New Guy, Need Help


 
I

Ian Smyth

New member
Hi all, first off... thanks so much for the great resource! I've been reading and trying to study up. I got a 14.5" smoker from my brother as a wedding gift.

I'm trying to smoke chicken wings tonight (2nd try on the smoker) and need advice. Do I need to switch the wings 1/2 way through. AKA switch the top half and the bottom rack?

I have a need wife to impress. Please Help :)
 
No you can leave them on the rack you started with from start to finish, also you do not need to flip them unless you would really like to. When I do chicken i like to run the smoker at high heat so i put in the coal, add my lite to the unlite, let it start going,add my wood chucks, then put the lower half on and let it build up some temp. add the rack,or racks of wings and let the smoker run with all the vents wide open. it should hit around 325 or so. 45 minutes to a hour and your eating. or around 150 to 160 internal temp with a meat probe thermometer.
This make sense to you? if not ask away for more help.

Kevin
 
I did wings for the office a few weeks ago and did it that way. They came out fine. I normally only cook on one grate, so I would defer to Kevin on this one. Wings are fairly forgiving, so I suspect that you could do it without switching them with no problem. I usually don't flip my wings either.

I took out the water pan, set the thermometer on the bottom rack, used GrillGrates on both racks, and cooked at around 360 for 45 minutes. It takes some time, running the wsm wide open, to get the wsm up to temp, and I don't put the wings on until it gets up to temp. When I did the wings for the office, at around the half-way point, I pulled both racks and switched wings between the upper and lower rack based on appearance. Another thing that I think I learned here is that, with wings, I season them & put them on wire racks in the fridge for anywhere from 2 hours to 24 hours (as much time as I can) to try and get the skin dry to help it crisp up while cooking. Between that, the high temps, and the GrillGrates, the skin is usually pretty crisp, almost like it's fried.
 
I have used two Mavericks to check my rack temp once and they were both within 10 degress of each other, I never take out my water pan just use it as a diffuser. I have not tried the rack in frig to dry them out but will here on my next cook.

I have a 18.5 WSM so my results will differ a bit but not that much. folks liked my wings as much or more than BW3's, which made me blush....
 
That's good to know about the narrow temp difference. I can't believe I haven't thought to test that before, but it's on my to do list now.

I leave the water pan in as a diffuser for almost everything else (w/ a foiled saucer but no water), but I tried using the GrillGrates as a diffuser for wings and liked the results so have been sticking with that lately for wings.
 
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