Step one: Park your butt in the flower pot

[Stinky The Clown]

Stinky Jr2 built a smoker from a large clay flower pot, a clay flower pot saucer, an electric hot plate, some small cake pans, a gas grill thermometer, and a round grill grate.

Very similar to this:



He made pulled pork from a half a Boston butt. We brined it for 4 hours thencoated it with a rib rub I do that is pretty much the same as a good Memphis rib house would do. He then put the soaked wood in one of the cake pans and put it on the heating element inside the bottom of the flower pot. Water goes in the other pan and on the grill. The meat goes in with the fat cap facing up (so it melts down through the meat). He fired it up and smoked it with half hickory and half applewood at 225° to 250° for 6 hours.

Here's the rub recipe:

3T paprika
1T freshly ground black pepper
1T dark brown sugar
1T celery salt
1t garlic powder
1t dry mustard
1t cumin
1t corriander
1/2t cayenne pepper

That cheap contraption made smoked pulled pork as good as any I have ever eaten anywhere.

[Callalily]

1. Very impressive! n/t

[Phentex]

2. It's very Alton Brownish!

How many pounds was the butt for that recipe?

[Stinky The Clown]

3. It followed Alton Brown's concept. The butt was a supermarket cut .... maybe 3 ... 4 lbs.

StinkyJr2 saw it on Alton's Brown's show and built it.

[hippywife]

4. I was going to ask you

for the specifics but I just Googled it and found this:

http://www.naffziger.net/blog/2008/07/05/the-alton-brown-flower-pot-smoker/

This is very cool. :hi:

[Stinky The Clown]

5. That's a very good description of it ......

.... the hardest part was finding the domed clay pot for the top. StinkyJr2 never did. He used a flat clay post saucer that is the same diameter as the pot. The only down side is that it makes the top part, where the food goes, kinda shallow. A chicken damned near hits the lid. In hindsight, a second clay pot might be better than the shallow saucer. Or you could get one of each and use whichever suits the food you're smoking.

[hippywife]

6. A second clay pot

is a good idea. :hi:

[pengillian101]

7. Holy smokes!

Very nice!

[Phentex]

8. Last night on Foodography...

or whatever its called, there was a young guy who sponsors a trashcan smoker challenge. It might be fun to attend that just to see what people come up with.

It reminded me of your smoker.

[Catherina]

9. This is ingenious! Thank you. I'm going to be a copycat tomorrow n/t

[Stinky The Clown]

10. Have you done the copycat yet? How'd it turn out?

[lazarus]

11. just made one myself

had to do some rewiring, as the only hot plate we could find wouldn't fit in the pot. Made some great BBQ. Doing ribs in a week or so.

[Stinky The Clown]

12. Rewiring is normal. The heating element wants to be in the pot, but the hot plate body . . .

. . . which is normally plastic, wants to stay outside. StinkyJr2 ran the wires to the element up through the flower pot's drainage hole.

Did you do your 'que low and slow?

[lazarus]

13. 220 degrees

for about 10 hours with a 2 pound butt. I'm moving up to a 4 pound butt, or maybe ribs, next.

We got lucky and have a very sturdy metal body for the hot plate, so we can just set the pot on it.

Alton had a round hot plate that just went inside, but they don't sell those anywhere that we can find.

Our only problem was setting the temp properly. It kept wanting to jump up to 250 or higher, then drop to 180, which is too low to char the wood. So we had to babysit it all day.