Salmon is one of the reasons I've been looking for things that aren't pork butt or costly brisket to smoke. It's just too much and takes too long at 10-14 hours and on the other end, firing up the smoker for just a chunk ot two of salmon and rack or two of ribs isn't worth the work.
The hard part is finding wild caught salmon from the northern hemisphere at a decent price. Of course when a decent steak is $20/lb, salmon prices aren't bad I guess.
New ads out today. No tri-tip but they might still have some, just not on sale. One store has ribs and seasoned split roasters both at $1.99/lb. Another store has Sea Best salmon fillets for $7.99 but it's probably farmed in Chile. Less Omega 3. At least GMO salmon is no longer a thing. I prefer wild caught Alaskan/Canadian but there's only so much of that to go around so I will settle for Chile farmed if it's not too pale in color.
Need to get a new Dutch Oven but not straight up cast iron. Ceramic coated cast iron. Looks like walmart near me has Lodge brand in blue for $50.
I've got a ton of dried beans I should use up - rotate out. Vertical smoke chamber gets to 180-210 degrees. Soak overnight, rinse and sort, bring to boil on stove for an hour, add ingredients to flavor and make sauce, bring to simmer and transfer to smoker which should keep them simmering, then can them when done smoking. I can warm the jars in the smoker and bring the coleman propane cook stove out there to process them and do it all outside.
Will have to see if I wrote down my tweaks to the USDA canning guide recipe. Pretty sure it was just adding a touch more molasses. I did three canner loads of quarts and brought them with us when we moved to MO and they were just ok until I tweaked them. Then they got eaten up quick. We were still basically camping off grid at the time so anything heat and eat was nice to have.
Some sausage gets smoked!
I made bratwurst several years ago from a recipe in this book, Sausage Making, and it was good. Different than store bought and not as greasy. Another use for that vertical chamber and a way to fill the smoker without it being a 10-14 hour smoke(or being a $60 brisket), hang some sausage to smoke. All that get smoked use 2-4 lbs of pork butt mixed with some amount of beef chuck. Depending on how much room hanging sausage takes, the Dutch Oven could go in left end of horizontal chamber.
Will have to find other things to simmer/cook in a Dutch Oven since I only need so many beans. I have a book called the Outdoor Dutch Oven Cookbook with 125 recipes so I'll find something. Things in a pot don't really soak up any wood flavor anyway so it doesn't need to be a typical bbq recipe. I see Chicken Cacciatore, Curry and oh look, Aioli.
New item for to do/get list. Get some bolts to make something for round grates to sit on in vertical chamber. The grates for those little round Brinkman smokers will fit and I have a couple already.
Pics of the build. Made my own hinges from old truck linkage rods and tubes(center pic). The legs/feet are made from old step side bed supports. Latches are the only thing purchased. All else is made from scrap. I positioned all the WH tanks so that I have drain plugs on the bottom of them. Either pipe fittings or the screw in chunk of heating element.
Yoder Durango model smoker is what I based my design off of although most offset smokers with vertical chamber are the same. ($3,500) Below is the Durango 20 and they used to have a Durango 16 but quit making them. I found dimensional drawings for the 16 on their site which gave me all the sizes and ratios to go by. They use heavy pipe for chambers but water heaters are thin so a breeze will cool mine off but I have an inside corner on the house that keeps it out of the predominate wind. The two full size WHs are 18" in diameter so I call my smoker the Durango Light 18. Gonna bring it up to that corner and get the corner set up for cooking again and cut up some hickory this morning and any dry oak too. Need to take a ride in the woods and see what I have for standing dead wood too. I think I have a 6-7" cherry out there. Not dead afaik but might be soon.
