I use the racks that are for my Bradley smoker (which I don’t really use much since building my drum smoker), but any stainless cooling rack should work.
Anyone ever smoke a duck? Any tips?
I like my duck breast to be medium rare, so smoking a whole duck probably isn’t what I would do since I wouldn’t be able to get the legs and breast perfect at the same time. I’ve done duck breast separately and it is pretty good and there are a lot of good recipes out there. What I really want to figure out is smoking duck legs. I don’t see much out there, so I’m going to experiment with it.
Since eating John Lewis’ brisket a couple weeks back, my brisket jones has fully returned. Been obsessed lately if I’m being honest.
Had a good run yesterday. 12.75lb CAB packer, trimmed down the fat a good bit. On the BGE at 5am at 245. Egg hovered in the 235-245 range most of day. Hit stall around 11:00. Pushed through around 3. At that point, wrapped in pink paper, into the oven at 250 for final three hours and pulled at 202. Rested 90 mins down to 145 before slicing. No complaints. Basically Franklin’s method-at home (with Lewis’ mustard rub tweak).
Anyone here use the DigiQ products on their BGE? Specifically I’m talking about the kit that has the fan/control unit and the meat/pit probe setup. I’m doing a large shoulder this weekend and think it would do wonders on a long smoke and help me not nervously get up all the time at night to check on things…
I can’t find my post at the moment but I have commented on the DigiQ on this forum before. I have one, re-branded as BGE but still also marked as a DigiQ to go with my BGE XL. After three years I can only say it has pros and cons,
Pro’s;
Provides (mostly) stable temps in windy, cold, adverse conditions
Allows one to set and go to sleep for overnight cooks (altho this can be accomplished without)
Neat gizmo factor-and I say that in all sincerity
Cons;
Pain in the ass to install/set up
Prone to failure-all kinds-outright mechanical/electrical, false temp readings, viper (fan) failure, you name it.
Can cause fire to struggle
Probe temps are not as reliable as Thermopen
$350 of unnecessary expense
Becomes a crutch/hinders good fire building/air flow management skills.
Interesting points Mitch. My first inclination was it would be great for the overnight cooks but at the same time realized that if something went wrong, power went out, etc. than I could be relying too heavily on technology. I’ve never really had problems on overnight cooks in the past, usually get up once or twice to check and have been fine.
Update: did a 14lb whole shoulder (removed shank) from Snake River Farms of Berkshire pork. Have only had ribs from this breed before and can say without a doubt it was the best pulled pork I’ve ever done. Cooked for about 19 hours between 225-275 on the BGE indirect, no injection just simple dry rub with yellow mustard as binder. The real surprise even after trimming it down (it came nicely pre-trimmed but I’m picky so took of about another pound or so of silver tissue/fat) was how much fat I rendered out, it was probably about half a gallon at least!
![[wow.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/7/7d450e9830889c8943b674446a21b7254cad657e.gif "wow"){kind=small}
![[shock.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/0/0b1dcf699ec319f43254f92e3f145786dcd93904.gif "shock"){kind=small}
