BBQ 101 - How to Build a Fire in your Offset Smoker Firebox

hey Toni toné here today we are gonna do a quick video on how to build a great fire for your offset smoker what I'm using today is my char griller smoke and champ I've had this unit for about nine months now almost a year actually friggin great great inexpensive offset smoker barbeque I really love it and so we're gonna go ahead and do some pork spareribs today some st. louis-style pork spareribs and so I'm gonna want to get a fire going here with some lump coal and Applewood for the smoke and we're gonna do this pretty easy here I'm gonna go ahead and take these grates out here one thing I'd like to say to you know if you have a smoker like this make sure that it's sealed up really well we want to get as much of the you know stop as much of the smoke leak as possible this is a pretty inexpensive grill and I went ahead and sealed it up all the way around see there on the lid as well since this is a two-piece unit this lid comes down and when I first got it it was leaking a lot of smoke out and it was a really really simple fix just for me to apply some of that love a lock smoker gasket all the way around I got it around the back also and most of this it's up there underneath the lid actually attached to the to the lower barrel itself most of this I put on right after I would light it up and said just kind of watch a smoke come out like okay little smokes coming out there so let me just add a little bit of gasket here and press it up there nice as tight as possible and it stopped about 99% of the smoke from leaking out of it really holds temperature perfectly now so what I'm gonna do pull this drawer out here set that there I've got the Weber charcoal lighting chimney here so I like to do this without using any lighter fluid or anything like that just gonna put this right here good spot to get that started to light the coal actually just gonna use some watered up paper don't need any chemical I've got some wadded-up paper towel and the wrapper from the paper towel case I was gonna set that right underneath this thing here I set the camera down for a second wad of paper underneath there pretty simple for fuel here I've got Royal Oak lump charcoal here and I'm gonna be using the the favored Applewood chunks as pick us back up a home depot I'm gonna use a few of these chunks tray you'll see first of all I'm gonna go and get the fire started okay as you can see here I've got the chimney loaded up here with charcoal wood the lump coal and I do that right on top of the greatest port right in there when I was sitting on top of the great so any spillage just kinda ends up on the great I'm gonna be using that anyways that one's going to use a little propane torch here to like the paper underneath tricky doing all this one-handed there we go papers burn papers burning all right so that's going to take a few minutes to burn and start getting all the coal in there lit up and turn in white I'm gonna come back in a few minutes and when that's ready I'm going to do is pick that up slide the drawer into the into the burn box there and then going to pour those hot coals onto the grate and get them spread out just a little bit now I'm gonna go ahead and put some apple wood chunks on top of it and let that start to burn and let the temperature and the cooking chamber there and get all nice and to where I want it to be and we'll be good to go ready to cook okay it's been about 20 minutes and as you can see here that lump coal is burning really good it's nice and hot it's a kind of difficulty out close to so I'm gonna go ahead and take that off and since I'm doing this one-handed I'm using some I'm using some gloves here like I normally do but it's gonna be a little extra careful all right I got my diameter wide open that's exactly where I want it and this is gonna go right down in there beautiful slice a little bit on the ground no big deal and I'm just gonna use some tongs to kind of spread that around a little bit I like to keep it closer to the to the dampener side so it's capable of getting plenty of good fresh air all right little simple now finish it off just go already got a few chunks of wood here it's gonna go ahead put those right here on top these gloves are nothing special they're just kind of heavy-duty garden gloves that I use for the barbecue and that's it you see the smoke starting to build already there I'm gonna let those catch on fire a little bit what you're gonna do pretty quickly [Music] and might as well go ahead and close this up now and open up the chimney here wide open and smokes gonna start kind of working its way in there all right see we got some good flames already flaring up all around the wood that's exactly what I want to happen I want to let that would catch on fire and start to turn black before I close this up so it's gonna get it a few more seconds and this is going to create an excellent amount of heat so I'm gonna let the temperature gauge just the main gauge here on top of the factory gauge it came with this rig here I'm gonna let that climb up to probably about 350 400 degrees which is not where I'm gonna be cooking but I want to get it all the way up there and I'm gonna choke it down and get the temperature to drop back down below 300 on that gauge probably about the 280 ranges where I'm normally looking at which puts it down to about 260 270 on the great surface which I use a little probe that I stick in there the Maverick digital thermometer dual probe stick one on the grate and if it's a bigger chunk of meat I'll usually stick it on the meat to ribs I normally don't do that and see that's burnin real good now nice and yeah piece of cake I'm gonna go and close this up now obviously if you use this thing a lot got the Box nice and hot burnt the paint off got a little bit of rustiness going up there but no big deal see right away we got smoke coming out the stack don't have any smoke I mean hardly anything detectable leaking around the edges just barely a little tiny bit here and there but most if it's coming out the stack up top temperature already climbing up to 200 passing 200 temperatures looking real good there can't keep on climbing want to have a look here I'm sure there's plenty of fire going on up inside they're still wearing a nice and hot it's gonna let that keep climbing already at 240 on the factory gauge real quick that's my maverick dual probe that I like to use pick that up on Home Depot had to order it online and have it shipped to my house they didn't have any of those in the store inexpensive works really really great comes with a a wireless one that they transmit between each other it is not bluetooth and it works really great I can cruise all around my house and I get a signal and just it alert me if the temperature goes too high or goes too low and rarely ever does that because I'm pretty good at keep it a nice and steady but it's nice to just know where the temperature is I have a look at every now and then so I don't have to be running out to the grill all the time but already temperatures climb in here to about 280 still going smokes looking beautiful that's it really really easy so when this when this gets up to temperature to the high range I'm going to start choking it down the first thing I'm gonna do is I'm going to choke down the chimney here I'm gonna try to keep as much fresh air going as possible get a nice good clean smoke that way and start stopping the air flow on the way out choking it down a little bit keeps the smoke in the chamber and makes it so that not as much fresh air can rush in but as much as can will and start controlling the temperature that way and literally I'll be closing that dampener up down up on top down to about ninety percent or even more it'll be just barely open and if I need to choke it down some more then I'll start closing out the intake and choke it down to 50% you know maybe down to 40% you know approximately of course and get that temperature under control that way but I like to get the the cooked chamber here nice and hot and leave it nice and hot here for a little while closed about 400 just give it a little extra cleaning little you know bacteria cooking make sure everything's good to go and see here we're already approaching 310 getting close to 320 so it's gonna keep on climbing I have a quick look inside here it's hot it's burning looking beautiful take a quick peek in here oh yeah smokes looking good but I want to get that hot I'm gonna leave it closed that's pretty much it nice and easy all right if you liked this video please remember to give me a thumbs up and subscribe I'm gonna be making more of these thank you very much bye bye

Channel: TonyTone BBQ

Views: 201,354

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Id: omN5w_2Rhg4

Length: 11min 4sec (664 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 09 2020