Oklahoma Joe Smoker Maiden Run

Coffee Trial Update: I'm trying different supermarket coffees. This morning, I sampled some Yuban. Two sips and it went down the drain. The can went in the trash. Horrific.

Racism Update: I have completely lost the bubble on what we're doing. The hypothesis was that we needed to restrain the cops, support Black Lives Matter and talk, talk, talk about race. Several weeks of data is now in and by any objective measure, the results have been disastrous. I have no idea what the goal is here. I don't mean the Democrats' goal, that's obvious. Power. I mean the average American's goal, the person who unconsciously buys into the race narrative because they marinate in it every day, thanks to the news media, the academy and the entertainment industry. What's the plan?

The Smoker

Wife kitteh and I just celebrated our anniversary. As a mutual gift, but really more for me, we bought an Oklahoma Joe's Rider DLX pellet smoker / grill combo. It arrived on Tuesday. Since I'm teleworking, I can putter around the house at lunch and accomplish small tasks. By Wednesday evening, the smoker was assembled and had its first burn-off. Yesterday, for my first effort with it, I smoked a chicken. We wanted to do ribs, but there wasn't enough time. Ribs take 6 hours, the chicken was supposed to take 3, but was done in 2.

It was fantastic. It was the best chicken I have ever made that wasn't covered in a sauce.

Glorious.

I followed a simple recipe on the Oklahoma Joe's website which had a rub and then I used my Buzz and Ned's sauce to mop it at the very end. Cooking was trivial. I split the bird, turned on the smoker and placed it on one of the racks with a disposable aluminum pan underneath. I put beer in the pan at first and when that boiled off after an hour or so, I put in water to keep the bird moist. Other than that, it was set it and forget it. Trivially easy.

It was moist, too. And utterly delicious. Wife kitteh raved. She went along with the smoker idea because she loves me, but after this chicken, I think she's a true believer. The meat fell off the bones, but didn't have that greasy feel you get when you cook a chicken in the over and it sits in its own rendered fat. The skin crisped nicely, too.

Tonight, we're having friends over and we're going to make ribs.

The only drawback is that the smoker is a great brute compared to our old Weber kettle. We're not yet sure where we will store it when it's not in use.