Uber excited to begin my smoking journey


 
J

Joel Oliva

TVWBB Member
Hey BBQ'erz!! My wife bought me my my first WSM and I've been reading a lot of posts to get a general idea on how this baby works. I have a few questions hoping that y'all maybe able to help me out some.

A) So I decided to go with chicken as my first attempt. With my WSM I noticed I had 3 vents on the bottom and one on the lid. After reading a lot of postings, I've read that the first time firing up the WSM will go super high with the temperature. Can anyone help me understand the difference with the vents from where the coals are vs adjusting the vents on the top lid? Any recommendations for a first timer?

B) I'm thinking of having the water pan in with no water and only covering it with foil. Any take on this?

C) Any suggestions on an awesome rub for smoking a chicken?


I'm also thinking about buying a Weber Chimney(x2) to get the coals all hot and ready within minutes. It just seems like it's the best way to go with starting the coals as I've read on these posts.

Thank you BBQ gods for any help! I'm thinking maybe this Sunday will be THE DAY!!!

~Joel
 
You will do great - especially if you follow the instructions found here.

Adjust your bottom vents - keep your top vent 100% open.

Water pan with no water and aluminum foil sounds good. I like to keep an air gap between the aluminum foil and the bottom of the pan so that drippings are less likely to burn. You'll find more descriptions of this in any of the high-heat instructions for chicken.

2 Weber chmineys means getting the coals ready in half the time. That is exactly what I do. Well worth the $15 investment for the 2nd chimney.

Enjoy. The first smoke will probably be easier than you think. Bot oh so tasty.
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Thanks Pete for the reply/tips!!! I'm getting more anxious!

One more thing...since smoking a chicken goes pretty quick. Are there any preference with the coals? I was thinking of going with Kingsford Competitions. Probably may have to save the coals after since it'll only be used for about 1.5 hours with a temp of 350 degrees. Sounds ok??
 
Joel, Welcome to the great world of Weber BBQ. At 350 my chicken only takes 40-50 min. The type of coals you use is a matter of personal choice, many option and many varied opinions.
I agree with no need for water in the pan. You will control your heat primarily with the bottom vents and keep the top open all the way. The WSM was really designed for low cooking temps in the 200-250 range. You can get yours hotter but may need some extra manipulations, ie open the door, open the lid, use more hot coals etc.

Good luck and Happy Smokin'

Mark
 
Originally posted by Pete Z:
You will do great - especially if you follow the instructions found here.

Adjust your bottom vents - keep your top vent 100% open.

Water pan with no water and aluminum foil sounds good. I like to keep an air gap between the aluminum foil and the bottom of the pan so that drippings are less likely to burn. You'll find more descriptions of this in any of the high-heat instructions for chicken.

2 Weber chmineys means getting the coals ready in half the time. That is exactly what I do. Well worth the $15 investment for the 2nd chimney.

Enjoy. The first smoke will probably be easier than you think. Bot oh so tasty.
wsmsmile8gm.gif
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What Pete said. Good advice there!

The top vent is only for helping in keeping precipitation out when not cooking and for saving partially used charcoal at the end of a cook if you choose (a good way to see if your wsm has good door/section/lid fit).

You asked about chicken rub. Well, don't think of it as rub w/ a chicken. Just dust it on as a seasoning just like grilling, and I like a typical Kansas City type bbq rub like Paul Kirk's. Any recipes that Chris A. has posted for his chicken is good too, I'm sure. If cooking whole chickens, I dry brine (or called salting?), and if only cooking dark, I usually marinate in an Italian dressing overnight.

Chris's site has lots of good help, and probably the only thing I differ w/ him is how to put the smoke wood on. I prefer it all to be buried in the coals for a cleaner smoke, and I only bring it up since you're cooking chicken, and poultry doesn't take to heavy smoke well at all. Since I like to bury the wood in the unlit charcoal, I prefer to do Jim Minion's method, even w/ short chicken cooks. Charcoal is cheap, and any leftover can be reused. You can turn the door upside down and prop it up w/ a crack if you want more heat, but you probably won't need to since your cooker is new.
 
Welcome!

For the WSM Beginner, I recommend you do a 'practice' run with no meat so you can learn how your WSM reacts and how to regulate its temps.

I also would not recommend chicken as a first cook. Pork butt is much more 'forgiving' for the beginner.

A) Top vent full open. Bottom vents are adjusted to maitain target temp. I start with bottom vents are full open at startup then closed down as it approaches the target temp. Typcially, my 18" WSM will hold ~250º with each bottom vent open only the thickness of a nickel.

