:
Jim,

I had only used 6 pucks (1hour 40 minutes) for this butt so the smoke was probably a bit light for most peoples taste. When I was looking around for cook times I had seen that most people smoke their butts for about 4 hours. The flavour could also have been a bit mild given that I used 4 pucks apple and 2 pucks hickory. I'd say that's another nice thing about the Bradley. You can layer in different woods to give you different flavours and still not have to do much more than stack different pucks in the feeder.

I can tell you that the smoke is strong enough that when you open the fridge, you can smell the pork throughout the kitchen.

My dad did ribs in his Bradley and found that you certainly can get a deep smoke flavour that's to the point where it's overpowering. I believe he used hickory.

I smoked up a block of cheese just before winter last year. I found it a bit too overpowering for my liking. Interesting idea though. Some people on the Bradley forum do cheese by the smoker load. Good thing I don't really care for it because that would be a few $100 here in Canada given how expensive it is compared to the US.

I had also seen a post where a guy put a wide pan of cream into his smoker and used a cold smoke box to give it a light flavour before using it to make ice cream. I have no idea how that would be, but I'd like to give it a try with my Vanil-hab ice cream and see what it's like.



I really like how easy it is to maintain a temperature. I just couldn't get the hang of it with the offset smoker I got from my grandpa. One other thing I'll mention about Bradley is that I've seen people post in their forums about a bum element or switch. It seems as though they respond very quickly and send out the parts needed. You're allowed to open the box and do the repairs yourself without voiding the warranty. I just hope that the product they've put out is reliable enough to not worry about repairs for a long time.

  

Thanks JHP! The Bradley sounds very comparable to the one you have.

Thanks Jay! It was crazy juicy. Last night I used my Shun 8" chefs knife on it. A sharp knife really helps. Especially since it was so tender. I'll be running it though a slicer today now that it's had a chance to cool and stiffen up a bit in the fridge. I like it so thin that it only has one side. That way you can pile it high without making it hard to bite into.

Neil
Click to expand...
Thanks, man.  Depending on the butt size, of course, 4 hours seems really short, at least for pulling. 
 
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