I smell like a gigantic piece of jerky at the moment. I've been smoking meat since 8am, and let me tell you, I think that Bradley Smoker I got is defective. I'm going to try to fire it up again tonight with nothing in it to see if the element actually glows red or not. If it doesn't, then it's RMA time with Bradley. Starting out this morning, I finally did the seasoning process. It took forever to get up to 150, then it went up to 180 and wouldn't come back down. Not too much of a problem. Once the seasoning was done (twice as long as the book said it should), I put my lovely rub-marinated pork butt in the smoker. And the temp went down to 150... and stayed there. I turned the temp slide up to maximum. And the temp stayed at 150. It got up to around 175, but it refused to budge up to the 220 to 250 range that I needed to actually break anything down. At first I thought, well maybe the ambient temperature of the wind is affecting it. So I waited til the afternoon, sun beating down on the smoker and me, and the temp was.... 175. Alrighty, it's clear that butt's never breaking down. I took the butt off the smoker, brought it into the house, and threw it in an oven bag and tossed it in a 225 convection bake oven. It should be done in several hours. Then fridge overnight, pick the fat and yucky stuff off, and it will be ready for Sunday afternoon and several saucing options.
I also did some cleaning and organizing today, in between bouts of figuring out what to serve and what I needed to get to make that happen. Tonight will be bar cookies, which will be enough to take off my plate as far as prep is concerned, yay!
12:03 AM Update: Two pans of bar cookies are done and cooling; 60 dates are stuffed with cheese and in the fridge along with the pork butt. Cleaning is going well, and I'm looking forward to Sunday.
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