Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Food, Cooking, and Game Preparation BBQ Pit...SOS

We are doing cookouts at the club this summer and I was thinking of doing some pulled pork. Here is what I have to work with. Any ideas on converting this thing into a pit BBQ...? Any thoughts greatly appreciated...!

Looks like a nice cement slab to park your smoker. I suppose you could jury rig up something but draft control is essential to controling your temperature. I cook on a similar grill set up every week for 150 people and it's a challenge. Scorching on the bottom and cold on the top. The heat curve for charcoal is very sharp and drops off quickly.

The open side of your grill looks like it would be a good place to put a fabricated smoker...store your hickory underneath. Good luck!

This is what I would do..

Was thinkin' that might be a possibility...

OK, nobody else respond, apparently we already have the solution...

I charge $100 per hour for my design fees.

So, that'll be 10 cents please.

ROFLMAO....that's just TFF!! Your best work yet!


I'll type up some ideas when I have more time but this would be my approach.

Now, why would you encourage him...?

You owe me a keyboard Dave!! TFF!!

Mike

Yeah, you can do it. If possible remove the solid iron sheet and replace with exanded metal. If you can't do that then just put your coals on the sheet and lay a piece of expanded metal on top of the pit. Put enough braces of something like a steel fence post under the expanded to hold your meat.

Take a sheet of galvanized iron and block the open end of your pit. Cut a door in it that you can cover so you can regulate draft. Take a couple of those concrete blocks and block off the closed end of your pit up to where the expanded metal is.

Go to a furniture or appliance store and get a cardboard box like a refridgerator or washing machine comes in.
Cut it so it fits flat over your meat. This is your lid. It won't catch fire because you are not going to be cooking that hot.

With a little work you can turn out some fine smoked pork on that set up.

BCR

BCR - Thanks for the observations and suggestions. Gotta mull that over. I keep thinking I would like to talk to the guy who built this to see what the plan was. Either he was a genius and had some unique/inspired way of doing things, or he just went wild with the bricks and concrete hoping for a miracle.

Here's northern dave the other day, caught the BBQ jones leavin the market and couldn't wait to get home...

You can use what you have right there. All that's missing are cooking gates and a cover, which are easy enough to ad-hoc. That rusted piece of steel likely slides in-and-out. That often provides great indirect heat as well as warming.

Honestly, I would not invest anything other than heat and meat! Just treat it like a big hole in the ground.

Aint me, I dont wear shades.

Plus it looks like that guy has a small tire fire going in that cooker. I use charcoal and oak, no tires.

This however actually is is me with one of the cookers I built.









I do know a thing or 2 on the subject.

And I still stand behind this design idea.

only thing better would be tucking fridge girl into a wet Camp Chickenbuck T-shirt.

If yanno wut I mean.

Fixed!

Either way better than "shaving the carrot" as someone else said.

You need 220 to 250 degrees of heat.... and smoke. You could cover the big grill with heavy duty tin foil and put your butts there. If you could shimmy the metal out 6", you could do it. You'd have to seal off the pork butt chamber. Wide roll tin foil stapled to furring strip frame. Cut a little hole in the top of the foil opposite the 6" slit. Do it right, and you could lift it to rearrange butts and baste. You could start coals in another place and toss a shovel at a time under the metal. You would get the heat to the butts and the smoke would come up through the slit and roll over the butts. An instant read stuck through the foil to keep track of the temp, and a remote in a butt, and you'd have it. It would give you the opportunity to tend a bbq pit for a good 12 to 16 hours. You get friends to watch for a few hours each and it's easier. Just don't let them get ahead with the heat. Whenever I'm doing a bbq, people always offer to watch the fire so I can sleep. Whenever I take them up on it, I always wake up to a fire that is too hot!


Or

You could do Miss Linn's May Recipe pork butts in the oven and fake it.

Hey Dave, you got that in a CAD file? Looks like a project for my buddy that has a metal shop. Put his shear and brake to use for me.

Someone get a rope...

Course I have six racks of ribs over lump and hickory right now at 225. They'll go up to Jorge's camp this weekend and feed a bunch so I might be a little prejudicious.

As hard as it is to believe, it's just a crude photo alteration I did in microsoft paint. Fridge girl might be the most challenging acquirement for the project.

Thanks, mongo, but the dream is starting to dissipate. More I think of it, the thing needs a thorough modification. d*mn........

No it doesn't. You can use it just as is with perfect results.

You a' skeered?

'preciate it!

Maybe. I can just see myself all marinated up the pork butt, with a couple rolls of heavy duty foil on a windy day.

Where are you located?? You get fridge girl there and we'll ALL come help!

LOL...slut puppies, the bunch of ya...

Just for that, you don't get to rub margarine on her.

That is a sweet looking cooker...but does it come with the fridge girl or is that an optional upgrade?

the upgrade is nearly unobtainable.

You like that, wouldn't ya...? Huh? Wouldn't ya...? LOL

It would probably make her look like T LEE's version

its not that its expensive up fornt, can be hard to find at times, the real cost is the endless MX payments for the rest of your life...

LOL Dave you goofy sh*t dog! I think he was talking about the cooker you built being in a cad file. Not your piggy!

