Thanksgiving Smoke

[DennyD]

Wednesday I smoked our Thanksgiving turkey in my vertical smoker. A 20 lp turkey rseasoned with rub I made up for the ocassion, put all over under the skin, all night long. While I had the smoker fired up, I also did a meatloaf, a pork butt for pulled pork, and smoked a couple ribeyes on the top shelf. High of 32° Wednesday, once it got dark, I let coals burn out and finished the Turkey and Pork Butt in the oven. No pics... I'm not much for standing around in the cold snapping them. The smoker held at around 225° until I let it die down, and I think I could have gotten more out of it if I had opened the vents more, so I should be good smoking meats with outside temps in the 20's. Below that, I have a large roaster that seals well(except for one small vent hole), that I can use as a stovetop smoker. A great Turkey day day today with great results... but haven't tasted the meatloaf yet. Using a tried and true recipe for it though so it'll be good. Hope you all had a great Thanksgiving!

[curious aardvark]

No pics... I'm not much for standing around in the cold snapping them.

lol we'd have settled for pics once you got them indoors ;-)

SOUNDS like a good smoke but.....

[DennyD]

lol we'd have settled for pics once you got them indoors ;-)

SOUNDS like a good smoke but.....

No time.... too busy preparing for the holiday and family coming. I put the Turkey in a Coleman cooler/warmer that I ran most of the nite and Thanksgiving morning. Moist and plenty hot yet when served. The ribeyes ended up being a little to the well-done side of medium, nice and smoky but still very moist and tender. Don't think you can mess up a ribeye unless you burn it up if you lose attention while grilling. Been there....

Well, here is a picture for those who can't get enough pictures of PORK. Straight out of the fridge. I like it better when photographed still hot and glistening with grease.

Haven't quite understood yet what that's about(no pictures-it never happened). Guess we're losing the ability to communicate through language. Seems worse on BBQ forums. Riding forums I'm on, there isn't near the pressure to snap pics along the way or else "the ride never happened". And there's so much more possibility of showing something one has never seen before than with pics of food we all prepare in a practically identical manner.
Some of the absolute best recipe books I own have almost no photographs, sometimes a few glossies grouped together in a couple places in the book. Cooks Illustrated books for instance. Doesn't make them any less interesting or useful. Pretty soon we'll be down to grunting and pointing, punctuated with monosyllables.
Ugh... STEAK v

(also right out of the fridge)

Just sayin.....

[massive meat pipe]

Looks good buddy, and I agree, the Phantom Smoke Anomaly is a bizaar event around here

[Pandemonium]

Its all good either way but its kinda like if playboy didnt have pictures, you think people want to use their imaginations? Pics are pretty much what makes all the good advise from everyone better. Yes i agree its hard to get pics sometimes but they do make for better food porn

[lynsey123]

monosyllables, That's a big word.

[Richtee]

monosyllables, That's a big word.

Heh that's f'in FUNNY Herb! Irony

Food pix are worth 998 words. The other two are those monosyllabilistic grunts you type of

[Pandemonium]

me like pics
[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cf_KRwFuwv0[/yt]

[Whisky Fish]

My problem with posting up pics is time. On dial-up here. It literally takes me 40 minutes to an hour to upload a single picture to photo bucket. Also most of the cooks I've been doing lately are for large crowds and any of you that do this, know that stopping and grabbing a camera is the last thing on your mind when you are orchestrating the kitchen chaos.
Don't take it personnally Denny, I've gotten the computer geek picture several times At least it shows they are payin attention It's when they don't give you chit that you should be worried

[Richtee]

Don't take it personnally Denny, I've gotten the computer geek picture several times At least it shows they are payin attention It's when they don't give you chit that you should be worried

The balance of my for today for this excellent post! Ooops... well, as soon as the System Points Nazi lets me anyway sigh..

