Franklin BBQ Pit: How to Season Your Smoker | Mad Scientist BBQ

hey guys welcome to mad scientist barbecue i'm jeremy yoder and today i'm going to show you how to season your smoker now you may ask the question well why do i need to season my smoker and by seasoning what we mean is covering it in oil so if you have a smoker like this franklin pit behind me that's completely exposed metal there's no paint on it anywhere it's essential that we season the smoker so we prevent a lot of rust even on smokers that come painted a lot of times you're going to have to do this process to the outside because the metal expands and contracts as you heat it and let it cool and then eventually the paint chips off and rather than spraying on new paint i think it's easier actually to use some oil to make sure that you protect that metal from rust for some smokers you don't need to season the outside so if you have say an offset smoker like this but the outside is powder coated well that's not going to chip off like paint so you don't need to put oil on the outside but for all smokers it's important that you put oil on the inside so that you protect that metal on the inside from rusting because you don't want rusty metal to get into contact with the meat you're trying to cook now i just got the smoker you can see the crate behind it still but in the uncrating instructions it says that this smoker is ready to go right away and you don't need to burn it out and if by burn it out they mean build a fire coat the thing in oil and let the fire run for a while then i don't know if i really believe it there's a lot of some kind of grease or something on the outside of the smoker so maybe they pre-seasoned the outside but the inside definitely has not been seasoned so we have to do that at bare minimum but i want to show the whole process of seasoning the inside and outside so you can adapt it to whatever your needs are our tool today is going to be pam and this is a very easy way to do it you could you know have a bucket of oil and with a rag coat the entire surface of the smoker with oil and you could do the same thing on the inside but that's kind of a pain this is a much easier way to get a more even coat of oil on all the surfaces step one we're going to cover the inside with oil [Music] now we repeat the process on the outside of the smoker [Music] [Music] i'm done screwing around with this it's so cold out that the paper doesn't really want to light very well so when all else fails you can use a torch also a side benefit of using a torch is it kind of sends preheated air through the smoker so it starts drafting so your fire gets going with air already being sucked through all right temperature on the outside is currently 39. [Music] so so i was able to use the torch to get that butcher paper lit and now i literally have a grease fire and that will get all that wood going in no time [Music] now i know a lot of you guys are probably watching this video not because you're super curious about seasoning a smoker but because this is a franklin bbq pit so i want to walk you through some of the things that i'm seeing with this pit right now number one now i do have a pretty hot fire in here but this metal has warped enough that i can't really close the door well anymore like you could force it in and you know use a lot of elbow grease but it doesn't want to actually shut second thing i've noticed is i have a smoke leaking from the cook chamber door right now since i have a hot fire the smoke's pretty clean so you're not really seeing it very much and then the third thing is on the tel truth thermometer there is now fog on it when there was no fog before on the inside let's take a second to talk about why we're burning a fire and not just spraying the outside with oil now the reason we burn a fire is because we want to change the chemical composition of this oil into something different and the process that we're looking for is called polymerization now that could be an intimidating word and if you're curious it comes from two greek words paulus which means many and meros which means parts it's something made of many parts so you can think of the individual molecules in oil as links that would make up a chain and polymerization just links all those parts together and so what happens is it forms a polymer coating on the outside of the firebox and the cook chamber and it's more like a plastic than it is like an oil so oil could wipe off plastic isn't going to wipe off and it forms a protective coating on the outside so that metal isn't exposed to oxygen in the atmosphere and therefore does not rust if you've heard of the smoke point of oils that's when that oil starts to break down now there are a number of different reactions that are happening the one we're concerned about is polymerization but for canola oil like what's in pam the smoke point is at about 400 degrees fahrenheit so we need to be at 400 degrees or above for our polymerization reaction to occur and so that's why we want to burn a hot fire because if we do that then we get that protective coating if we don't then it's just kind of some sticky oil that smells bad so we want