Let’s See What This Reverse Flow Does.

This is the first time cooking anything in the Oklahoma Joe’s Highland Offset Reverse Flow Smoker and BBQ.

I was given a couple of 18 inch Rainbow Trout caught last night. At Safeway we bought 10 pounds of pork bone-in sirloin steaks for $10 and a ¾ pound beef New York strip for $6.

I harvested a 5 gallon bucket of dry dead mesquite wood from the yard.

I started the fire with my electric starter in the offset fire box. It worked really well. I made sure the handle was not above the flames and to the side.

At 5:40 PM the meat was on. I sprinkled my 3 equal parts black pepper, onion powder and garlic powder on the beef and pork steaks. I needed to smoke the fish so I was trying something new. 300*F smoking. I used the Scientific Kentucky windage that saw when I seasoned the smoker the other day. I put mostly twigs in the offset to get a lot of heat and smoke fast. 20 minutes into the smoke the smoker temperature was 300*F and the offset needed some bigger pieces of wood to stabilize the heat. I left the smoke stack vent all the way open and regulated air flow at the intake vent.

My 30 year old wood tending rebar never needed a hook on it before, but it does now. I welded a piece of horseshoe on it to hang it on the smoker while I was waiting.

To get a constant temperature you’ll need to not open the firebox door or the smoker door. You’ll have to go on the thermometer on the lid and one in the meat and rely on times from previous successful smokes. If you’re doing it for the first time use the best data that you can find for the type of food you’re smoking. Opening a door can let so much heat out that it takes 10 minutes to recover. You will have to add more wood during the smoke when you see the thermometer needle going down. If you added too much wood close the vents part way to lessen the oxygen. This may put a lot of extra smoke into the chamber, so watch the wood.

At 6:20 I pulled the trout and the beef steak. Because the steak is smoked using the offset it doesn’t look like your standard BBQ’d steak. It is basically a baked smoked steak medium rare all the way through. There was no bark like you get from BBQ grilling.

I should have oiled the grills where the trout what put. The skin glued itself to the grill and was a pain to get it off. The trout was perfect, tender and juicy.

At 7:00 PM we pulled the pork steaks after 1 hour and 20 minutes at 300*F of smoking baking. It was strange to see red on the outside of the meat with an internal temperature of 196*F. I have seen this with smoking at lower temps like on a ham in a low oxygen environment. After resting for a half hour the color changed to brown.

The pork will be made into other dishes like green chili (verde carnitas). My goal was to smoke infuse the meat.

Oklahoma Joe's Highland Reverse Flow Smoker BBQ

The ash drop bucket rusted off of my Ol’ Blue Wood Fired BBQ Grill that I’ve had for decades. The lid handle and wheels sun baked off a decade ago. The wind threw it off the 14 foot high rock slope in my back yard and cracked the porcelain lid coating a decade ago. She's not being thrown out. I cut the bottom out of a Christmas popcorn tin and laid it over the hole.

Ol' Blue

I’ve been looking at Offset BBQ/Smokers for years. Call me cheap, but I would not buy one until I needed a new wood fired BBQ. I looked at the biscuit and pellet BBQ/Smokers. They don’t add as much smoke flavor as I like because they burn so clean. 

I don’t like the taste of burned propane gas in my food. Yes, Ethyl Mercaptan has a smell when it is burned and makes food stink. Even the propane companies are looking for a new safety additive that doesn’t burn dirty or stinky. 35 years ago I had a gas smoker that was given to me and I gave away after the 1^st use.

So, a new chapter begins after much research and deliberation. I bought at Oklahoma Joe’s Highland Reverse Flow Wood BBQ Smoker at Flagstaff Sportsman’s Warehouse and the storage cover. It was fully assembled and four employees removed the smoke stack and laid it down on a packing blanket in the bed of the Power Wagon. 

The directions for seasoning the BBQ, say, to brush down the interior (un-painted) surfaces with vegetable oil. It looked like it had already been coated so I didn’t bother. We washed the grills instead of leaving them in the BBQ as directed by Oklahoma Joe’s.

