Welcome to The Crusty Mustache Roadhouse

Here I'll share my cooking adventures and recipes. Lately I've been getting into smoking meats, so I plan to share my tips and experiences.

Here's what I've been using:

It's a Brinkmann two door charcoal smoker. This is available at the Home Depot for about 60 bucks. My initial experience was mixed. It's sturdy, and has a lot of cooking space up top. I also like the thermometer because it reads the real temperature, not "Low" / "Ideal" / "High." I've tested it with a good quality deep-fry thermometer and found it to be very accurate.

There were, however, a couple of negatives. First, the space between the water pan and the charcoal pan was very tight: just a couple of inches, making it a bit of a hassle to refuel.

Second, and most problematic was the temperature control. The first time I used it, my temperature staggered between 190 and 200 degrees. That was on a pork butt, and was really just a minor inconvenience. After six hours of smoking I finished the butt off in the oven and it was great.

The following week I did ribs, and here the temperature turned out to be more problematic. This time, I could only get the temperature up to 175 degrees for the majority of the smoking time. Toward the end, I found that by holding the bottom door open an inch or two, I was able to keep the temp at about 212 degrees. Again, I finished up in the oven. The product was good, but hey, this was starting to be a hassle.

I then discovered The Smoking Meat Forum where I discovered two great mods.

The first was the charcoal pan. The Brinkmann comes with two identical ceramic bowls: one for water and one for fuel. Because the charcoal pan does not allow air to circulate all around the coals, they just smolder down to ashes.

I replaced that with this stainless steel wok pan:

What a difference that made. I found that I had to use much less charcoal with this pan because the temperature went up into the 300's.

My next foray was meat loaf. Thought you couldn't smoke meat loaf? I'm here to tell you you can, and it's the best meat loaf you'll ever try. Just make your favorite meat loaf recipe and put it on a small cookie sheet.

The second mod was switching from briquettes to lump charcoal. Because lump burns hotter than briquettes, I only used about half of what would fit into the chimney starter. Bingo! 250 degrees spot on for four hours of smoking two 4 pound chickens sitting on a couple of half full beer cans.

I'll go into all these experiences in more detail in later posts, and I hope you'll enjoy them.