Hello!
I literally stumbled upon this forum when I saw a write-up of the smokey joe to mini-wsm mod randomly one night and sort of fell down the rabbit hole I guess. It's been eye opening and has inspired me to take my backyard cooking to a totally different place.
While previously I'd been happy with throwing a cast iron smoker box with some wet chips on my cheapo gasser, the idea of taking a $30 grill and turning it into a functional smoker was too much to pass up, so my 9 year old & I set out to source the parts & took it on as a father-son project. That first low & slow Boston Butt was a real eye-opener, I had never really "gotten" the fascination with Q before that, but when I tasted the smokey salty spicy goodness of fresh pulled pork melding with the creamy coleslaw... well my jaw dropped and I was rendered speechless (which as my boy will tell you seldom happens).
Fast forward through a few more butts, a bacon fattie, a couple batches of ABTs & a few drunken chickens and I realized I simply had to have better control over the temps without spending the whole day fussing with the vents and so I dusted off the soldering iron and ordered up the parts for a heatermeter ATC.
One more father-son project later & we were able to treat the extended family to the best backyard BBQ any of them had ever had over the Thanksgiving weekend, followed by a couple of lovely bison sirloin roasts smoked to medium rare in the days following... I figured it's finally time to say "howdy" to the great folks here who have put in the effort to share those 2 projects and the countless recipes and food pr0n photos I've read and looked at while waiting for parts and such. so.. Howdy!
tl;dr Saw the mini-wsm project, made one, fell in love w/ smoke cooking & am never ever looking back.
-Christian
I literally stumbled upon this forum when I saw a write-up of the smokey joe to mini-wsm mod randomly one night and sort of fell down the rabbit hole I guess. It's been eye opening and has inspired me to take my backyard cooking to a totally different place.
While previously I'd been happy with throwing a cast iron smoker box with some wet chips on my cheapo gasser, the idea of taking a $30 grill and turning it into a functional smoker was too much to pass up, so my 9 year old & I set out to source the parts & took it on as a father-son project. That first low & slow Boston Butt was a real eye-opener, I had never really "gotten" the fascination with Q before that, but when I tasted the smokey salty spicy goodness of fresh pulled pork melding with the creamy coleslaw... well my jaw dropped and I was rendered speechless (which as my boy will tell you seldom happens).
Fast forward through a few more butts, a bacon fattie, a couple batches of ABTs & a few drunken chickens and I realized I simply had to have better control over the temps without spending the whole day fussing with the vents and so I dusted off the soldering iron and ordered up the parts for a heatermeter ATC.
One more father-son project later & we were able to treat the extended family to the best backyard BBQ any of them had ever had over the Thanksgiving weekend, followed by a couple of lovely bison sirloin roasts smoked to medium rare in the days following... I figured it's finally time to say "howdy" to the great folks here who have put in the effort to share those 2 projects and the countless recipes and food pr0n photos I've read and looked at while waiting for parts and such. so.. Howdy!
tl;dr Saw the mini-wsm project, made one, fell in love w/ smoke cooking & am never ever looking back.
-Christian
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