So what are the MUST have’s for any true BBQ smoker? Well of course you have to have your leather wide brim cowboy hat, accompanied by your kiss the cook apron. Outside of these I have a few items I have grown to absolutely love and they have made my must have list in order to properly BBQ. One of the first things I never fire up the smoker without is my STRUDY stainless steel BBQ tongs. When you get tons, don’t cheap out. You want good strong tons not the open ended togs that don’t have a spring and hinge. You can find good strong, long handed, close ended tongs at any good cooking supply store. I purchased two just to make sure I always have one handy. Even if you are a griller and not a smoker you should NEVER use a fork to turn steaks, burgers, etc you never want to pierce your food.
The next item was given to me as a gift and I have used it ever since. The infamous “Ove Glove”, in fact I now have three of these. You can use them for just about anything; I primarily use them on the fire and handling pans, hot racks, etc. Nothing beats the original Ove Glove, so don’t settle for just a general oven mitt, do yourself a favor and go buy the real thing.
Temperature gauges on the smoker are a given, but you also want a good meat thermometer. I have and use a vast variety of wireless and wired digital thermometers. I normally mount one inside my cooking chamber so I can monitor my cooking chamber temperature from inside the house. This is especially nice during the winter cooking season. There are a lot of different wireless thermometers on the market, I have yet to find “the one” but if I do happen to stumble across it you will be the first to know.
One thing you will NEVER want to enter the kitchen without is an oversized cutting board and a couple of good quality kitchen knifes. Like I covered in “Brisket start to finish” you may have the BEST smoked brisket but if you don’t cut it right it could taste like the worst cooked brisket you EVER ate. If you start cooking larger cuts of meat you will want the oversized cutting board so you have the extra real-estate. I also keep a good meat cleaver style blade handy for chopping meat as well.
The last necessity is a new one that just arrived in my kitchen. I have been looking for this product for awhile and could not find one in the heat resistant range I was looking for. If you look online you can find high heat neoprene gloves. It took me awhile but I found some that cover the heat range I was looking for and did not come up to my elbows. These are priceless when it comes to handling those larger cuts of meat; you can reach in grab them with out slipping or soaking a cloth type glove in scalding hot meat juice. They are amazing when it comes time to cut the meat since you can then handle the meat without burning your hands. You can look for fryer gloves, or industrial dishwasher gloves, this will give you a few choices. I got the Steven Raichlen BBQ gloves; I will give a full review of the product on another post.
Now that we have what I consider the essentials out of the way lets look at a few items I just like to keep on hand. Mass qualities of paper towels, extra disposable foil pans in a variety of sizes (these work great to cook in as well as just store your cooked food in), and last but not least charcoal and lighter fluid. I don’t know how many times I THOUGHT I had a full bag to find two briquettes and dust, now I always buy bags and cans of lighter fluid in two’s.
- From no to know
Nathan Conner
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