chicken
Is lookin for wood to cook with.
I have been smoking on a Cookshack Amerique for nearly the last 10 years. The thing has been rock solid and I get decent pork butt and ribs out of it. I could never cook a brisket though to save my a** in it. I bought a XL BGE about 4 years ago for grilling and figured one day two years I would try a brisket in it for s**ts and giggles. The thing came out amazing! Since then I have been doing my pork in the Cookshack and brisket in the BGE. Well this weekend I needed to cook a pair of pork butts for a friends party and I figured let's try them on the BGE.
Wow I did not realize how much better it could have tasted compared to the Cookshack. The smoker flavor penetrated a lot deeper, was considerably more moist and the smoke flavor just seemed to taste cleaner. It was the same pork I always buy, same rub and same smoke wood. Only difference was electric vs charcoal. Now I am thinking I should sell my Cookshack and buy a new smoker. The BGE is great but it just does not have the capacity of the Cookshack. I really like the Cookshack for ease of use but the flavor was just so much better on the Egg. I have a cyberq now so it's not like the egg is that much harder once the fires going.
So any recommendations on what smoker I should buy? Here are my requirements/wish list
* no budget per say. I want this to be the last smoker I buy
* size needs to handle at least 4 pork butts and 2 full briskets but larger would be great
* would be great to have one large enough to do a whole hog. Never cooked one but we have enough parties where it would be great to have the ability to do it.
* needs to be a insulated smoker of some type. I work a lot of hours and have a 3 & 5 year old so I cannot be up all night tending a standard offset stick burner. That's what I love about the Cookshack and BGE with the CyberQ. I load them up and they run until the food is done mostly unattended. I also like smoking during the winter. Hopefully I could run at least 16-18 hours on a full load.
* I suspect I need a charcoal based setup as I live just outside of San Francisco and it's would be tough to find various type of stick wood here. Lump coal is easy though to find
* needs to work with the cyberq as per above reasons.
Any other things I should be looking for? Any pointers are greatly appreciated! Thanks Chris.
Wow I did not realize how much better it could have tasted compared to the Cookshack. The smoker flavor penetrated a lot deeper, was considerably more moist and the smoke flavor just seemed to taste cleaner. It was the same pork I always buy, same rub and same smoke wood. Only difference was electric vs charcoal. Now I am thinking I should sell my Cookshack and buy a new smoker. The BGE is great but it just does not have the capacity of the Cookshack. I really like the Cookshack for ease of use but the flavor was just so much better on the Egg. I have a cyberq now so it's not like the egg is that much harder once the fires going.
So any recommendations on what smoker I should buy? Here are my requirements/wish list
* no budget per say. I want this to be the last smoker I buy
* size needs to handle at least 4 pork butts and 2 full briskets but larger would be great
* would be great to have one large enough to do a whole hog. Never cooked one but we have enough parties where it would be great to have the ability to do it.
* needs to be a insulated smoker of some type. I work a lot of hours and have a 3 & 5 year old so I cannot be up all night tending a standard offset stick burner. That's what I love about the Cookshack and BGE with the CyberQ. I load them up and they run until the food is done mostly unattended. I also like smoking during the winter. Hopefully I could run at least 16-18 hours on a full load.
* I suspect I need a charcoal based setup as I live just outside of San Francisco and it's would be tough to find various type of stick wood here. Lump coal is easy though to find
* needs to work with the cyberq as per above reasons.
Any other things I should be looking for? Any pointers are greatly appreciated! Thanks Chris.
