Smoky Joe should do fine. Many people make their own. Just make sure the opening is very close to the grate. My grate actually rests on the edge of the Vortex on my kettle, but it's not enough to make it unstable.
What makes the Vortex so great with wings is that it turns your kettle into basically a high heat convection oven with the added bonus of smoke. You have the super heat source that is in close proximity to the lid. The lid reflects/circulates the heat and smoke around the wings and cooks them...
I concur with what's been said. I have no experience with cooking in such cold conditions, but have read that a welding blanket wrapped around the smoker and retained with heavy duty steel clips should help retain heat in your smoker which should reduce your fuel consumption.
Feeling confident after reading the entire bacon made easy megathread. I went to my local Costco and picked up a 10 lb. pork belly.
I cut the slab into 3 equal pieces and applied the correct amount of MTQ after weighing each individual piece. Tried 3 different varieties:
1. Just brown sugar...
Welcome to the addiction! The 14.5 is a beast of a little cooker. You'll find yourself Qing more if you get it, because it's so easy to get going and to clean. Congrats on a mighty fine first smoke!
Wanted some wings for the LSU game today and since it was an early start, I made a basic brine of saltvand brown sugar last night. I also had to do my first bacon slab today because it's going to rain buckets the next few days. (Later post). I pulled them from the brine, rinsed and rubbed with...