The dreaded temp spike when the lid is off.

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tom37

Master of the Pit
Original poster
OTBS Member
SMF Premier Member
Sep 24, 2009
1,649
21
Independence Mo
This weekends cook was not to big of a problem since I had my partner helping me. He would open the lid and I would grab the grate, then he put the lid back on while we loaded the grate.

After holding the grate while he loaded 72 B-Oinks, I decided that I want to make a rack of sorts to hold my grate/grates while they are being loaded or rearranged. I did have the lid off long enough to flip 24 chunks of chicken and the temp ran away all the way to 400. That was a bad deal.

I want to make something cool looking to compliment the drum.

I would love to hear any other ideas you all may have.
 
Here is a quick idea of something I was thinking about today. One problem I have is that my smokers are outdoors and not under cover. So they need something to shed the water off the top so the vents dont let rain in.

My thought is to make this out of two pipes that fit inside one another. If its raining while I am cooking then put the arm up and over the lid of the drum. Make it to fit a drum lid on the arm to keep the rain off the top. Then when not in the rain the post and arm can be turned and lowered to grate level. Swung out to the side.

Open the lid, grab the grate and set it on the arm and post, set the lid back on quickly. Load up the grate or rearrange then reverse the order and have it cooking again.

Question here is, Do you all think this is a retarded idea?

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Pan, the chicken flip was a last resort. I was running between 250 and 300 and still wasnt happy with the results that the skin was yeilding. So I fliped them and let um sit in there with the temp spike. This made it biteable but not crispy at all.
 
 I need to get some practice at chicken because i am cooking at my brothers wedding for 100 people, so i was thinking of throwing them on a grill after smoking to crisp them up, but really i have been happy with the chicken parts i have smoked.
 
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Pan, I can offer one piece of advice for a wedding.

We always put a patty of butter under the skin and then put spray butter on our chicken.

A friend got married and ask us to cook. He wanted wings, taking a short cut we dumped the wings in a bucket, put squeeze butter and mixed. Thought we were cutting a fat hog in the rear end. WRONG.

The wings turned really dark from the butter.

Then at the hall under the dining room lights they looked GREEN. OMG we almost croaked. But the guest ate every stinking one and ask for more.
 
I saw a great mod a while back. Take a 3" bolt, slide a washer up to the head, place the bolt through your cooking grate from the top of the grate going to the bottom of the grate, slide on another washer, put on a nut. Washers should be big enough to capture 1 rod of the grate on either side tighten up the nut clamping the rods between the washers, the rest of the bolt (aprox. 2 1/2") extends out the bottom of the grate and acts like little feet. Put four of these around the edge of your cooking grate, then when you reach in and yank the grate you just need to put it on a flat surface and viola instant stand. Just make sure all the hardware is 316 S.S.
 
I just have a table nearby with some pieces of angle iron on it that I set the grate on.  If I'm doing something that will take some time, I take the grate out and put the lid back on.

Another thing that helps is closing the intakes for 3 minutes or so before you remove the lid.  Lowers the oxygen level in the drum so that the air spike doesn't make your fire flare up as much.  Also, leave the intakes closed for a few minutes after you put the lid back on.

Chicken on a UDS usually tastes pretty smoky regardless of what temp you cook it at with all the fat dripping on the coals.  Lately I've been cooking chicken as close to 375° as I can get but I have a hard time keeping the UDS that high -- with the lid on anyway.
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Dave
 
I know I will catch heck for this but try using a water pan.I can open mine and maybe spike another 50*   after a few minutes and it drops quickly when I drop the lid. Just another option to consider.
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Sorry my brain if fried this semester. Here's a thing i do that works pretty good. I have grates that stay in the UDS. Then I have smaller grates that I smoke my meat on in the UDS, if that makes sense. These are cooling racks that I got at a rest. supply. I scrub and wash them after each smoke job. They have legs so they dont touch my primary grates.

232041ed_coolrack.jpg
 
I shall try that dave, as for the chicken I will try that too. I have been choosen to cook brisket and chicken at the sept contest, I'm in pretty good shape on the brisket but my chicken needs help. I cook it decent now but my apperance is lacking what it takes to place. I have 4 1/2 weeks to play and see what I want to do.

Meateater, I will try the pan thing and see what happens as well. Catch heck over what? Last time I checked there was no actual Wrong way to do it, some may like it one way and others may like it another. So long as we all end with the results we want all is good. When I did the brisket I had a pan on the lower shelf to catch the drippings, then I was going to put the meat in the pan and cover but when I was ready to wrap there was no drippings. LOL they were all dried up. I was really bragging up the drums with the last smoke. My temps ran very good and consitant with the execption of when I was working the chicken and the B-Oinks. It spiked because of me having the lid off so long.

I am still brain storming the rack holder idea. When I cook on the drum, I don't have much outside. No tables most of the time. Its so easy to run I take the thermo inside and do other things. I just thought this would be a really cool deal if I could make it for only a few bucks. And have a place to hold the rack to work the meat. Or put it high and throw maybe a canvas tarp over if it was raining bad or really cold.

Sorry guys I tend to overthink alot of stuff. About half of what I think up in the round file and the other half ends up being decent ideas. Just like I want to figure a way to make a smoker that will shut the smoke off when the lid opens. ( I hate the blast of smoke inthe face ) Not to choke the fire out I would want to have a full seal damper close as the lid opens and also a valve the same size as the stack open from the fire area to the outdoors. This way the fire stays the same and only the cook area drops temps which should recover fast in a RF.
 
Meateater, I will try the pan thing and see what happens as well. Catch heck over what? Last time I checked there was no actual Wrong way to do it, some may like it one way and others may like it another. So long as we all end with the results we want all is good.
 
I know I will catch heck for this but try using a water pan
Water pan . . . in a UDS . . .are you nuts???

Just messing with ya, meateater.
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Catch heck over what? Last time I checked there was no actual Wrong way to do it,
agree, some don't on here.  If it work's i'm good with it myself.
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If it gets your meat cooked the way you like it then it's the right way to do it.
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Dave
 
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