Smokers / Grills

I'm somewhat of a traditionalist. I have a Weber kettle and an XL Green Egg. I hardly use the kettle anymore though, it just sits in the garage mostly unless I'm cooking for a lot of people, maybe once a year. I'm a big fan of Meathead at Amazing Ribs and I've had great luck following his advice. I wish I could use plain wood for all my cooking but it's just too hard to maintain the correct combustion and account for all the variabilities, so I go with lump charcoal. Royal Oak has been my go-to but I just got a huge bag of Costco special, I'll report on it when I have used it it's a bit cheaper.

I'll put in a plug for the temperature controller that I use made by BBQ Guru, it's the DigiQ model. It's so nice to be able to set up a long smoke and go to bed with no worries of checking temperatures. I cooked pork shoulders for pulled pork a couple weeks ago and I didn't even open the lid once to peek during the whole 24 hour cook. This thing is somewhat fragile and there are a lot of cords to snag or trip on, I've had the unit about 4 years and it has been replaced on warranty. I also screwed up a fan and replaced that on my own dime, but easily done once I found the correct part on amazon that bolts into their holder. If you get one of these, get yourself a nice box to store it in.

I also recently upgraded to a better dome cap for the egg, now rain won't get in and the air holes don't move around whenever you open the lid. I've had the egg for a good long time, and nothing much has gone wrong with it. My plate setter has a crack in it which seems to be traveling across so we'll see how good their warranty is when it finally breaks in two.

Put the pork in at 1:30 am set the profile on the gmg app temp 225 cook until food temp is 195, then keep warm. At 10 am the pork looked like this:
Temp was 150 ish using a thermoworks smoke and the built in probe to track temp
It is now 4:20pm and the pork is at 191/192 taking it off when it hits 194 or 5pm. Whichever comes first. I got 3 sauces for the meat. A North Carolina vinegar sauce, a Carolina mustard sauce and a bacon molasses Bourbon bbq sauce

I did not take pictures, but check this out. It ended up taking 23 hours to finish my pork. It was an 8ish lb butt, I'm concerned that I did something wrong. I followed the Methead site, used one of his rubs, kept fairly consistent temperature between 225-235, used hickory this time. The end product was on point, bark was fucking superb and it was super tender and tasted great, nice smoke ring and nice subtle smoke taste not super aggressive like when I used mesquite before. It just seems like I am doing something wrong, I'm reading people online talking about 10ish hours for similar sized pieces of pork.

Also, did ribs along with them. Fucking rofl at my 23 hour smoked ribs. Yeah, should have taken them off before, there was alcohol involved. I actually liked them, they turned out super crispy and flavorful. But yeah, I'm sure anyone who loves ribs would have been upset as fuck at what I did to those ribs.

hmm. you have a 3rd party temp monitoring setup (igrill/thermoworks/10 billion other brands)? cuz really the only thing i can think of offhand is maybe the thermometer for the cook temp (not the meat) was off significantly(reading ~20ish degrees high) which caused it to take longer. my gmg unit -without adjustments-, reads about 18 degrees low (ie 3rd party temp probes are reading 18 degrees warmer(3 different brands all read within 3 degrees of each other 18 degrees higher than what the gmg says the temp is)) compared to the actual temp, and the thermometer built into the cover reads lower than what the display reads(3rd party says 240 gmg says 222 cover thermometer says ~210.... yours could be reading the opposite- thermometer says it is 225, yet the cook area is 200 or less.

tip for cooking pulled pork, if the temp reaches about 140-150ish wrap it well in aluminum foil and add about a quarter cup of apple juice into the foil wrap. what that will do is force the temp rise to the meat so in ~2hrs the temp will go from 140 to the 180ish range- it hinders the bark but can speed the cooking up by several hrs.

my cook took from 1:30am-5pm --15.5hr for my 9lb pork butt, but i didn't wrap.

another way -if you have a good temp control setup- is setup smoker to run at 325 for 45min to an hr initially, then drop the temp to 225 for the rest of the cook until internal is 193ish.

2 sliders i made - left one is a carolina mustard sauce, right is a north carolina vinegar sauce- both were delicious

Yeah, I have a dual probe thermoworks with the remote reader to monitor temp. Maybe it's the placement of my probe in the smoker itself? I don't know, I will have to figure this out because 23 hours is a bit much. In general I've been placing it near the meat on the same rack as the meat.

For me, it stalled at about 150ish for several hours, then stalled again at 192 for like 5 hours. I had to go crank the heat (it was starting to rain, my eternal foe) and cranking the heat to 280ish broke the stall and it went from 192-203 inside an hour.

