Recent content by Rudy Radelic

As long as you get decent thermometers (I use one on the grille surface, and another with a wired probe to monitor meat temps), it's a breeze to do a pork shoulder (butt). I smoked one, starting Monday at 10:15pm, and took it off at 2:45pm Tuesday. I let it rest in a cooler for just over two...

OK, that's great! I know the last kettle I bought did not come with a cover and since I bought my WSM used, I wasn't sure if it had one or not. For the price of the WSM, I feel it should come with a cover anyway. ;) And it's actually quite a nice one at that. My next investment is going to be...

An actual fire in the chimney creates that draft, but the smoker has the fire enclosed, so the only draft occurring is inside the WSM. When first lighting mine off, smoke seeps out slightly through the door and all the seams. I can only imagine how this would smell up the living space, not to...

Since mine has to live outdoors most of the year, I use the cover on it (with all vents open). Mine was a Craigslist find, and the cover came with it. (I think they have to be purchased separately on new WSMs, don't they?)

I started it overnight--it's in the upper 50s/low 60s, cloudy, with no wind whatsoever. The weekend was too miserable to bother.

I started the shoulder last night around 10:15pm, 9 pounds. 8am, the shoulder is at 180° (so it appears we made it through the stall). Grill surface temp was about 220° when I last checked at 2am (it held nicely there for four hours) but was at 270° when I checked it a few minutes ago...

Here I had planned to do my 9+ pound pork shoulder overnight, starting in a few hours. But the weather forecast has gotten progressively worse. Wind? Cold? Some light rain? Yeah, I can deal with those individually. But it appears that here in Michigan, we are getting a little nip of the...

Jumping in here with a related question--my last load of ribs used a bit of the coals. Other times, it used about half, on average. I think I had them going for between 5-6 hours. If doing a large pork shoulder (>9 lbs.), allowing for 1.5 to 2 hours, I don't think my 18.5" WSM could last on a...

@DGibb, the way Weber stocks parts for old kettles and smokers, I would think you could replace or even upgrade anything you wanted. Might cost a little more, but ~$300 for a new WSM is still a lot more. I scored my WSM from a Craigslist seller in Auburn Hills. He'd used it only three times...

Naturally yes, water does boil at 212, but why in subsequent smokes, occasionally drifting to higher temperatures (250-ish, at the grill surface), does it NOT boil? Air is a poor conductor of heat, so that partly explains its lack of boiling in normal circumstances. It was in the sun also. I...

I did baby-backs a couple of weeks ago that were fall-apart delicious. The pot wasn't boiling this time, but I had it nearly full to the top with water, and it helped keep that WSM at a perfect roasting temperature of about 225-235, barely fluctuating. I haven't had it boil since back in May...

By the time it was boiling, the coals had burned down a bit, at least a third of the way down into the ring. I will have to watch it more closely next time and see where the bowl and the coals lie. I filled the ring only up to the top, didn't mound them in the middle. And the bowl was seated...

I have smoked before--over the past couple of years, I've been doing small smokes on my 21" Weber kettle, and they have been coming out fine. But, temperature was a struggle, and I was constantly doing minor tweaks. By chance, someone on the local Craigslist was selling a WSM 18", practically...

I hated to waste a load of fuel, so I did my first smoke using a rack of baby-backs. Wasn't too happy with the outcome since the temperature fell to around 200 a few times, and flared up high once or twice, but some of that was due to the weather and the fact that I didn't use the MM to light...

I Minioned my WSM18 last Saturday, using nothing but briquettes (no smoke wood), and by the time I got done fussing with everything else (assembling everything, getting water in the pan, bringing out the meat, etc.) the coals had about 15-20 minutes to start up. No ill effects. And actually...