Looks like a winner

I have been tossing around the idea about smoking salmon in the smoker. With a stroke of luck we will be out on Lake Michigan catching some kings in June. So until then I will make a trip to Costco to get a couple fillets to experiment on. Heres the one I picked:

This hot smoked salmon is loaded with 10 cloves of garlic. While that might sound like a lot, once you've tried it you'll probably want to add more.
Prep Time: 15 minutes
Cook Time: 4 hours
Total Time: 4 hours, 15 minutes
Yield: 4 servings
Ingredients:
1 large (2 pounds or so) salmon fillet
10 cloves of garlic, minced
4 tablespoons lemon juice
3 tablespoons butter
1 teaspoon sage
1 teaspoon oregano
Preparation:
Prepare smoker for a 4 to 5 hour smoke. Rinse salmon thoroughly. Combine remaining ingredients and cover the top side of the salmon. Place in smoker for 4 hours. Salmon is done when it flakes easily and has a consistent color all they way through the middle. When done remove from smoker and rest for 5 to ten minutes covered

What a Sunday dinner should be......

This old barrel smoker is has been know to produce some killer ribs and chicken, and that's exactly what it did again yesterday. I put everything on the grill at the end to get a little char. (30mins).

(Cleanest this grill has been since i purchased it)

This was an eight beer smoke. The ribs in the title came out of this crude device and i got a hell of a tan during the event.

Spring in California

Whole chicken and rack of baby back in here.

Birthday Party

We hosted a surprise birthday party. For this we had to bring in the big guns....Brian Saunders took charge of the grill and thrilled the masses with his grilling mastery. (to date, I have not heard of any party goers needing stomach pumping).

The time honored Stuffed Mini-Bells

I almost forgot...We also whipped up a batch of Scotts mini-bells. I don't care who you are, you just have to love them!

It wouldn't be right not to pay tribute to our other passion..Muscle Cars, Monster Trucks, and Antique Cars. We had a friend drive up from the Motor City with his 39' Chevy. to have a few beers talk bbq and cars.

The sophomore effort

I went with two 7lbs butts for second time out. One rubbed with Montreal Steak, and the other with Pork Rub. We ran them up to 195 and they came out perfect. We also smoked two turkeys this last weekend (the smoker worked into overtime for sure). One turkey was from Otto Farms, it weighed 19.5 lbs. That thing smoked for 15hrs before I wrapped it and finished it in the oven. I put it in a brine before hand, and it turned out moist. The second bird was a wild turkey that was taken from turkey hunting. It also was brined and smoked. I will say this; There is a night and day difference smoke wise between a wild and farm grown turkey. (size and fat content) I wasn't sure I could pull off doing a successful wild bird smoke, but all in all it was good. It just didn't yield as much finished meat was all.

Baptism by FIRE

I visited my local butcher shop and acquired a choice 9.5lbs pork butt for the official breaking in of the smoker. I buttered it up with dijion mustard and rubbed it with McCormicks Grill Mates "smokehouse" rub. As it turned out we (being my dad, and brother) pulled an all nighter feeding the beast with oak to maintain 215 degrees. All told, my magnificiant butt was smoked for 13 hours. I then double wrapped it in foil for a stint on the gas grill to top it off. It pulled apart easily as you would expect, but my gut feeling (based on past smokings) is that maybe a bit longer in the smoker would have helped. 1 1/2 hr per lbs put us right in the range where we needed to be, but I just did not get to 190 internal, like I would have wanted. All in all it was a success and to boot tasted pretty damn good on ciabatta bread.

"smoke um, if you got um"

Patio in front of kitchen