I wanted to have time to enjoy the company this time so I cooked my BBQ on Sunday. At 8am Sunday morning I started preparing the meat. I don't use any rub or marinade.

I used 2 1/2 18 pound bags of Sam's Choice charcoal and I picked the bigger chunks from 3 bags of Hickory wood.

Here is what the smoke should look like. You should be able to see through it and it should have a blue tint to it. If it's black or dark gray you have was to much heat or bad wood.


Here is how much charcoal and wood I used to heat the grill up and start cooking.
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Video of the smoke for those new to fixing BBQ.


9am I added it to the smoker and captured this picture shortly after.
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5 Hours in the smoker.
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8 Hours in the smoker
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14 Hours in the smoker and just turned and rotated. It hit the plateau and stayed at 165 for a good time before and after I took this pic.
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Reached 180 at 18 hours and 30 minutes I took them out of the smoker at 3:30am. 1 of them was falling apart when I took it off the smoker. I foiled them and place them in a cooler because I would not be able to place them in the fridge until they cool. I got some sleep and when I woke up I was surprised they was still very warm. All I had to do was place them in the oven to get them just a little hotter.
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Now for Mondays grilled chicken, hotdogs and Hillshire Beer Brats. All I did to the chicken was fresh ground pepper, I use "Tone's Peppercorn Melange."+
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Here is a pic for those using the same grill as I do. When adding the wood I just add it to the front butted up to the coals. Placing it on the coals you will get flames.
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Here are some other pics.

Here is how I feed the coals and wood to the smoker. I shovel the coals in and place the chunks in behind the coals.
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Sunday I grilled some steaks and here is what it looks like when I have the smoker and grill going.
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This is all that was leftover from 15lbs of BBQ
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MM,

You spent your day just as I wished I could have! Unfortunately, the weekend was slow around my house with my daughter away, wife working, Dad in the hospital, etc...

But you make up for my lack of participation! I thoroughly enjoyed your series of pictures (and video) showing the process of making that most delicious looking food for your family! The pork looked so tender and moist it jumped off my screen! Thank goodness nobody was around to see me licking the screen!

Thanks for a most thorough post! Hopefully some more members will chime in and post some of their holiday with us.

mike

I hope it helps the new people to smoking and grilling.

I'm having BBQ sandwiches for supper today. I'll even get some pics of that for you.

Your welcome.

Here is one of my mom "testing" it after I took it off the smoker. She didn't know I had the camera in my hand I could not resist.
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MM,

Looks GREAT! Does that shoulder joint have more dark meat than the butt portion?

Here are my labor day pix.
The ribs turned out GREAT!
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In case we ran out of meat!
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I used some EVOO, herbs de provance, salt, pepper and balsamic on the veggies.
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We did some crustini out of roasted garlic italian bread
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Nice smoke on the corn!
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Got out the 8" Dobs and got a few shots of the moon. Also checked out Venus last night but didn't get any good pix.
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I don't know because I only fix shoulders. Could you post the 2nd moon shot in full res? I would like to make a wallpaper for my desktop from it.

Sure, MM... Her ya go

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thanks