I’m not sure how I got from “I’m not BBQ’s biggest fan” to “Got to go pick up the smoker I got on FB Marketplace,” but cramming a big offset smoker and a pile of cherry and apple wood into my truck really felt like heading into the gray area that’s adjacent to BBQ Fandom.
If not quite entering BBQ Fandom, the whole process was, at the very least, exceptionally Texan.
I’ve been back and forth between Texas and the East Coast a lot over these past 15 years. It wasn’t until my last visit in October that I realized the smell of BBQ and my idea of Home are cemented together.
Maybe because people smoked a lot of meat in my neighborhood growing up? The proliferation of BBQ restaurants scenting the air in Texas in general? My parents bringing home Strack’s on a regular basis? The fact that some of the most lovely people are doing great things with BBQ in Texas?
I don’t know. Maybe I need to reassess my idea that I’m not a big BBQ fan, come to think of it. Can I be a BBQ fan if I really only want brisket and sausage?
Minor introspective crises aside, I did not scout out a second-hand smoker to function as some giant home-scented candle. I stalked my favorite second-hand marketplace (RIP Craigslist) because I need brisket.
Brisket King NYC only comes around once a year, and outside of that, it can be hard to source consistently good brisket near me. There are a couple of places that scratch the itch, but after going home a couple of months ago and being reminded why people travel to Texas to eat and learn BBQ, I reapplied myself to the offset smoker search.
It is, unsurprisingly, difficult to find decent second-hand offset smokers in the Hudson Valley (although, at the time of writing, suddenly two quite nice cu$tom smokers popped up. 8500 was a little out of my price range, though). There are plenty of pellet smokers (fine, but I was looking for a solid offset), and it took probably 6 months total for me to find something decent, if you count the time searching pre- and post-Texas trip.
The Old Country offset smoker showed up in my devastatingly accurate FB Marketplace feed on a quiet Saturday morning. I had my search radius set to an hour away, but this one was just 10 minutes from my house. It was meant to be, meant for me.
I tore down the road to go pick it up and the wood that came with it, hauled everything home, refilled the campfire wood rack with new, tastier wood, and set the smoker on the patio with a lot of huffing and puffing.
Then it sat there for a week or so. I started reading, and reading, and reading. I wasn’t so worried about what cuts to buy or seasonings to use; I wanted to control the fire. I’ve been doing some wood-fired cooking for the past few years. It’s challenging; I’ve ended up with some very charred pieces of protein, so I knew this was where my weak point is.
Now, I got the smoker for brisket, but I know better now than to come out of the gate swinging with the biggest or most important project that I can think of. I learned this the hard way over a million years, mostly by not learning the lesson the first 17 times and staring down irreparable, inedible errors, wondering bitterly why I repeatedly and voluntarily choose to operate in this way.
But I have finally learned. So I didn’t immediately slap a brisket on the smoker.
I went with chicken first, then some olives. With some very helpful pointers from extremely talented people, I felt confident enough to move on to a bigger piece of meat.
If I hadn’t had a Bluetooth thermometer, I feel like cooking the pork butt would have been exponentially more difficult. While I am not tech-averse when it comes to food, I debated on whether or not I should get a fancy thermometer. It feels a little like cheating when your thermometer can send a chart to your phone.
I had accidentally killed two thermometers earlier that month in separate incidents so decided it wouldn’t hurt to replace and upgrade what I consider a key kitchen tool. To top it off, when I was testing things out, I found that the thermometer mounted on the smoker was 100 degrees off. Perfect.
Armed with four probes that could be used in food or to measure ambient temperature, I set off cooking the pork. It’s been a neat experience learning how to watch smoke color to gauge temperature and combustion (or flavor if we want to argue about that). I’m still in the trenches learning how to pick the perfect chunk of wood to bump up the temperature however many degrees I need it or altering cooking temperatures and techniques to avoid a big stall when cooking a large chunk of meat.
It was a long process. I was supposed to keep the cooking chamber at 225F but it swung between 215 and 275 with panicked spikes to 300. The chicken and olives took two hours to cook, the pork took 13. I was pulling it from the smoker at 2am because that’s what I get for starting it at 1pm like a chump.
There was no fancy seasoning, just salt and pepper. The bark, a crispy coat that can form around the protein you’re smoking, turned out nicely, and the meat fell apart with a touch.
I made some BBQ sauce for half the batch of pork and froze the other half. I used to add a bit of smoke flavoring to my homemade BBQ sauce when I’d braise pork for pulled pork, but it doesn’t compare to real smoked food. It’s not bad, but it’s not the same. The other half of the pork butt maybe will be used for tacos, maybe I’ll go in a bit of a French direction with white beans and sausage, maybe a gumbo.
But not nachos. I get bothered when I see smoked pulled pork on nachos and I’m not sure why. I feel the same way about chicken on pizza. There’s no rational explanation. It’s ok if you do it, I will just… not.
While pulled pork with BBQ sauce is not at the top of my list of Things I Love to Eat, it is one of my family’s, so I have been eating it with them and enjoying their enjoyment. It also absolutely tastes like home. It’s a nice situation, watching the people I love the most enjoy something that is Home to me, making it Home for them, too. I feel more empowered to make brisket now, but I am still psyching myself out since I can not do anything without turning it into an evaluation of my total worth as a person, apparently. Uh, I’m working on this.
Things That Helped Me Start Smoking in the New-to-Me Offset Smoker that Will Really Just Be for Brisket
The FTC says I need to tell you that there are affiliate links ahead. When it comes to books, many of the books that I recommend can also be found second-hand on AbeBooks.com, or you can check them out from your local library with Libby without even leaving your house. So, obviously, I’m pretty bad about making any money with affiliate links, but I think everyone should be able to access knowledge, especially about food.
- Meathead has been really helpful. It has accessible breakdowns of the science behind smoking and BBQ. It’s fun to read and sent me down a few rabbit holes apart from the book. It feels like talking with a neighbor who knows exactly what they’re doing and is excited to share the information.
- Franklin BBQ: A Meat-Smoking Manifesto explains smoke and fire-building in a way that helped me not feel so anxious to get started. It goes in-depth about the process with helpful photos and is very eloquent. I’ll probably be referencing this this most when I put the brisket on.
- ThermoPro TP25 is the four-probe thermometer that altered my screen time reports this month, beating out such favorite time wasters as Instagram and Mail. I spent a lot of time watching the charts build when things were cooking, cross referencing temperature climbs in meat vs. temperature in the cooking chamber and saving them for future reference. Never know when you will want to compare different cooks. Or maybe that’s just me. Anyways, great thermometer, 10/10.