Over the weekend, JG decided to assemble a homemade meat smoker in the style of Alton Brown. He’s been talking about it ever since we saw the episode of Good Eats with instructions, so once he set his mind to it and realized that he had an unused gift card to Home Depot, there was no stopping him. JG spent Friday afternoon at the hardware store, toting grill racks to the garden department to check against the diameter of terra cotta pots, and he reported garnering more than his fair share of odd looks from the staff, not that I was surprised.
At home, after dinner, JG put together the working model of the smoker, while I looked on with a cocked eye. I’d believe it when I saw it, I said. Not that I didn’t trust Alton Brown, but did two terra cotta pots, a hot plate, a bowl of soaked mesquite chips, and grill rack a smoker make? I had my doubts. JG was all glee and excitement: “We can smoke meat all summer! If this works, I’ll get a big pot for the top and I can do a whole pork shoulder! Except they call it a pork butt. Oh, and ribs! And I can make jokes about all the things I’m smoking!”
“Please don’t,” I said.
The next day, JG was ready to start up the smoker when we got home from the gym. One of our friends was on hand to witness the great experiment, and the two of them set up the manly smoking station while I hulled strawberries and made a taco dip to tide us over. The chicken JG had prepped went into the smoker, and we watched the thermometer to monitor the temperature. Unfortunately, the smoker failed to perform on the first run. JG hypothesizes that the hot plate shuts off automatically when it reaches a certain temperature, so maintaining an internal temperature of at least 250 degrees was not feasible. I think we need to procure an old-school hot plate without a shut-off switch or rewire this one so that it doesn’t foil the smoking efforts.
In any case, JG grilled up the chicken and the ears of corn we had ready, and it was a tasty dinner nonetheless. The two guys started chipping golf balls in the yard, and when I suggested that they hit a few at the local driving range, I immediately won points as the Best Wife Ever. They cleaned up as quick as a wink before they left, and I enjoyed a quiet house with Ted on my lap.
In retrospect, I should not have expended any energy in suppressing JG’s jokes, because those “what I’m smoking” lines seem to come up on their own. Ah, well.
4 comments
My first thought when beginning this post was “Oh, man, don’t tell Tim!” But apparently I was thinking of a different Alton Brown episode (what? You don’t just refer to that show as “Alton Brown”?) that involved a much more complicated homemade device for doing something to meat, because when I saw how small and seemingly simple the at-home meat smoker really is, I began to think “Maybe I should show this to Tim.” He would LOVE to be able to smoke meat at home and the non-conventional set-up has his name written all over it. If you figure out how to get it working properly, would you care to send instructions my way?
Oh, AS would love to build a meat smoker! Please keep us updated on JG’s smoking progress!
We adore Alton Brown here. Ted has actually been talking about concocting this smoker for himself. If he finds out that JG made one, well, there will be no stopping him!
I told Chris about this and he is SO JEALOUS. He asked me five hundred questions about it so I just sent him the link to this post. He’s seen Alton Brown do it, why is he asking me?!
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