For rubs, I'm doing a keto diet so I was really hesitant to use the Meathead rub, which has a TON of sugar. But I talked it through with some people and we figured the amount of sugar you're actually eating probably isn't that much. Still, I'd like to find a rub that doesn't have much, if any, sugar and can still generate something approaching a bark on the pork.

ahh you have the Smoke? i have that with the wifi gateway addon.

ya that 150 stall is a fucking killer---wrap that motherfucker up.

you can take the meat off anywhere over 190, but 195 is the normal recommended temp. just remove the probe and insert in a diffferent spot, if it goes in like a knife thru soft butter, it's done.


it most likely was done at 192.

it -could- be the placement of the probe but i don't know.. that is an excellent unit.

one popular recipe that goes over what to put in the wrap

Slap Yo Daddy Bone-In Pork Butt

found this wholesaler in new jersey that sells iberico and kurabuta pork at reasonable/comparable prices, to try them out, and since i have a good freezer in the basement...

i got 20 lbs of ibereco pork belly to make bacon and or a meal based on pork belly
and 12 racks of iberico baby back ribs(about 18lbs)..which i will make ~2 or 3 at a time...

I trust you guys more than most forums so I'll ask my question here. I've had 2 (crap) BBQs in the last 10 years and with the extra grills/parts I'm ready to splurge for a nice one. I was thinking of getting either the Weber Spirit or Genesis, but someone told me to get the Broil King Sovereign as it's the only made in American option in the same price range. Are these solid choices? Any recommendation is appreciated.

Adebisi said:

Drop the propane and get into charcoal cooking.

The flavour difference is beyond comparison.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the suggestion. My friend use to have a charcoal BBQ and it does make a huge difference. It's too much work for me as I only BBQ maybe 10ish times a year. I just don't want to deal with low quality BBQ that rusts and shit. I also have a natural gas line so its super convenient for me.

for propane,, both weber's are good choices - amazingribs has multiple reviews on the various webers in those model lines, only one for the broil king

weber spirit reviews @ amazing ribs

weber genesis reviews @ amazing ribs

Broil King Sovereign 90 Gas Grill Review

For anyone wanting to try out kamado style but not wanting to spend a lot of money, the Akorn (link)is pretty solid. Under $300 and I far prefer it to the standard large BGE, since it has a much larger cook space and comes standard with a lot of features you would be paying extra for with the Egg(second level removable rack, cast iron grate). It's not a ceramic so its not quite as insulated and you wont be getting quite as high temps if you want them. On the plus side it's light enough pick up and throw in the back of the truck no problem to take camping or whatever. Some good prices to be had if you keep an eye out.

If you really get into that style of smoker then spend the money to graduate to an extra large BGE or another XL style equivalent, and keep the akorn as a camp grill.

And Akorn and a weber One Touch Gold together would run about 400 and get anyone a solid backyard set up to do just about anything you would want to on a budget.

so i made that iberico pork belly into bacon...put a salt brown sugar honey cure rub on it, sealed it for a week then smoked it at 190 until internal temp 155..
sliced up/cooked some for the family for BLT's..

omfg, totally worth the price i paid (9 bucks a pound). wife has DEMANDED that we never run out. i have 4 more slabs of pork belly in the freezer. once i get down to 1 i'm going to reorder more. it was that good.

might try kurabuta(Berkshire) pork belly too. see which is better.

Ok. Been over a month since I got the gmg jim bowie. Quick review time for those think of getting a pellet grill.

Brought the grill home, assembly was fairly simple if you follow the directions, solid sturdy grill. Initial built quality looked good. For the parts that are not important. Customer service is excellent. Which as you will see is a good thing.
Fired up the grill, no lit pellets. Restarted it worked.. turned on the app WiFi worked etc. Fairly simple.

After the First week of having the grill, issues started, first the ignitor stopped working, called gmg and they shipped out a new one asap,replacement was a simple procedure. Then a week or so later WiFi started being weird, no working, then working on a factory reset, but last week, WiFi complately stopped working.. called gmg again explained the issue and...they sent out a replacement master control module asap, installation was 2 bolts and 2 plugs. Simple.. it I has worked fine since. However I told the cs personwhen I called that I was not impressed with the build quality of the electronics of the machine if after a month I have had to replace 2 major components -out of 4. Other 2 are the auger and the fan. So far they have been fine.
The grill looks like most other grills except on the left is a box hopper which contains the control panel and the fuel storage hopper. The hopper holds 17 lbs of pellets. The control panel has a rocker on off switch a led display, a thermometer plug (looks like a guitar amp plug) and 3 buttons, temp up, food and temp down. The temp up/down changes the set temp of the grill by 5 degrees each step pressing food allows you to set food Temps and displays current food temp. With grill off if you press hand hold the food button, turn on grill with button depressed for 10 seconds aftervturn on, the grill will do a factory reset.

Working the grill. Plug it in, fill hopper with pellets, flick switch press thetemp up button and wait for ignition. Once the display changes to a temperature, set grill temp by pressing the button.

The WiFi model has an app where you can set food and grill temps, run cooking profiles, tweak the temperature profile vs 3rd party sensors..ie If you have a good thermometer, and it reads hotter than the "grill" temp on the display you can adjust the controller to match the difference if 3rd party is 10 degrees hotter, set the adjustment to 10, the displayed current temp will jump 10 degrees and the grill will adjust the feed to drop the temp to the set temp. You can also set the grill to server mode where the signals will be sent to gmg and then you can go anywhere that you have the Internet and you can see and adjust your grill.

