I survived another 4th of July – this one was actually pretty tame. I was sick going into the weekend, then the Mrs got sick the day before the 4th. We got out and about, but there was no ridiculous drinking stories or gross lack of respect for explosives like usual. I did fire up both of my smokers though – tested out a new piece of gear, and pulled of a feat that I have not accomplished yet in my smoking career –

First, let’s talk about what was getting cooked – On the Weber, I was doing a picnic shoulder (skin on) and a couple fresh (not pre-cooked) cheddar brats. On the DynaGlo, I had chicken thighs and chicken wings. I put toghether a basic salt, pepper, oregano, adobo rub for the shoulder and the chicken thighs:

For the wings, I put together a heavy cayenne spicy rub with smoked paprika garlic powder and stuff –

The goal of this cook was to stay out of my lady’s hair, because she was sick – kick back in the garage and crush coronas and kick it to some tunes while monitoring the smokers. Looking out the garage:

The shoulder went on when the heat got up a little – I decided that because of my new piece of gear, I was going to shoot for a complete cook on the smoker. No Texas crutch, no swapping to the oven half way through, no sous vide after smoke – This picnic was staying on the smoker until it hit 192 degrees internal temp. This would be my first attempt at a ‘no wrap’ cook on a picnic shoulder like this – the hope was that I would get insane amount of smoke flavor and bark.

Ok – now let’s talk new gear. I saw a groupon for the iGrill2 by Weber, which is a digital thermometer / probe setup that connects via bluetooth to a cellphone and lets you monitor your cook from inside the house if your signal reaches.

The signal didn’t reach into my house very well, but it did when I was in my bedroom (closest to the smokers). The unit comes with 2 probes, but can handle up to 4 probes – which would probably be a good investment. I was excited to finally monitor my cooks in a graph format – which is one of the features of this device. I started by monitoring just the temperature of the inside of the smoke chambers to verify what I already knew – the Weber is a beast for holding temp – but the DynaGlo is a little rough in that regard.

You can see the Weber on top, holding temp within 10 degrees for almost an hour and a half. The DynaGlo wiggled around like a drunk between 40 degrees – and that was with me paying very close attention to the temp. I had very little regulating to do with the Weber – I also used my favorite ‘horseshoe’ technique to keep things perfect. I line it up in that shape so it burns like a slow fuze from one side to the other without getting too hot.

The temp gauge for the Weber was pretty spot on (within 5 degrees of what the iGrill was reading). But the Dynaglo’s temp was all over the place, and the actual temp was about 40-50 degrees higher than the gauge said at some points. Here the probe says almost 260, but the gauge reads 215 or so.

I’m going to have to trust the brand new toy with brand new batteries on this one DynaGlo.

I sipped the coronas and started getting a little tipsy..  I sat in a chair and broke it – I swear I didn’t throw myself into it, but I still ate shit on the ground, so that happened.

 

I also made a batch of guacamole – it was super good. I added queso fresco, sour cream, black beans…  I know – I broke the law – but it was damn tasty.

The stuff on the DynaGlo was done way earlier than I anticipated, but it was super good: These chicken thighs were crazy good. I didn’t get any pictures of the wings, sorry -but they were super good too!

I love the coarse ground pepper flakes – I buy it from save-a-lot, it’s perfect, and gives you that texture you want in a rub – especially when used with oregano.

oh and check out this wiener:

Pretty great color on it if I do say so myself – it was super tasty too..  no jokes about what it looks like.

Things pretty much went downhill from here on the cook – I swapped the probe from the DynaGlo to the pork shoulder in the Weber so I could monitor the cook temp and the temp of the meat inside at the same time. I had never really experienced a ‘Stall’ before, because I usually push through the stall by wrapping and using the crutch. Well, I finally got to experience it this time. Stalls occur when the fat, collagen and cartilage start breaking down and begin to sweat out of the meat. The escaping liquid is actually a much lower temp than the outside surface of the meat, and as a result, the outside of the meat is cooled down, causing a delay on the cooking progress. Depending on the cooking temp, this can last for quite some time. I was cooking very low – averaging about 220..  The stall set in around 4:30am when the meat hit 180 degrees. I was starting to do the ‘nap, tend, nap, tend’ of monitoring things – which is terrible, but a part of pit life.

 

From 4:30am to 11:30am, the pork shoulder only went up 3 degrees. That is one HELL of a stall friends. What’s even worse is that I got a second stall when the pork hit 188 where it stayed for over 2 hours before finally getting up to 192 – I wish I exported the whole graph, but I forgot to – I was so exhausted when this thing was done cooking, I just wanted to get it in the cooler and go get a solid hour of sleep without worry.

But check this friggin thing out:

The bark was unbelievable on this thing! 1 hour later, the bone popped out of this thing so easily – I used the flimsiest tongs that I had too – the kind you can barely flip bacon with that have the silicone nubs on the end that fall off in the dish washer.

Pardon my disgusting finger nail in the shot – that’s what you get when you dig around in charcoal bags for 20 hours. Look at that smoke permeation though!

All in all with the iGrill – it was very accurate, very easy to setup, and a pretty cool tool. Did I find myself glued to the app, watching my temperatures go up and down way more than if I was just drinking in the back yard? Absolutely. In that regard, it’s kind of a bad, because it takes you away from the ‘set it and forget it’ and ‘trust your instincts’ factor of smoking with a charcoal fueled smoker.. However,  the product I generated with perfect – no brine, no spritz, no mop, no wrap, no crutch – just meat on the smoker, coming out perfect.

My grill group on Facebook had lovers and haters for the iGrill – literally on the same post!

I look forward to cooking with it some more – maybe not keeping such close tabs on my cook, but I will absolutely keep using this thing until it breaks-  then I’ll let you know the when and why.

Regardless of breaking a chair, and eating too much food – this was a great cook! so much leftover!

(here I am, heating some up on a bonfire!)

Cheers!