Donna's First AmeriQue Cook

Donna,

Congrats on the new smoker and being the first to post a "photo album"

What a great new feature.

Looking forward to more photos.

Russ

Of course, I have to post more pix when it comes out of the smoker.

BTW, I am really impressed. The oven temp which is set at 225 has stayed between 223 and 226 constantly, and it's usually right on the money.

The probe temp just keeps climbing on up there. It's been in about 4.5 hours and the internal temp is up to 143, just 17 more to go. I can't wait to see this hunk of pork!

Donna

Donna,

Looks great - gotta love the pix!!! Can't wait to see the finished product.

Just curious, are you only cooking to a temp of 160?

Mike

Yes, the USDA says that is the recommended temperature for pork.

http://www.fsis.usda.gov/Is_It_Done_Yet/Brochure_Text/index.asp

I thought I'd let it hold for a couple of hours to make it more tender. What do you think?

Donna

Oh, the humiliation. Now Tom tells me I should have cooked it to 195! I am going to try to salvage it by resetting the probe. Guess how many pork butts I have smoked? This sounds so lame, but my husband usually does it. No more! I am becoming an empowered pork butt woman!

I'll have to post the picture of the finished product WAY LATER tonight.

Donna

After learning that I needed to bring the internal temp to 195, I put the AmeriQue back in the smoke-cook cycle at 225F, and let it go for a couple of more hours. By then it was getting late so I foiled it and left it in all night. I took it out at 6am and it was great! Click on gallery at the bottom left to see the photos.

Donna

Some observations:

Pay attention in class. I have been to the Fast Eddy's class and I should have listened instead of walking around talking to everyone. I would have known much more about what I was doing. (Girls just want to have fun, in the words of Madonna.)

Since I work for Cookshack, maybe you won't believe me, but this AmeriQue is so dead easy to use it's astonishing. Prepare the meat, prepare the smoker, probe it, set the oven temp and internal meat temp with the controller, and that's about it.

The AmeriQue was within 2 degrees of its 225F setting every time I looked at. Since it's my new toy, I looked at it frequently.

I did not open the door one time during the cook cycle, which I reallllllllllllly wanted to do. I am glad I didn't. It would have lowered the oven temp and therefore the meat temp and it would have negatively affected the end product.

I think our operator's manual needs improvement. I referred to it a few times, and I don't think it explains the controller well enough. Or it could be that I just have a hard time grasping obvious concepts.

I have a dirty little secret: I have always hated cooking. Yes, I am from a cooking family, and I never liked it until about 6 months ago when I fell in love with it. I am way behind the learning curve on my very own company's smokers because I have just smoked obvious, easy things. I am so excited to have the forum to learn from. What am I going to smoke today?!!

Donna

Donna, coupla questions

On the latest pix.. can you repost them as larger sized pix like the first batch?

How did you post the album.. it's a great way to put a bunch of photos on a forum as thumbnails and follow a story in a neat concise way.. I'd like to try something like that on the website I'm trying to put together for my woodcarvings.

Bill

This thread is great with the way you added the album. It is unlike all the rest of the threads in that it's difficult to figure how to get to the place where one can add a comment.

At least on my end.. you can go to "comments" and get to what everyone wrote.. but there is no reply link.. that I can see.. anywhere on the page as is with other parts of the forum.. or is that just an anamoly(sp?) for today?

If there is enough server space, I'd love to see more of these.. especially with the tutorials.

That comment thing is a tricky little devil. Clicking on the "Comment" links just takes you to the comments. When you get there, look at the red bar at the top left of your screen. See the little yellow arrow? Those little arrows mean "Reply" wherever you see them. Click on it and you will get a reply window.

Clever the way they made it so obscure no one notices it.

As for the albums, any forum member can post albums. Your pictures must be smaller than 100K, which is really generous. Most of mine were under 20K, as I recall. It's very easy to do, just go to the New tab ...

Donna

quote:

Originally posted by Smokenque:
Donna, coupla questions

On the latest pix.. can you repost them as larger sized pix like the first batch?

How did you post the album.. it's a great way to put a bunch of photos on a forum as thumbnails and follow a story in a neat concise way.. I'd like to try something like that on the website I'm trying to put together for my woodcarvings.

Bill

Yes, I can change them to a larger size thru the photo album editing feature. (I doubt if it will be today; I have been playing on the forum all week and neglecting a bunch of other stuff, now it's time to pay the piper, in a minute.)

Go to New tab, the click on Photo Album and it will be obvious from there. You must use small files, though. Like under 50K if possible, although I have it set at 100K max.

If you are taking pictures with a digital camera, you probably have a program that came with the camera, or any photo editing software, to save the pix for the web or save jpgs or gifs ... you have probably already done this. It's so we don't fill up the server with high resolution huge fotos and the run out of space for posts ...

If you need help, just say the word.

Donna

Donna
How long will the AmeriQue stay in the holding cycle? I didn't see any details in the operators manual about this.

Also, at the end of a timed smoking period, does it turn off completely, or go automatically into the hold cycle?

quote:

Originally posted by Mark R.:
Donna
How long will the AmeriQue stay in the holding cycle? I didn't see any details in the operators manual about this.

Until it is manually shut off.

I will see that this is added to the operator's manual.

quote:

Originally posted by Mark R.:
Also, at the end of a timed smoking period, does it turn off completely, or go automatically into the hold cycle?

It automatically goes into the hold cycle. Thanks for pointing out that the operator's manual is not clear on this. We will get it fixed.