One of the joys of the FE for me is the ability to be cooking in minutes instead of hours. With my offset New Braunfels it is a real production to get it up and running and regulated and ready to put the food on. I would NEVER have tried to cook a weeknight dinner on it.
Last night I decided I'd make a meatloaf. About two hours before I expected my wife home from work I thought "I wonder how this would be in the smoker?". I formed the loaf onto a pizza pan full of holes (see the thread "New Trays for the FE") and slid it onto the bottom rack. I peeled two nice onions and made a couple of cuts not quite all the way through from the top down towards the root end. I made a little nest out of crumpled foil so the onions would stand upright, drizzled them with olive oil and some Southern Succor Rub and put them on the second rack. I then put 4 medium sized red potatoes on the top rack after nuking them for 5 minutes to get them started.
Closed the cooker, put it on "smoke" for a half an hour then cranked it to 350* until the internal temperature of the meatloaf was 156 (I figured it would reach 160 during the resting period). At that point I pulled the meat and covered it with a stainless mixing bowl to keep warm and let it rest for a half an hour while we had a cocktail.
Everything was delicious. My wife, who isn't really big on onions, even liked those. I think next time I'll use russet potatoes instead of the reds. I like their texture better as bakers.
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