Rookie here.
Trying to smoke a pork shoulder for the first time. The ideal temperature should be 250F (I think). I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong but the ambient temperature keeps rising? My vents are open 1 finger both bottom and on top. I ignited a half basket of wood and coal with one of those fire starters that I let it burn for 20 mins until it reached 250F.
Suggestions of what am I doing wrong?
by renatodamast
12 Comments
I only ligt i wood wood starter. Let is burn with the lit even open. Want 15 min close lit. Vents both open for 7 min
The botten 2 fingers open. Top open till first bar. Want 20 min done
Close the vents more.
Before I got a coal basket, I’d close both vents to 50 below goal and slowly open back up. Only take a tiny bit of opening to give good flow and keep heat level. Bottom vent is rarely more than a half finger width open.
Letting it burn until 250 means that you’re trying to instantly stop the burn and are overshooting.
Once the fire is established, start choking out down. It’s way easier to bring a cold kamado up to temp than to try to cool it down.
I have fat fingers. I say for 250, bottom vent should be a pencil width or less. Same with top, maybe a scootch more if you get smoke out the bottom at all.
Is it in direct sunlight and it’s hot as hell outside? That’ll affect your temps. Like other people said, close your vents more.
Open bottom vent 2 mm.
The meater probe is also closer to the grates so I’m usually reading 10-20 degrees hotter than my dome temp. I just did a pork shoulder on Sunday and meater was reading 300-305 or so and my dome temp was about 260ish. Pork turned out beautiful. About 8 or so hours for a 10lb shoulder.
Oh i see
I don’t know the circumstances but will take a shot at this.
When i smoke/cook for over four hours i just lite a bucket of coal let the K J get to about 300 then the vents close to about .5-.75 inch open.
If I am cooking for longer, I arrange the so they touch each other. Lite a set of coals on one side only. Set the air floor to medium or slightly less and monitor. It really works great. But if it is not good enough arrange the coals in a circular format so only one coal is touching the next ( max 3/4 of the Joes bottom), lie only the first coal. you can always add more coal but it works great!
It’s better to bring up the temp slowly when you’re aiming for 225 to 250. Use 1 or 2 fire starters. Put your deflector plates in place. Close the dome. At this point just watch it and slowly close the bottom as you heat up. Pinky width open at bottom should be where you end up and just slowly close the top to slow down the temp climb. Don’t put wood in yet. Bring it up slowly then when you hit your temp, put on the wood and get it ignited, then add food once the smoke turns blue. If you put wood on too early it can burn up fast and climb the temp unnecessarily.
One thing I’ve been doing is lighting less charcoal at the start. Instead of lighting in three places I light in one and it’s easier to keep low.
Most common problem to keep it low is starting a big fire to begin with, make sure you book plenty of time to start a small fire and let it grow slowly