Every year, the Christmas season befuddles men and women alike. The unanswerable question: 'What do I get the BBQ'er in my life for Christmas?' While this post won't be an exhaustive list of suggestions, I figured I would put together an Amazon-affiliate-link-littered blog post of ideas. Just so we are clear, these links bring in a small amount of revenue for the blog. The price doesn't change for you on Amazon, and the revenue, small as it may be, is helpful in keeping the site going. You are also welcome to purchase other things via Amazon through my affiliate links, and it is much appreciated. Enough of that, to the list!

Smokers:
Perhaps your BBQ'er has been a sideline BBQ'er. Doing plenty of research, looking into a variety of models and options, but isn't actually out back smoking a rack of ribs or a pork shoulder right now. This is the time of year to change that!

First up is the Weber Smokey Mountain Cooker (WSM for short). This is widely considered the best entry point (and beyond) charcoal smoker you can get. The model linked is the 18-1/2 model, but it also comes in a 22-1/2 inch model for a bit more space. 

If charcoal isn't their thing, the Smokin-It #1 is a fantastic option in the realm of electric smokers. This unit is build like a champ (and the much more expensive Cookshack smoker that I started with). If this unit was around when I was first getting into smoking, this probably would have been my choice. If you've done any research on electric smokers so far, you've likely run across the Masterbuilt Electric Smokehouse which will run you a little less. Initially I was a big fan of the Masterbuilt unit...until several of my friends had issues with the heating element going out after a year of use. After some research, I discovered that the heating element is a common issue, so I don't feel comfortable recommending that unit any longer.

Woods:
If your BBQ'er is already active in the fine arts of meat smoking and BBQ, then a great way to hit a home run is with woods. The most popular woods tend to be Hickory, Mesquite, and Apple. Because of that, I'd suggest getting a wood that may be a bit more unconventional for your BBQ'er. I'd suggest woods like oak (great on beef), pecan (great mixed with hickory on pork), and alder (great on fish and poultry). I've been happy with both of the brands of wood linked below, so it is mostly preference on your part. 

Camerons BBQ Chunks come in a variety of flavors, and two different bag sizes. They offer maple wood chunks as well, which is a very unique offering compared to most of the other wood chunk sellers.

Webber offers less of a wood selection, and only sell 5lb bags, but they offer their wood at a lower price. I've also used their wood, and was pleased with the quality of their product as well. I tend do order Weber chunks unless I need a wood that they don't offer.

If the BBQ'er in your life prefers wood chips to wood chunks, Webber also offers wood chips. Most smokers do better with chunks, but not all. The previously mentioned Masterbuilt Electric Smoker uses chips. If you buy chunks, you can always cut them into large chips, but that is a bit more work.

Cutlery:
One of the often overlooked parts of BBQ is the kitchen tools used for prep - mainly cutlery. The right equipment when preparing meat to go onto the smoker or grill can speed the job up tremendously, and the right blade to cut things after the fact can make presentation a breeze.

I was given this gift a while ago, and wasn't really sure it would be that helpful. I mean, scissors are scissors right? Why would I need 5 pairs? Now I know. The poultry shears have been a HUGE help when working with Chicken, and having a pair I can go to when I need to trim a cut to my liking is such a help. Mine were a huge help when cutting up a rack of ribs into 3 bones for easy serving for a large party. I've even found the herb scissors to be very helpful when I'm working on a rub.

Also very helpful is a cleaver. This specific cleaver is very well balanced, and makes the job of chopping up chicken quarters a breeze.

While an automatic meat slicer is a great tool to have, the average BBQ'er doesn't really need one sitting around the house. They are a tremendous help when you are slicing huge quantities of meat, but when you have a brisket or two you need to slice, its such a pain to get it out of storage, fire it up, then tear it down to clean it. Enter the slicing knife. You may recognize this knife from the meat station at the buffet. These are designed to make accurate, consistent, and thin slices of meat. Much more affordable solution than the automatic meat slicer. Not to mention easier to store and clean!

I'm not sure if Bear Paws qualify as cutlery, but they are a nice help when pulling a pork shoulder apart. If your BBQ'er is one who often does pulled pork/beef, this would be a nice tool to help speed up the process.

All this sharp stuff will slowly get dull over time with use. The AccuSharp Knife Sharpener has crazy good reviews - especially considering how cheap it is. If your BBQ'er has all the cutting tools he or she needs, this is a great little tool to help keep them working at their best.

