What have you smoked lately? Q-view...

Just before Thanksgiving, wanted to smoke some snacks to take to my Mom's....did a Spiral ham, couple pound of mixed nuts, and I usually throw on some red taters just because. I rub a little EVOO on the taters, some seasoning, and pull them out when the main course is done. Sometimes they're not cooked all the way through, but can always be finished off when you decide how you want to cook them. I either chop and fry up, or finish off as a baked tater...red taters cook quicker... Good stuff.

I just put in a brine a 3.5# laker cut in 3 chunks, also 1/2 of a 3# coho fillet.   I’ll brine them for 1.5 hours then dry them under a fan for 2 hours until they form a pellicle.   When done I’ll refrigerate them until tomorrow afternoon then smoke them until they reach 160o, about 1.5 hours.    I’ll smoke them in my WEBBER charcoal grill and serve them at our FD cookout .               DANG!    I should have put this on the SMOKED SALMON thread.

Brisket baby. Low and slow all day. I need to get a electric smoker. My propane smoker is inconsistent with the temperature. 

Edge, so after reading the manual, my Grill was set to lower grate temp and not air temp. Once I switched it to air temp my GrillEye and display are close.

Edge, I always use my Grill Eye. Put 1 on the grate for actual cooking temp. Blue tooth to my phone which I'm cutting grass... lol Built in on my Oklahoma Joe's Rider fluctuates big time. My Grill Eye show the constant temp.

Anyone run a pellet smoker? How stable are temps, how low or high can you go? Really want something that can run 150 deg. To 275 deg stable. Don't want to constantly adjust temps If possible. Got my weber bullet dialed in pretty good above 200 deg. Under 200 is a struggle

Good reads. Thanks much

Edge, after smoking fish in my Masterbuilt electric unit, I’ll burn a tray of hickory chips for about 3 hrs on max temp, empty.  That takes care of any lingering fish residue!

Edge, my Bradley is a six rack digital. It has a 500 watt electric element which is undersized. Smoke is generated by using Bradley’s wood pucks. The smoke generator unit auto feeds the pucks every 20 minutes. They smolder on a puck burner hot plate. When the fresh puck advances it pushes the spent puck off into a water bowl to snuff it out. It does a really good job of getting smoke flavor just not so good at getting product to a proper finish temperature. Many people have upgraded their Bradley with a 900 watt element and it now does what is expected.

Eyesman, is your Bradely a pellet smoker? Didn't know it would struggle at higher temps. That's a head scratcher.

Edge, I thought I knew a lot about the smoking process until I started reading the Bradley Smoker forums. There are three approaches to smoking, cold smoking like you would do for cheese and such at 90°F or less, smoke curing like you would do for fish, sausages, bacon and hams at 190°F or less and smoke cooking like you would do for brisket, pork butts for pulled pork, beef chuck for shredded beef and all kinds of fowl where you need temperature in the 250-280°F range. My Bradley struggles with achieving and maintaining temperature necessary to finish product like pulled pork or brisket. I use the Bradley to get the smoke flavor I want and then move the product to the house oven to finish.  

Thanks eyesman. I have a webber bullet so fish might be out of my low temp range. I'm thinking about pulling the pin on a new smoker that I can smoke at lower temps and can regulate a little better. I do love my webber for meat. Kind of old school 

Edge, I had a homemade barrel smoker for 40 years and didn’t have any cross contamination when going from fish to meat. Most all my meat was sausage products like summer sausage, ring bologna, kielbasa, hotdogs and hot sticks. I also did venison bacon in the loaf form, some turkey breast and whole chickens without a flavor problem. I now have a Bradley brand smoker and have made most all the meat products I’ve done before, haven’t had the chance to do fish yet. Smoked fish should be done at temperatures less than 180°F. Any hotter than that and you are just baking the fish in the presence of smoke. With any temperature that is too high you will cook out the fat and oils from the fish and make a mess in your smoker. That mess if allowed to get too hot could transfer some fish flavor. I have read many Bradley Smoker forums and the cross contamination question comes up a lot. Virtually all the answers are a no to the cross contamination. Those forums also mentioned the too high of heat on fish and cooking out the fat and oils. 

For those who smoke fish in the same smoker as meat. Do you notice any smells that would effect meat after smoking fish? I'm afraid of trying to smoke fish.

Catman, definitely a plus to bleed the fish asap. When I catch Lake Michigan fish, browns, bows, or Salmon, the first thing I do when I decide to keep them, is instantly pull a gill or 2. They bleed out quickly, and also less messy in the cleaning process! Bleeding fish helps in keeping Fish palatable!
JD

Smoked a chunk of meat yesterday.