I did almost the exact setup awhile back. Used loose cinderblocks and put a piece of welded wire grating and then stacked up more cinderblocks on top. The result was a three sided grill with no top or front. I then put a piece of ply on top with a hinged front. The fire didn't get so hot as to burn the plywood. It kept in the heat and smoke well enough. Control heat by amount of wood/coals in the contraption.

Yup----ain't hard at all. Unless you got distractions like fridge gal.

Upon further review, cut the steel leaving a three sided lip about a 8-12" wide. Slide a piece of grating over top of the steel lip. Put fire around the sides so you get a bit of indirect heat. Lay pig on center of grate. Got to cut the steel to allow smoke and heat up.

Lay plywood on top to hold most of it in. Lean a piece of plywood across front to further help keep in heat and smoke.

Appreciate the additional comments...

That's too bad. If you're familiar with "The Big Labowski" the upgrade is kind of like that rug that made the whole room...oh well, the dude abides...

You know how I opperate Jim, I drew the side drawer cooker design on my etch a sketch. And I had the drawing on the screen for like 3 years, I thought it was fine like that.

Then some A-hole come along and shook my drawing so they could squiggle a set of crudely drawn stairs and what looked like a spiral square maze of sorts....

No biggy, just redraw it right?

Wrong.

I lost my mojo in a string cheese eating accident in 2008 and I've just not been able to recreate the design drawing on anything. Not in CAD, not on the etch a sketch, not on grid paper, bar napkin... even tried peeing it into the snow once.

It's just gone bro.

Someone needs to get over themselves.

how many of them are there..... me?

lol

Dude give up the plans for fridge gal....comon!

And that somebody is ewe...

OK, due to the FIRST PART of this thread, I have studied the linked BBQ video extensively and my brother and I constructed a pit based on the video. We're going to try it out this Saturday with 70# of chicken halves, 30# of pork butts and two bundles of hardwood slabs. Anybody hungry?!?

Pictures please!!!!!

Thanks

I tried this the other week after watching the video and got all exited. It worked real well just went thrue a lot of wood burning it down on the side of cooker to get coals.I have smaller pieces of wood and i'm going to use some charcoal tomarow. In the pic my neighbor gave me some salmon it turned out real good just could of been a little more smokeier. The wings,legs and theighs turned out excellent.My plans are to make it bigger and build a fire box on the side so could have both coals and inderect heat. I could use that peice of steal you have and use it for the lid. Tomorrow i'm going to bbq some small turky legs,a small pork roast and some italian saosage. I'll post pics tomarrow or probably the next day.

I'll try to get some up over the weekend!

Nice bigbrie...nice yard also!

This thread still here! I was thinking, you might want to try the Italian way. My Grandfather would stack cinder blocks 2 high in a rectangle out in the garden and dump a couple bags of charcoal in. After it got hot, out come the spits and grilling baskets. I have a whiskey barrel out in the lean-to full of grilling baskets! I like to bring one camping because it's handy as heck over an open fire! When I was little, we'd skewer meat and vegetables, and put chicken and fish and steaks... in baskets. You'd take them off the fire to baste them and put them back on. Flip as needed. It was fun. So long as you just wipe them off after using them and don't think you feel the need to wash them. Baskets are fun.

I cooked 19 halved chickens and four pork butts Saturday. The pit worked great, the food was fabulous!! In my excitement though, I forgot to take any pictures with meat on the grill. The only thing I would try to do differently next time is that I created too much heat. The pork was done in half the time it was supposed to be. I used an oven thermometer and had trouble keeping it below 300. I think 225 to 250 would be about right.

Looks pretty doggone nice.

I'm really digging the shop you have in the background. What's that all about?

The pit looks great too and as long as the Q was good it don't matter how soon or long it took to cook.

Nice job Jester!

Thanks. That's my brother's (DonSM70 on the campfire) garage. He's the guy vigilantly tending the fire in the next to last pic. I'll let him jump in here.

We're trying to plan a baby back rib event for the pit next.

byc,

My brother (Jester) alerted me to your comment on the shop that is pictured. I'm 62, and retired, and I spend way more time in there than I do the house.

We bought this place about 3 years ago and the first thing Jester and I did was to build a "man cave" in the top floor of the original barn (top, left in the picture, with the row of windows). The first floor (approx. 60' x 100') is workshop and garage space. I'm working very hard to fill it up!

It's been a great property and between the man cave and the 28 acres, it has become party central for family and friends.

donsm70

I would have bet my life on there being a man cave up in there. My Dad has about the same setup but a smaller barn. Nice digs for sure. I'm envious.

David

byc,

Looking back in the thread, I see that you're the one who posted the Kentucky BBQ link. Thanks a lot!! That's the only reason we're talking now. If you ever get to PA let us know. We'll give you the grand tour then eat some BBQ! I'm sure you could teach us a thing or two as well!

Dale

If you need any cheap labor to pick up and police the yard, run for beer, lemme know...LOL

sse,

Can always use some good, cheap labor! Did you happen to notice the floating half keg in Jester's first picture, next to the ladder. It's a good thing that he can cook 'cause he sure does drink a lot of beer.

donsm70

LOL

One must be careful to stay hydrated,

ya know!!

We older gents need to watch a little close don't we

Randy