Dive in at the deep end!

[Freen0]

Hi everyone, I am a keen BBQ'er over the last 10 years, it doesn't seem to matter what time of year, or where I am its always BBQ time! I think the only constant I have kept for years is the Christmas Turkey on the BBQ - last year I went a little crazy with a 7.5KG turkey, sadly it didn't fit on my 57" Weber so I had to de-bone it, but it all worked out absolutely amazing!

Last weekend I went to Grill Stock in Bristol and I have never seen so many smokers, this really is mixing with the big boys! One of the points of going was to speak to the people about the smokers as I had pretty much decided on a WSM before going but seeing them in the flesh was a different thing completely! those guys cooking with them are amazing!

After coming back I have done a lot of research into them and decided to spread the love in the BBQ world to ProQ, i think the 57" and smokey Joe from Weber were enough for my garden otherwise it would start to look like a Weber showroom! So I bought a ProQ Frontier this week and fired it up yesterday to burn it in before some cooking this weekend. I am also now trying the 'snake' method in it with some charcoal from Makro to see if I can control the temperature and time it burns for, I just bought a mini chip fryer rack to separate the coals and packed the charcoal around it - good method??? I just don't know but I'm sure ill find out!!

Also went to the butcher yesterday and bought 4.5K of pork shoulder with a couple of ribs attached, that is in the fridge marinating in its rub now and I plan to re-start the smoker before I go to bed with this on - risky times sleeping with it cooking but as I said, dive in at the deep end! I hope to maintain around the 190-200F temp overnight if possible... Lets be honest, ill be so excited I wont sleep anyway!!

Anyway, that's about it for now, any suggestions are greatly appreciated!
Freeno - London

[CHokKA]

Hi and welcome to the forum

Brave stuff there man but glad to hear you're jumping in with both feet (and everything else by the sound of it!). Fingers crossed that it all works out properly overnight Also glad to see someone else with a ProQ. Recently the WSM flag has been flown around here a lot. I've barely used my ProQ but have often wondered if the WSM would have been a better purchase. Then I remind myself that the ProQ is far cheaper and has a lot of extra features that the WSM lacks. I do really like my Excel

So Grillstock was good then? I have never been but I'd love to go one year. Did you get to sample the food?

[Artust]

I am also a ProQ man and I have had no issues so far and I love it for the small family and friends cooks I do at home. Hope your first smoke goes well. Let us know.

[RobinC]

Good luck with your cook. I've always quite liked overnight cooks as they've taught me not to fuss with the smoker. One thing in your post you say you are trying to maintain an overnight temp of 190f-200f. Is this the temperature of the cooker? Or the temp you are aiming for in your pork shoulder. If it is your cooker then it's on the low side of low and slow. Pork shoulder is pretty forgiving and I tend to cook mine around with the smoker running at around 270f. 190-200f would just prolong the cook time for no real benefit in imho. I've not bothered with the snake method in a smoker. I find normal minion with hot coals dumped on top is fine. Snake works well in a kettle BBQ though.

[Freen0]

Hey everyone! Its a massive learning curve for me here! I kicked off the coals around midnight and started cooking at 1:30am at 270, I did a test run of the coals/temp control the day before so I hoped I would get through the night so after about an hour of monitoring I went to bed. I woke up at 5am so thought I'd take a look and it was at 240 so I adjusted it, checked the charcoal and replaced some then back to bed... after all day around the 250-270 range until the pork hit 190 (16 hours), then foil on and in the oven (off) for 2 hours...

WOW it was amazing, a real nice smoke ring and the taste was amazing, thought I would put sauce down if anyone needed it (JR's) but no one did, it was amazing. That video from Toby - viewtopic.php?f=26&t=1759 really helped and put me on track.

Thanks for the advice, I think I will go for the minion method next time, very happy with the Makro 'blue bag' charcoal... I actually bought 2 boxes of Oxford Charcoal at Grill Stock but a mate brought them back and I didn't get them in time for this cook, will be curious to test the difference.

Grill Stock was amazing, I must admit I was guilty of hanging around the competition area feeding off scraps (so good) for a while but still managed to eat my way around the rest. I liked the Weber demonstrations, put pizza in my head so also cooked a pizza on the Weber after the England game on Sat, that was also superb!

Happy days - what next?