On the weekend I finally got around to trying out the new smoker box I bought for the barbecue. It's just a small stainless steel box designed to hold some wet wood chips, with a couple of holes to allow smoke to get out. You put it right on the burners on the barbie and lower the hood.
A while back I bought the smoker, and the same weekend bought a lovely piece of biodynamic lamb shoulder from the market behind our house. Unfortunately I didn't get a chance to cook it, so it ended up in the freezer.
I rubbed the outside of the meat with a little salt and a bunch of chopped rosemary, that's all. Temperature at the top of the hood (where the thermometer is) was around 120°C, which means it was around 90-100°C around the meat. Cooked for four hours at this temperature the lamb was beautiful: still a little pink in the centre.
The smoker contained manuka chips, soaked for 20 minutes in water. I refilled the smoker once during cooking, as it burnt out after about half an hour, so there was probably about an hour of smoke.
The result was spectacular. Beautiful tender meat with a lovely smokey taste. The outside was a deep ruby brown from the smoke.
Next effort, I think, will be some reasonably quickly cooked sausages with the smoker on. But I need to buy some more woodchips. I'd ask Scott to bring some up from Tassie at the weekend but I'm not sure virgin forest eucalypt would go so well with meat.