I took my Stihl Battery Chainsaw MSA 120 into my back acreage to harvest a 5 gallon bucket of dead mesquite. 4200 feet in elevation is near the highest level that it grows in Arizona. About 10% of my 200 trees are mesquite.

I loaded most of it in the offset basket and lit a pile of fine mesquite twigs with larger twigs on top that I put on the access door side of the basket. For years, I've used an electric starter to start Ol’ Blue. I never use paper or starter fluid.

I was happy to see that the mesquite in the offset was able to bring the temperature of the grill, after going around the reverse flow pans, to 475*F. I would probably never cook at that level, but it tells me that it works very well and I won’t need to use tons of wood. I saw door clamps installed on some reverse flow smokers. It doesn’t look like they will be needed on the Oklahoma Joe's Highland Reverse Flow Smoker. It's fairly air tight already. The hinge side of the door is where some smoke was escaping.

I saw several reviews with pictures of the paint peeling off from the heat. I’m not sure why they don’t use Stove Paint. Well, like everyone else, the paint on the top of the offset peeled completely off.

So, Instead of sniveling, I removed the warming shelf and handle.

I cleaned the damaged paint off and painted it with Stove Paint that everyone that heats their home with wood stoves in the back-country already has.

It took me 30 minutes total and is a little more flat – luster than the factory paint, but it will stay on.

Where I live, when you buy a new rifle you skim and pillar bed the action, float the barrel, replace the trigger and mount a scope on it that cost more than the rifle.

We bought a brand new Power Wagon 4X4 6.4 Hemi 2500 Truck 3 years ago, replaced the tires with real off-road tires and sold the factory supplied shoes to a flat-lander with a mall-crawler who writes an article in a major magazine about the great tires he got for 20% off.

I give the Oklahoma Joe's Highland Reverse Flow Smoker a 5 Star Rating and will recommend it to my friends. And, when they taste the table fare from it they’ll be buying one too when their Ol’ Blue breaks.

I could have bought or made a similar BBQ/Smoker Reverse flow, but it would have been double or more the cost.

Smoking Javelina Jalapeno Sausage 1st in 2019

Archery Javelina hunting in Arizona is a blast. It happens in January and you have to have an Arizona hunting license and a big game permit tag that has to be applied for ahead and drawn for. There are leftover permits in some areas, so we were lucky this year to get a second tag for a different archery hunt. Javelina are not feral hogs that currently do not live in Arizona. I want to someday go to Texas to hunt them.

The archery season this year started out with 9 inches of wet snow in both of our hunting areas. It was slippery but every track can be seen from a long ways off through good optics.

I am lucky to have a loving wife who for my 60^th Birthday bought me a Swarovski STX spotting scope, Gitzo Traveler tripod and a Manfrotto MHXPRO-2W fluid head. She also years ago bought me a pair of Leica Ultravid 10X42 BL way before all the high definition and built in range finders. I bought an Outdoorsmans brand quick release Binocular Tripod Adapter and a stud that goes on my binos.

Don’t be tricked by Vortex hype. People who love Vortex haven’t looked through good glass or are too cheap; it’s not their fault. I bought a Rem 700 LR 30-06 for a fair price considering the Nightforce Picatinny 20MOA rail and 30mm rings. Now I have a Vortex Viper 4-16x44 that has glass about as good as my Simmons 8 point that is on a 22LR. For a 30mm tube it has an eye box that is pathetic. You can’t harvest what you can’t see. The rifle now has a Leupold Mark 5HD 3.6-18x44 TMR Illum and went from 1 to ½ MOA.

I have a couple of rifles with Nightforce ATACR  5-25 x 56 F1 MIL-R Illum scopes that are in a league of amazing. I just bought a Sig Sauer Tango 3-12X42 MRAD Illum for my Areo Presicion Enhanced AR 338 Federal that I haven’t even plumbed to the mount. It has a generous eye box and is perfect for the 400 yards caliber; and yes, it is foreign made that doesn’t pretend to be made in the USA.

