Ok, here is where every man/woman/child/griller/smoker/BBQer never wants to admit they are wrong but in May I had a 16 kilo whole suckling in my smoker. All was well in BBQ land. Until hour 28 came and it started smelling like I left it in the sun.
I am going to come right out and say I tried to do the "offset smoker" only using pans and foil (I am 99% sure that it cut off the heat source and clogged it up(BUT thats because I used foil and didnt make a proper baffle plate))
It all started like every Q'ers wet dream - I have a whole suckling pig freshly killed 2 nights before for 100 Euro! hot damn! its birthday time. 36 pound pig for 135 dollars!
I started off brining her the wee early hours of the night before in a large cooler, injected as well in every part where that darn injector went.
After a nice nice bath and a serious pat down, dry rub in the cavity it was time to throw her on the smoker, I was using those weber apple chips and show these frenchies how its done! Full of white smoke, thats what I was
4 am fired up the smoker and let it get up to 280F and put her in like sleeping beauty. Around 8am I decided to take a peak and boy did she look good! - but damn I should not have done that.
As the guests came, the more my pit man and myself got really excited - and drinking (its france, I am convinced they dont have livers, they have canteens) any way, the smoker was opened pretty often for facebook pictures of a frenchie infront of a smoker or "#hashbrown BBQ" and let the heat out
Still I thought no problem,
At this point it was still looking pretty good, nice apple wood smoke in the air, thick bacon on the thighs cooking, a few rounds done and future Army talk - Nothing better -
It wasnt until around 10-11 hours in when my pit man was out, drunk, done and the father in law wouldn't stop opening the smoker to check on it when I started realizing, son of a blues player, im screwed!
Maybe the smoker was way too small, maybe the hail and snow didnt help, maybe many factors played against it.
Something that I wonder is, can a pig be OVER injected?
The fact that heat rises, were the makeshift baffle plates a no no? redirecting the heat before it even had a chance to reach the meat?
The 4 first pictures are of Fatima raw and unbrined, rubbed, seasoned n injected.
The 5th is when them hash tags started..
6th is about 10-11 hours in
7th - Is when my heart broke. The back was way too over cooked, the front - colder than my fridge.
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