B) I recommend Beginners use water until they have mastered temp control. Water helps regulate the heat and mitigates any temp 'rollercoster' due to improper vent adjustment.

C) Rubs are soooo subjective. IMO, any of the rubs posted here are quite good as well as commercial rubs like Stubbs.

Buying a 2nd chimney just to speed things up? You're talking about saving a few minutes when typcial cooks take hours? Slow down, relax, enjoy.

Lump charcoal typcially burns hotter than briquettes. IMO, for the backyard Q'er, just stick with the 'standards' and avoid the fancy-schmancy 'competition' stuff.
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Good luck!
 
Joel you want to go easy with the wood for smoking a chicken. One or 2 lumps is all you need. Hickory and apple are my regulars.
 
Wow! This place is awesome! It's like having my own personal trainers! You guys ROCK!! Thank you all again!

Now if I decide to go with the Chimneys, does it typically take 2 full Weber chimney's to fill up the charcoal ring on the WSM 18.5"? Should I stack some unlit charcoals inside the ring at all or on top of hot coals at all?

I'm planning on throwing on a "whole chicken". I'm such a beginner that I don't even know if it's possible to just put slices of dark meet or white meat on a WSM? (thought it was only best to do whole poultry's?)

I read somewhere that when smoking, it's best not to use wet marinates as it'll just burn, so dry seasonings for poultry and rubs for meat work best for smokers. Yay or nay?

Oh! I wasn't even planning on using any wood lumps. Should I?? for chicken??
 
All right. You wanna learn to bbq, and you have some queastions. That's good. Here's your homework. Read everything here and take the quiz on the bullet website: http://www.virtualweberbullet.com/tipsfaq.html

and then try every recipe found at the link that Pete Z gave ya.

If you want to go cheap and even easier than the split chicken cook, get a few leg quarters. They're harder to dry out than the breast meat, anyway. Don't worry about Italian dressing burning. On the other hand, do worry about bbq sauce burning if you put it on the chicken before it's done.

Just kiddin' about the quiz
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What Dave said, but DO take the quiz. The coal ring will take more than 2 chimneys of hot. Typically for slow and low you will add about 1/2 chimney or less of hot either on top of or in a whole made in the cold coals. Most folks just fill the coal ring with cold coals and leave space for as many hot as they need. The overal # of hot depends on how hot you wanna cook and how fast you want your temps to rise. Remebber it is easier to stop the temps from rising than it is to bring them down after you have overshot your goal.

Go fur it!!!!!! The best teacher is doin'

Mark
 
I have one more question which i think is very important prior to my first attempt to smoke.

Would I have to wait for the temp inside the WSM to get to it's cooking temp before i put the chicken in? or i could just throw it on there after throwing in the coals and wait for the temp to rise up with the chicken in already?

thanks again for your help!!!
 
Joel, I wait, especially with birds cause I want a higher temp to work on the skin. With larger meats there is a differing of opinion. I like to at least wait until the smoke cleans before I put the meat on but some say there are advantages to putting it on as soon as smoker is assembled. Try both and see what you like.

Mark
 
I used to put the chicken on soon after adding the coals. This always worked just fine for me.

Lately I have preferred chicken with less smokey taste so I will either 1)let the smoke wood catch for a little while before adding the poultry, or 2) adding the smokewood to the top of the chimney and letting it burn a little before adding it to the WSM. Any of these three variations works fine for me. I guess my point is that there are any number of ways to skin/smoke a cat.
 
2 full chimney's should be enough for your planned chicken cook. For pork and beef, I recommend you use a full ring. You can always reuse any leftover coals.

Chicke, whole or parts, all do well. I do pulled chicken for the annual Church picnic and I use all boneless thighs.

Wet marinades are fine. What 'burns' is the sugar in the marinades or sauces. If you're not going to 'dust' them with some rub after marinading, just wipe/rinse off any excess.

Lump or Briquettes, your choice. I'd recommend you just stick with good ol' Kingsford 'Blue'.

I also wait for the target temp to be reached for chicken. Caution - it's very easy to oversmoke poultry. It's better to start with too little wood and less time in the smoke than to have a finished product taste like an old used cigarette butt.
 