[DennyD]

My problem with posting up pics is time. On dial-up here. It literally takes me 40 minutes to an hour to upload a single picture to photo bucket. Also most of the cooks I've been doing lately are for large crowds and any of you that do this, know that stopping and grabbing a camera is the last thing on your mind when you are orchestrating the kitchen chaos.
...At least it shows they are payin attention It's when they don't give you chit that you should be worried

Oh yeah, dialup.... gotta make your pics small and low resolution. I was at a gathering I cooked for and mentioned the"no pics: it didn't happen!" concept on many BBQ forums while I was attributing some of my recipes and smoking skills to stuff I've learned on them, particularly on this forum. Though they inspire, I haven't really learned much from the pics. It's the recipes and great descriptions of experiences that others have smoking foods, that I learn from. Anyway a 20 year old that was at the party said the "no pics: it didn't happen" line has been around on kids' online forums and chat rooms since he was old enough to use a computer and has gravitatied to adult forums in the last several years. I believe it, because I never heard it before the last few years.

One of the best threads I've seen here is your "Low temp, high temp, low temp Packers and premature Butt extraction" thread, with no pics. Not only was the reminder of the contribution celery can make excellent, but also the reminder that we can all be a bit too anal about maintaining strict and narrow temp control in our cookers. That's something that I began learning this summer when I was at a nearby BBQ contest and asked one of the guys on a team that competes across the country, what temperature they kept their smoker at? He looked at me like I was from Mars and said, "it'll go a bit over 300° sometimes and we try to not let it go below 220°, doesn't matter that much as long as you know how to tell the meat's ready." I told him that Paul Kirk said he tries to not let the temp vary by more than 5°. He told me he knows Paul Kirk and has competed against him, that they all win sometimes and lose other times, and he ccouldn't see that expending that much effort for temp control was worth it.

I've also found that telling when the meat's ready isn't always as simple as sticking a thermometer in it.

[Mark R]

Pics can really help, especially when it's a new technique.

I've also found that telling when the meat's ready isn't always as simple as sticking a thermometer in it.

Yea daddy ya got to use your thumb!
Codswallup, just cause I like the word.

Nice lookin fud by the way.

[DennyD]

Pics can really help, especially when it's a new technique.

Only things I can see where pics are a help..... I first learned what a smoke ring was through pics. I'm sure pics would help some people in how to do a bacon weave(but not me... I can't even weave a simple potholder using a frame, so I do my own style of bacon wrap). Crosshatch grill marks are nice in pictures. Also, there are some aspects of sausage stuffing where pictures definitely help. For most other things, pics can make me want to create food like what's in them, but are no help for getting there, except maybe for decorated dishes, like cakes.... or making pictures out of veggie arrangements, etc.

Now for mechanical stuff, that's different. A good blow-up illustration, with parts labels, is usually way more helpful than the instructions(especially those in 'chinglish').

[Pandemonium]

Pictures are just something good to look at, its that simple, I agree you dont get info from pics on how to make it but who doesnt want to see a picture? Its not that hard to take them and they help tell a story.

[DennyD]

Pictures are just something good to look at, its that simple, I agree you dont get info from pics on how to make it but who doesnt want to see a picture?

I do agree about that.... good food pics make me want to go cook something, and then eat it! ...which often takes precedence over getting the pictures taken.
Frequently it comes down to the fact that I always get my cooks started late(between noon and 2PM), so at the frontend of the cook, once I'm awake enough, I'm in a hurry to get going(not much of a morning person).
Then by the time it comes to the finishing up part, it's often 10 PM to maybe 1 AM, depending what was being done.... and with me there are always multiple meats to keep track of in between times. If there is a 1 1/2 to two hour stretch where I don't have to watch the cooker, that's the time where we go and get our daily walk, so pretty busy all the time, without adding picture taking to the mix. I do have some pics that I've taken here and there when I've gotten a chance, not enough to put up a post with pics about a cook though, to satisfy the visually oreinted. I'll probably post a bunch of those at once sometime.

I do love a good story about folks battling wind, rain, cold, or sometimes thir own misjudgement or just plain lack of attention and triumphing by snatching a not too bad result from what could have been disaster. Don't even mind the full blown disaster stories.... and you don't have to take pics to prove it on my account!