Smoking with Doug

" We turned the lights down low and had a party on the patio." - ZZ Top

A couple of weekends ago I went over to my friend Doug's house where his friend Tommy was smoking chicken, pork, and salmon among other things.

Above you can see two beer can chickens cheek to cheek.




Below the two chickens was about an eight pound Boston Butt and a huge piece of salmon.

I found out that this particular Weber smoker is known as the "bullet" and Tommy was particularly adept at smoking on it.

The coals are in the very bottom that you can access by way of a door on the side.

He had some "chunks" of hickory that were soaked prior to going on the coals. He prefers them to chips.

Just above the coals sits a "drip pan", that was about half filled with beer before we put on the meat. (You can see it on the left)

On top of that was the first grate. He loaded the butt and the fish on this level.

The two chickens were placed on the top grate.

He had a digital thermometer hanging inside the body of the smoker. He kept it at 250 or below the entire time.


After 2 hours we pulled the salmon off. It was the best salmon I can remember eating in a very long time.

After about 4 hours we pulled off the chickens.

About 2 hrs after that the butt came off, which I forgot to sample.