to make sure we get it nice and hot and so on this one right now on the firebox the temperature is in the 430 40 range and it'll probably continue to climb for a while so it'll probably get up to 500 maybe 550 degrees so think of a screaming hot cast iron skillet that's about the temperature you would have i just mentioned smoke point and if you don't have an infrared thermometer you can still know if you're getting your pit hot enough or not because once you pass the smug point it'll start to smoke and right here on the firebox now we're starting to get quite a bit of smoke and this is telling me we're moving in the right direction and this is all going to kind of turn a dark dark brown and form the protective coating that we're doing this whole process for let's eat it in the company's little guys at this point we're starting to see some different things happening as the process carries along so the initial browning what's happening there with oil is oxidation cyclization polymerization but as the temperature goes up then you get carbonization so on this firebox you can see both of those stages right here you have the dark color the dark brown that's from those previous reactions then it carbonizes and gets this nice black sheen that's what you want that's going to be the coating that protects the metal for a long period of time as you may be able to tell i have this thing just screaming hot right now but that's the point because i want all of this to set properly and i don't want it to be some sticky gross oily layer that you know is in my way every time i want it to be a protection for the smoker and it also looks really cool but one thing i noticed is right here this is the first part of the cook chamber that started to turn black so that tells me the hottest part of this thing is going to be right here so this is a little bit cooler this is a lot cooler so i think the smoke is coming out the smoke and the heat rather or coming out right here and then boom up at the top and then it cools off as it moves toward the stack so when you hit temperatures like this 678 degrees and probably in some places over 700 degrees that's what you want to build that carbonization now another thing that you should do is you should repeat this process periodically what i do is every time i cook on an offset i will spray the firebox down that's just part of my procedure so i'll spray the firebox light the fire go do all the prep i need to do so trimming meat seasoning meat and i allow this to build layer after layer of protection because if you don't do that then you're going to start to get rust start to have to deal with those things but if you just take preventative measures it should always be taken care of so i want to check on the temperatures of this stack at the bottom 444 that's pretty hot at the top 265. so this isn't necessarily related to seasoning the smoker but one thing i want to point out is there's a lot of heat loss as the smoke moves up the stack and so that's why on tall stacks you can get something called back pressure so the temperature of the air at the top is no longer as hot as it was at the bottom and the greater that difference the more it's going to impede the flow of air as it comes out of the stack so a tall stack oftentimes is good for convection but if it gets too tall then it can impede the convection so we're gonna have to do some testing with this but that's my fear with this tall and skinny stack nice you hear that it kind of sounds like a jet engine it's a lot of air moving through there wow taking a look at this right here i see kind of an even black coating everywhere that tells me we got the polymerization and the protection that we were looking for the only exception is right here where we have the opening to the firebox and that's just because it got so hot that it degraded the coating and so that's a simple fix we just spray another layer of oil on there as this thing is cooling down and that will set the coating that we're trying to get everywhere so nice and black i don't see any rust very happy with this and that's really all there is to it now one thing i do need to mention is that the results that we're looking for so that black shiny exterior is the result of heat and time so it's not like you just burn a hot fire for 30 minutes and then you're done with it what you need to do is burn the fire for long enough that you get a uniform coating on the exterior surface of the smoker that way your smoker is protected and your hard earned money that you spend on that smoker is protected with it if you enjoyed this video or if you found it helpful hit the like button down below subscribe to the channel and leave me a comment you can also follow me on instagram and twitter at mad scientist barbecue i'll see you guys next time

Channel: Mad Scientist BBQ

Views: 215,830

Keywords: bbq, barbecue, franklin bbq, franklin bbq pits, aaron franklin bbq pit, aaron franklin bbq pit review, offset smoker, texas barbecue, smoker, texas smoker, brisket, ribs, seasoning, how to season, welded smoker, austin barbecue

Id: htOn7yJPWgk

Length: 11min 17sec (677 seconds)

Published: Sun May 09 2021