After a lot of shopping, comparing, reading, and research I finally settled on a new smoker that will be the last I ever own(unless I make it a retirement job). I spent a large portion of time drooling over smokers from Tejas smokers, BBQ Pits by Klose and many other larger manufacturers. I could never quite get myself to commit to something this expensive without seeing it for myself though, and the thought of traveling to Texas to shop seemed ridiculous. However, I found that the Bass Pro Shop in our area of Arizona was carrying a brand out of Oklahoma called Horizon that I was immediately impressed by. After doing research on this particular brand and finding people had very little negative to say about it, we made the purchase and towed her home.
It's a Horizon 20" RD Special Marshal Backyard Smoker, and man is it a beast.
I spent the remainder of this Saturday seasoning it and getting a feel for how it responded to adjustments. I burned a lump charcoal and hickory fire for about 5.5 hours and oiled it up by spraying oil inside and out and then wiping down the outside at about the 2.5 hour mark. Once it was shiny black inside, I shut it down and wiped it down one more time to get as much unbaked oil off of it as I could.
Sunday I christened it with a couple of racks of pork ribs. Nothing too fancy, just a test run to see how things came out. I invited my Mom over to share in the output as well and we had a nice little meal. Sarah is going as meat free as possible for awhile, so I made her some nice grilled black bean burgers over the firebox, which has LOTS of room for this kind of cooking as well.
I think the most immediately noticeable thing about this new smoker is how little adjusting and tending it requires. It takes considerably longer to heat up compared to the cheap little Char-Griller, which is understandable as it is 1/4" cast iron. Once you've got the temperature up where you want it though, it's just an adjustment or two and bam, there it sits for hours and hours on end with only having to add wood to keep her going as the upkeep. I actually had time to prepare Sarah's meal in its entirety without having to worry whether the smoker went out or if the temperature was out of control and burning the food. I spent the majority of the day doing everything else other then worrying about the smoker in fact and that is a huge change. I used to have to camp out next to the cheaper smoker and watch it like a hawk, if I left it for a half hour I was getting worried and potentially either ruining the food, or seriously delaying the meal because of temperature fluctuation.
So thanks to my wife Sarah for making this happen for us, I hope we have many many years of great bbq, and a little blogging along the way!
