Newbie Smoker from Washington

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dwane oliver

Newbie
Original poster
Aug 11, 2014
13
13
Loon Lake Washington
Hello all , I'm new at smoking meat.

This is an awesome resource for smoking information.

Thanks for having me.

I'm not a big poster , I know how to use a search box.

A bit about me.

I recently retired from the oilfields of New Mexico and we moved to Loon Lake Wa in Jan of 14.

My lovely wife was born in this area, and still has some family here , and its GREEN.......

I am now a full time Knifemaker ( been doing it on the side for 12 years ), making everything from straight razors to bush knives, I think I'm pretty good at it.

We will see if it pays the bills ,LOL The good thing is my wife has a good job , so basically I have to take care of the farm. LOL

Here is how I got into needing a smoker.....

We recently butchered a pig , and I knew I would need to smoke my bellies and hams.( cause there aint no way I'm gona pay someone to do something I can do myself )

No way was I gona spend a bunch of money on a fancy smoker either ( I'm as tight as a frogs butt )

So I built an old school smokehouse ( I've been told it looks like an outhouse, LOL )

Its propane by the way.

Yesterday I smoked 2 bellies and 23 lbs of hams..............

WOW , the hams are the BOMB......had to taste em right off the smoker at 10 last night.

We will be butchering again in May , this time I'm gona butcher 2 , one just for sausage......Ohh we will pull the loins out of course.

Lets start at the beginning of this ordeal. LOL

The " Sticker " I made just for killing pigs. It aint purdy...........but it don't need to be.


We do it a bit different than most, we will use the tractor or just a rafter in the barn. Hook a back leg with a chain , hoist the animal up in the air. They calm down in just a few minutes. Then with one stab in , a swipe from side to side , and you will have a gusher.....the meat is Soooo clean and blood free , its great.

We have done a fair amount of butchering in the past, just never made bacons or hams before.

 We always thank the lord for our blessings here on earth.



We always just quarter them and put them in the freezer overnight, and process them the next day.

In the move we lost grandma's old book with the sausage recipe , so we kind of made one up.

Here my wife is frying some of the experimental recipe up for sampling. It turned out really good , it is a sage recipe. 


I was real nervous about the brine recipe , we had went to Michlitch's up town to get some of them sock things, and I just bought some pre made mixes.....

Holly smokes , expensive............never do that again. Live and learn.

I did one side with a rub on brine and the other I put in with the hams in the buckets.

There are 2 chickens in the other tub , I needed something to practice on before the pork.....lol



7 days later , and after flipping that one belly every day , here we go.........SMOKING




America.......I love this place.

( my wife brought me this little flag home last night )


Once again I have proven that you can learn to do ANYTHING on the internet.

Thanks again for this great resource , I have learned a ton here and will learn a lot more I'm sure.

Dwane
 
Hello Dwane, and welcome to the forum, Great place to learn and share and a bunch of good people.  Cool, very cool you can't get any fresher than that.

Gary S
 
Glad you joined the group. The search bar at the top of any page is your best friend.
About anything you wanna know about smoking/grilling/curing/brining/cutting or slicing
and the list goes on has probably been posted. Remember to post a QVIEW of your smokes.
We are all smoke junkies here and we have to get our fix. If you have questions
Post it and you will probably get 10 replies with 11 different answers. That is
because their are so many different ways to make great Q...
Happy smoken.
David
 
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