Eberlestock packs fit more people like a glove and make weight feel like ½ of what you’re carrying. Just remember though, “Every Ounce Counts”. "Go in light, come out heavy". The rule of thumb is 1/3 your peak body weight or less and no more than 50% even on flat ground. I hunt at 25% total gear including firearm. Packing out with Leki trekking poles I’ll go 45% max on the 1^st trip at 3 miles or less. My adult son goes 30% and 50% with a couple of 65% elk head only pack outs. I cannot do that any more. 20 years ago I did a 200 pounds of meat for a half mile on flat ground. We de-bone everything and don’t leave any meat like a lot of guides and hunters do. Those tough cuts make great sausage.

This is my son with a nocked arrow ready for the downed boar Javelina to charge. If a Javelina is not cold stoned dead it is dangerous. Just before passing they have gotten up and charged. This goes for elk, deer and even a turkey that all try to get away and then pile up. Approach them from behind slowly while watching and listening for anything. A final poke of the eye is a great idea, but my grandfather was hospitalized by a bull elk that got up after being poked in the eye. He was kicked several times, gored and batted 30 feet by the antlers of the bull elk attempting escape.

Proper field care of the meat is essential to great tasting table fare. Note the use of nitrile gloves during the skinning process to keep sweat oils, dirt on the skin and fur off of your hands so you don’t get it on the meat. I sock skin Javelina before I even gut them. When working on field dressing a bull elk I will go through 6 pairs of nitrile gloves. I’ve been told ten thousand times that wild animals are gamy. That is people who hang meat with the skin on, cross contaminate the meat with musk from the fur, don’t properly cool the meat, hang the meat too long or hang the meat around contaminates.

I have a buddy that hangs deer and beef in a freezing barn in Minnesota with his combine harvester and diesel truck. His wife won’t eat the bitter “Gamy” meat. She tells everyone that Arizona meat is fantastic tasting and she hates corn fed Minnesota meat. She thought their stores imported the beef meat from other states besides Minnesota.

The 2019 Javelina Jalapeno Sausage recipe: (1st 6A boar)

13.75 pounds of fine ground Javelina

1/4 Cup - Sea Salt Ground

1/4 Cup - Black Pepper Ground

1/2 Cup - Onion Powder

1/8th Cup - Paprika Powder

1 at 12 ounce jalapeno's including liquid (Hatch brand)

1/3 Cup - Fresh Minced Garlic (1 Head)

1/4 cup garlic powder (not garlic salt)

2 pounds Mild Cheddar Grated Cheese

2 @ 1 oz packets of Ground Cumin (Tampico)

2 @ 1 oz packets of Ground Mexico Oregano (El Guapo)

1 oz packet of Ground New Mexico Molino Red Chili (El Guapo)

Tampico, Mojave and El Guapo are all great quality and can be ordered online if not available in your local grocery store.

I am using LEM Clear Fibrous 1 ½” X 12” casings. Six thick slices of the 1 ½” diameter sausage cover the bread with lettuce, red onion, mustard and tomato for a scrumptious sandwich.  

Start soaking your casings in warm water. Mix all the spices in a food blender, and then pour over the fine ground meat and cheese. Mix very well, stuff the casings and put it in the refrigerator for at least a day for the spices to hydrate and blend.

LEM 5 Pounds Stuffer wing nut attached to an old cutting board that I put 2“ rubber feet. The wing nuts spin off for easy cleaning and storage of the smoker.

   

Now the smoking;

I did not preheat the smoker. After loading the cold raw sausage in the Masterbuilt 30” Digital Electric Smoker. Top vent ½ open and no water in tray.

Started at 10:28 Temp = 160*F and set the time for 7 hours. One scoop of maple wood chips and one of apple. 

At 11:43 added ½ scoop apple and ½ scoop mesquite.

At 12:52 added 1 scoop maple.

Pulled the sausage at 4:00 PM at 5 ½ hours of smoking.

Cooling the sausage on cookie racks. Cooling them horizontal and turning them over a few times seems to allow the moisture to evenly absorb back into every inch of the sausage.