Hook, line and smoker.

It's not every day you get invited to a bbq with a fire fighter and a German ex death metal bassist. Even better,  it was the unveiling of a brand new smoker in a bbq of truely epic proportions and a truly memorable way to spend Easter Saturday.

Feed. Me. MORE!

This is how I like to spend my public holidays..



My version of how a smoker works is pretty unscientific: put meat in, burn wood that smells great, pull meat out after a lot of time, enjoy.

Looks like a locomotive, cooks like a demon. 

The owner of smoker however, The Sultan of The Sweet Smoke went a lot more in depth than I ever could. This included setting the alarm for a 2am start to balance the heat and smoke rate (for a whole hour) before he was satisfied enough to pop the meat in. From there it was an hourly check to make sure he had enough wood in there combined with enough smoke to give a genie an orgasm. That's some serious dedication to something that got destroyed in 30 minutes.
The smoke was dry tree bits with the occasional piece of hickory wood soaked in red wine for a true 'don't drive straight after this feast' flavor. I have since learnt that chopped up whiskey barrells can also be used and it would be my civic duty to make sure it had  been well and truly emptied first had we had one around.

After 11 hours of smoke checks and talk about how good the weather was it was finally time to hoover down the truly amazing smelling meat offerings. The beef came out with a truly beautiful well smoked flavor while the pork had a more subtle taste but still that lovely smoked essence I will now demand at all future bbqs. The Sultan was partially pleased but still feels more work is needed to achieve the fall to pieces smoke effect he's ultimately looking for.
(I would have put up pictures of Marc's amazing efforts but I was too busy stuffing my face with copious amounts of glorious smoked meat coupled with enough sides to destroy a hungry army to take any happy snaps.)

Of course now I really want one. I'd probably use it once and forget about it for the rest of the year but the fact still remains, I still want one. I do have a couple of options - I could buy one like this one or this one or this one or this one...

or...oh my god what the hell...I could make...A FRIDGE SMOKER!!!

50 shades of HELL YES!

Wow, why didn't anyone tell me you could turn a fridge into a smoker until this morning? That's amazing!

(If you don't have a spare fridge handy, you can follow one of these handy guides on making your own DIY smoker including stuff by Popular Mechanics and BBQ Smoker Guide.)

Now to find out what else tastes better with 11 hours of smoke fury...