Accessories:
Accessories are often a lot of fun to search for. The biggest problem with them though, is that they don't always help out. I bought a grill light a while back thinking it would be the most helpful tool I'd every purchased. It has been on the shelf for 2 years. That isn't to say that grill lights aren't good for anyone... just not for me. Keep that in mind when you look for accessories. Try to think of the problems your BBQ'er runs into all the time, and see if you can find something to help solve that problem. Here are a few of my favorites:

I was given a pair of gloves as a gift a while back, and sort of rolled my eyes when I got them. Not helpful, and goofy looking. Well, I'll eat my words on that. Thick leather gloves have been, by far, my favorite grilling accessory. They won't let you pick up hot coals or carry a smokin' hot cast iron skillet for 20 minutes, but they are a huge help overall. They allow me to move grates with my hands, pick up a piece of meat if needed, and even hold a metal chafing dish when full of hot-out-of-the-smoker meat.

A mop might seem like a silly accessory, but as you get more and more sucked into BBQ, you want to try everything you can to up the flavor. Boy howdy is mopping a great way to do that. On leaner cuts of meat, the mop sauce really shines. This little tool is a great way to control how much you are putting on, and where it is going.

Lets be honest here...this is an apron for men. Plain and simple. A few nice things about this though. With BBQ, it is really easy to get your cloths messy. This helps with that. With BBQ, you often carry a lot of tools to help you do your job better. This helps with that (check out those pockets!). With BBQ, it is really easy to burn yourself. This helps with that (nice, thick leather). I learned how helpful these would be the hard way. I had a friend help me cut up 60 pounds of chicken quarters. Fortunately all the sauce came out of his shirt. This would have helped with that.

Thermometers are a huge help when it comes to smoking meat. So much so that there are many BBQ adages about temperature. 'If your lookin' you ain't cookin' - referring to when you become so impatient that you keep opening the door of the smoker to check the meat, but keep losing all your heat. Another is, 'its done when its done' - when the meat is at done temperature, then its done. While other thermometers take an accurate temperature, they can take a long time to read the final result. All that extra time allows more heat to escape. This thermometer gives you a temp in 3 seconds. Waiting 15 extra seconds may not seem like a big deal, but it sure is frustrating. This is tops on my 'if I have $100 to spend on a thermometer' list.

Books:
If your BBQ'er has been at it for a while, they are likely pretty well off regarding tools and accessories. Most likely, they have also dabbled a bit in making their own sauces and rubs. Or, for the extremely ambitious, they've pondered building a smoke house in the back yard. Books can be a great resource for all these types.

Most of these books offer the same thing - a bunch of recipes for sauces, rubs, sides, and a few other niche things. Mainly they are about sauces and rubs. And they aren't the kind of thing where the recipes they list are the 'right' answer. They are starting points for your BBQ'er to experiment and customize.

For those dreaming of the more unconventional, a backyard smokehouse is a very interesting idea to read about.

So there you have it. A hopefully helpful list of shopping ideas for your BBQ'er. The nice thing about most of these items is that having more than one of them isn't a bad thing. Gloves will eventually wear out, wood keeps on burning. Even knives will eventually need to be replaced. If you are a BBQ'er reading this, what are some other things you have on your holiday BBQ wish list?

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In this week's podcast, we talked about smoking mac and cheese. As promised, here is the recipe with a visual tour of the process of smoking a batch for yourself. It is a very easy recipe, and the result were great. This was a crock pot recipe that we are redeeming by finishing in the smoker. If you decide to try your hand at making this in the crock pot, cook on the low setting for 2.5 hours. Its better when smoked though, just so you know. 

First off, the ingredients and process:

• 1/2 stick of butter 
• 1 can condensed cheddar cheese soup 
• 2 cups half and half 
• 4 cups cheddar cheese (grated) (feel free to mix up the cheese suggestion to suit your taste)
• 12oz of your favorite noodle (we use small shells)
• Hickory wood (or your wood of choice for smoke)

Your first step is to boil your noodle of choice. As noted, we prefer small shells, but almost anything will work.

As your noodles are cooking, I'd suggest getting your smoker up to temperature before you put the mac and cheese in. I don't always take my unit up to temp before putting meat in, but in this instance, getting things warmed up was more important to me. For this recipe I used my Masterbuilt XL smoker at 250º, and hickory. Also, because the mac and cheese will only be in the smoker for 1.5 hours, get some good smoke going.