Originally posted by Pete Z:
Lately I have preferred chicken with less smokey taste so I will either 1)let the smoke wood catch for a little while before adding the poultry, or 2) adding the smokewood to the top of the chimney and letting it burn a little before adding it to the WSM.
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"Start charcoal (10-15 lbs.) and 4 chunks of white oak and 2 chunks of cherry wood (about the size of a tennis ball) at least 1 hour before cooking meat. All fuel should be started in a chimney-style starter, no starter fluid, and all must be gray/white hot." Mike Scrutchfield, regarding his BRITU method

In my experience, you actually will get far worse smoke by preburning UNLESS you burn as long as Mike suggested. If you were putting the wood on an offset that had plenty of air to the fire, sure, the better engulfed in flames the cleaner the smoke, BUT, in the oxygen deprived environment of the wsm, if you put fully flaming wood on the fire, it snuffs out and puts off a lot of nasty smoke.

I suspect some folks think they're doing themselves a favor, but the reason you don't get objectionable results is that thankfully the offending smoke doesn't last long. Nevertheless, it doesn't change the fact it's bad smoke, even if it's for a short duration. Smoking w/ an offset is so different than w/ a wsm. I put my splits a couple at a time on top of the firebox so they will almost instantly ignite when it's their turn to burn.

"Very little smoke will be visible. Don't worry about that! You'll get the flavor..Forget about how much smoke is coming out of the cooker. If you've got the wood you like in there burning cleanly, the flavor will be in the meat."
Mike Scrutchfield on his BRITU method
 
Awesome!!! I'm planning on cutting the chicken into a butterfly cut (removing back and breast bone spreading/flattening chicken to butterfly position).

Would I need to "flip the bird" =) around at some point or there is no need to?

Are the 2 chimneys going to give enough heat to reach 350?

I also have hickory wood lumps. My wife doesn't want the flavor to be waaaay strong but a nice light hint of hickory smoke to it. How much fist lumps of wood would give the light smokey flavor?
 
Originally posted by Joel Oliva:
Awesome!!! I'm planning on cutting the chicken into a butterfly cut (removing back and breast bone spreading/flattening chicken to butterfly position).

Would I need to "flip the bird" =) around at some point or there is no need to?

Are the 2 chimneys going to give enough heat to reach 350?

I also have hickory wood lumps. My wife doesn't want the flavor to be waaaay strong but a nice light hint of hickory smoke to it. How much fist lumps of wood would give the light smokey flavor?
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There's no need to flip or rotate the chicken.
If it was me, I'd lay one good layer of briquettes on the bottom of the smoker w/ one chunk of hickory on the bottom in the middle. This way your wood won't burn up so fast when you pour... as much lit as you can get in the ring.

With your smoker being new, you might get 350, but w/ mine, I have to turn the door upside down and leave a little crack, even w/ a LOT of lit charcoal all at once.

Good luck w/ it!
 
"Are the 2 chimneys going to give enough heat to reach 350?"

350º, eh?

Since it's your first time and you've not done a test burn yet and not familiar with temp control, I'd recommend you start with a full ring and with Dave's recommendation of the upside-down door and lots of lit coals. Also, no water in the water pan.

Don't be surprised if you find yourself playing the temp rollercoaster game.
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No need to "flip the bird".

For your wife's sake, use only 1 small piece of hickory ... or none at all. The charcoal itself will impart some smoke flavor. Again, better to have it too lightly smoked than oversmoked.
 
Alright! Thank you all soooo much! I think i have gained the confidence to go for it after learning from "The BBQ Gods" in here.

Can't wait for the weekend!!! Let's SMOKE!!!
 
Hi Friends! I Ran into a problem with my smoked chicken this past weekend. I was uber excited it being my first time to assemble my smoker and use it for the first time.

I used "The Perfect Chicken" recipe which I got from the Cooking Topics from the Virtualwebberbullet site. I followed everything to a T and when I pulled the chicken out and came to slice it, it looked undone cutting from the breast. I cut 1 leg off and everyone saw the blood on the bone and said it's not done.

I'm thinking most likely it was my Taylor mini temp thermometer. I had it sit inside the chicken the entire smoke and I would check the inner temp from when it was 50min on. The thermometer did read 165 so I immediately pulled out the chicken. It did look awesome as well so I placed it on the table for 10min with foil covered loosely over it.

What I noticed is that from the recipe, it said to use 1 chimney full of briquettes. I did that and my temp never reached over 300 degrees from the gauge from the lid of the WSM. I was worried because everyone here was mentioning high heat.

Overall I believe it's my thermometer not being accurate OR I should've checked other spots of the chicken. I placed the thermometer near the top of the chicken breast (the thickest part of the breast). I should've checked a few more places. I ended up purchasing a Thermopen out of frustration hoping that i'll never run into this problem again. =P

Any suggestions or comments? I'd love to learn more to improve my smoking journey. I already have a request to smoke 2 chickens for our Christmas party.

Thanks for any tips!
 
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