WiFi password for the grill is the serial number of the grill, once you connect to the grill input your network settings/password and it should be all set.


More coming in the morning. Pardon the typos doing from tablet.


Good grill, once I fixed the issues. If I was going to buy another pellet grill, i would buy comparable the rectec brand since all gmg grills are made in china...price is similar, rectec is made in usa, and..well the above issues I had.

The initial ignitor was about a half inch diameter ~3 inches long ceramic rod. the replacement, was a 3/4"x3" steel coated thing that weighed about twice as much. it has worked perfectly since i installed the replacement part. i have 2 propane torch setup's. that one and the cheaper one...cheaper one works great too.

the only issue with having to do manual is....the heat deflector is a fucking precision placed item. screw it up by a half inch and the left half of the grill is 50 degrees hotter than the right half (or vice versa)
that and the grease tray is a bitch... manual, take all parts out...turn grill on, get to ignition stage/fan turning on. use torch, put deflector on, make sure it is accurately placed(i scored/scratched the auger tube so i know where to put the deflector)- put lower grease tray on, put upper grease tray on(i have the 2 piece grease tray..and the one piece on), put grill grids on....it takes a few minutes, i'd much rather just turn on and go

review continued:

app - the one thing the app does not do is graph your cooks, it just keeps track of the temps, it does have 2 timers where you can do a timed cook, or time the cook(or both) under grill options is the option to lock or unlock the temperature reading on the grill (if locked, the grill gets to "225" it will always say 225, even if the grill is actually 250 or 200...) settings for c or f. etc. it is a decent app, and if they added the time tracking option it would be even better.

doing long cooks on the GMG,...worked ok- i have not done a long cook since the replacement controller came in so i have to defer a bit until sunday when i am doing ribs (4 hr cook but the graph will tell)... set temp, and the prior controller would have the temp swing ~15 degrees hotter and cooler in a pattern...with the new controller, i am hoping the temp swing is significantly reduced (+- 5 degrees or lower)

shorter cooks on the grill- work ok, the grill does take a while to get up to ~400 temp (20 minutes or so) but once it is at temp, hamburgers steaks etc cook fine, though getting a good sear marking is not great - i'd recommend getting "grill grates" putting those on your grill and having them be hot, you can get an awesome looking diamond sear marks on your meat/veggies.

the smoke from the pellets is good, it adds a subtle flavor to meats cooked "grilled" and the smoke ring on ribs was pronounced, and the flavor is there from the smoke on the long cooks, but, it has a ..smoother? softer? not sure how to term it taste...wife likes it.

grades so far

build quality- not electronics - A- thing is built like a tank basically.
build quality - electronics - D - having to replace the controller and ignitor within the first month of ownership-even if free replacement- SUCKS.
cooking low and slow- B-(temp grade) - the temperature swing was significant(30 degree range total) for long (4+hr) cooks i have done,while previously using my propane smoker or charcoal with the bbq guru, i would have minimal temp swings(in the order of 5-10 degree range total once i was at temp) for the vast majority of the cook, i think this issue was due to the controller being faulty on the GMG but will not know for sure until i actually have a long smoke to confirm my suspicions.
cooking -grilling- A - once at temp, steaks/burgers etc can be cooked in ~10 minutes or less depending on the internal temp you want, the grill is also good for reverse sear style grilling where you cook the meat for an hr at ~225 degrees, then jack the temp for the final sear or so of cooking to get a decent sear on the meat (use grill grates)-but again it takes about 7 minutes for the grill togo from 225 to 400.-if you use grill grates, i'd have the meat off the grill for ~12 minutes before putting on the grates to ensure that the 3rd party grates were hot enough.. then it's put meat on grates, wait a minute, turn 45 degrees or 90 degrees wait a minute, flip,,,wait a minute and a half turn, wait a minute done. meat should be done by then. (i like my steak low end medium/high end medium rare - 135 degrees- according to amazingribs.com medium rare ends at 135, medium starts at 135.)

overall grade B-

if not for the electronic issues, this would be an A. I will revisit the review after the summer is over and after using the grill for ~3 months to see if the replacement parts have fixed the issues I previously had with the electronics.

What is the best affordable remote temp sensor anyone has found?
I just had 2 pork tenderloins hit near 160 again in under 2 hours when I was shooting for 145-150.
I know they make the probes with cord that goes to a unit you set outside the smoker/grill and displays it/sends you alerts but the reviews and prices are all over the place.
What is one people actually use that is very affordable?

How much you want to spend?
Maverick 732 is good and is about 60 bucks.

Thermoworks smoke is 99.

There are tons out there.

But those two I have used.

Igrill is good,
Thermpro tp20 is good but the one I had stopped syncing with the receiver. I use the base unit for my instant read temps if I am doing grilling, etc...