Once the noodles are done, pile in the glorious ingredients.

Now, stir.

Once everything looks evenly mixed, pour it into a half chafing dish. I prefer the disposable ones. You can also use a non-disposable pan, but the smoke might cause you grief. I've noticed that anything I've put into the smoker is really difficult to clean, so I tend to use either items shunned from the kitchen to live the life all kitchenware dreams up - as an outdoor cooking tool, or the aluminum disposable dishes.

Now, into the preheated and smoking smokily smoker:

Smoke at 250º for 1.5 hours.

I pulled our batch out when the cheese looked melted, and some of the pasta tips were starting to brown:

In the house, it looked like this:

If it were left in much longer, the top layer may have been too hard to eat. The top pasta on dishes like this tend to get chewy, or worse, crunchy, when overcooked. This happens when cooked in the crock pot too, but mostly along the edges of the top layer. At 1.5 hours, we didn't have that problem, and all layers were delicious, with the top layer being just a bit firmer. Also worth noting, the top layer was where the smoker flavor was. It wasn't overwhelming at all, and added a very nice degree of interest to the dish.

Hope you enjoy it if you make it!

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Some of you may have been following out meat smoking podcast, The Smoker's Lounge, over on iTunes, but I figured I'd put out some feelers to see if there are any topics you'd like to hear about. We have some great topics to be released in the next few months, but if there is something that is highly requested, we'd love to put it into the show rotation. Would you like to hear some specific recipes? More detail about specific cuts of meat? Something else? Let us know in the comments. Thanks!

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Episode-4-Beef.m4a Listen on Posterous

If you enjoy the podcast, don't forget to subscribe on iTunes.

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Easter is a few weeks away, and that means holiday smoking is on my mind. In this week's podcast, Tim and I talk through two very simple options for smoking for the holidays. While Easter is the next major holiday, these things will work great for any holiday. Hope this is helpful!

- Matt

Episode-3-Holiday-Smoking.m4a Listen on Posterous

Subscribe to The Smoker's Lounge:

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Episode-2-More-Pork.m4a Listen on Posterous

In this episode of The Smoker's Lounge, we talk through two more options when it comes to smoking pork, as well as a tip to add some flavor to your smoked meat:

• Pre-cooked Ham (note: try not to get the pre-sliced, as it tends to dry out)
• Pork Loin
• Letting meat rest after the smoke is finished

If you are interested in subscribing to The Smoker's Lounge, it is now available on iTunes.

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Episode_1_Pork_3.m4a Listen on Posterous

We've decided to put together a podcast talking through some of the basics of meat smoking. Episode 1 is about Pork. Let us know what you think!

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Welcome to Fattybombatty's Beginners Guide to Smoking Cheese and Meat!

This site isn't designed to be a replacement for any of the other fantastic BBQ sites out there. Instead, it is meant to be a 100% beginner focused guide to answer the questions you have about meat smoking. I started meat smoking in early 2008, and remember having a lot of trouble finding answers to the most basic questions. Questions like "is there a right way to put meat into the smoker?", and "what do I do with the wood to make it smoke?".

Meat smoking is a unique beast. I remember thinking that I would really mess things up if I did them wrong. I've since learned that, as I've often read, 'meat smoking is more of an art than a science'. There aren't nearly as many 'right' answers as I thought there were. But there are some!

Up top will find four sections of questions, each geared towards a different phase of the process. When I started researching meat smoking, these are the three phases of research came up: 1. What is meat smoking and am I even interested in it? 2. What do I need and can I afford it? 3. What types of smokers are there, and how much are they? 4. I'm in! Where can I find inspiration and how do I convince my spouse. You'll also find some videos on some of the basics of meat smoking.

The list of questions and answers is by no means exhaustive, so post a comment if you have a question about something that hasn't been answered. Pass it along even if it is something you have answered with your own research, as it might be helpful to another just starting to get their feet wet.

I hope you find the site helpful in your journey into the world of meat smoking. It's the best tasting hobby I've ever picked up! If you have found any of this information helpful, consider supporting the site through the store link above. I get a small percentage of any purchase you make through Amazon (not just the things featured in my store), and it doesn't change the price of what you buy. Thanks!

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