I've been wanting a Big Green Egg for years now, just had more important things financially to concentrate on. All that is out of the way and a fantastic deal on a large Big Green Egg fell into my lap yesterday. Picking it up on Wednesday! Comes with the accessory kit, charcoal, and stand all for just less than the cost of the large egg itself, and all brand new in the box.

So, here are the important questions I have, lol.

-Any rubs that you seasoned smokers use swear by for pork and brisket?
-Starting out, until I get a feel for my egg and become a more seasoned smoker, I'd like to get a digital thermometer that can be read outside the egg so I don't have to continually open and close the lid. Can anyone recommend a fairly inexpensive one?
-What should I cook first!?

I know we have some experienced meat smokers here at the asylum, so please come one come all and chime in!
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Digital thermometer: http://www.amazon.com/Maverick-Remot...6974687&sr=8-3

For your first cooks, I've heard that pork butts are the most forgiving and absolute hardest to screw up. After that, ribs is another easy cook. Briskets are considered by many to be one of the more challenging things to get right from my understanding, although my first brisket cook was awesome.

For rubs, you can find almost anything out there. For your first butt cook, I highly recommend using this rub/injection method: http://www.virtualweberbullet.com/pork4.html By far the best pork I've ever made.
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Congrats on the BGE purchase. I have a medium and a large and absolutely love them. Shoot me an email and I will send you a couple of rub recipes and a couple other things you might be interested in.

Duane steered you right on the Maverick. They are reasonable and dependable. I also agree that you can start with a pork butt if you want to do a long cook.

One Egg tip... when you start your fire for smoking do it only in the center. Then put your plate setter drip pan and grate in. Open the air intake all the way and the slider top all the way. HOWEVER, keep an eye on your temps. If you let an Egg get too hot it is a bear to get it back down.

Once you get it to 225 or so close the air intake to about 1/4 inch and close the slider top. Then open your petals to about 1/2 way open. Keep an eye on the temps again and adjust the air intake down if needed. To run at 225 I barely have the intake open 1/8 of an inch.

Try as much as possible to make you temp adjustments with air intake. Also, big adjustment with air intake... small ones with the petals.
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Congrats on the Egg! I always have wanted one myself and so far have been a weber bullet man. One day I'll get one too. I'd start with the Pork Shoulder to get used to the smoker and then progress. Love the various ideas on the virtual weber bullet dot com site. Tried many and have had great results. Try the smoked wings on there; I can't believe the results and my friends keep asking me for them again and again. Good luck. Steve
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congrats on the egg. if you stop by jeffs on the 7th i will hook you up with a great rub and recipe. for brisket. and maybe a sample.




stinkie:-)
dan
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You seem to know a lot about pork butts.....
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Nice man:-) I've only drooled over one at the local hardware store!
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I think I'll start out with a pork butt/shoulder, then maybe go onto ribs or prime rib the next time. Eager to do some steaks on it as well. I'm going to gain a lot of weight with this thing, lol....
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Ohhhhhhh yeah!!! Love mine.
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Well, that, and trying to keep on Untappd. LOL :-)
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I googled instead of asking but to help anybody else:
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yea thanks I was like what the heck is a big green egg lol now i want one
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Just ordered the Maverick temp gauge. I'm heading to a football party Saturday around 3:30. I think I'm going to pick up a 6lb pork butt from the butcher Thursday afternoon and prep it and let it sit over night, then fire up the egg Friday and smoke that bad boy all day. Will definitely post pictures of the process. Hopefully it turns out good... lol.
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The maverick will be a good guide on your butt, but do the b
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Did you get the 2 probe maverick? Thats the one I have and I love it. A 6lb butt could take 12-14 hrs at 210*.
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Darned phone...

Do the bone wiggle test at 195. If the bone doesn't slide out easily, it's not done yet. I had one in my last cook that I pulled them at 198 was still tough even after holding for 2 hours in the cooler. Had I been the one pulling them off the smoker, it would have probably not come off until it was closer to 205.
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Also....I HIGHLY recommend the royal oak lump charcoal at walmart (bright red/orange bag). They make all the lump for the BGE brand. Very good stuff.
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Stubbs is good too. Stay away from kingsford.
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The Royal Oak is definitely good, especially for the price, just have to watch the country of origin on the bags. Not all of it is the US made stuff like the BGE lump.

For the OP, take a look at this site:
http://www.nakedwhiz.com/lumpindexpage.htm?bag

About 2/3 of the way down the page they have all of the Royal Oak bags and they tell you where to look to see if it's a US or South American bag.

There is actually a lot of useful info on that site, but it isn't laid out that well, so you have to poke around from the home page to find all of it.
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Yep, this is what I use.

Funny story... a couple of years ago it was rumored that Walmart was no longer going to carry RO lump. I bought every bag at three different Walmarts and ended up with about a pallet all together. Obviously, the rumor was false!!!! I don't use lump in my big cooker, but I do use my Eggs quite a bit. Still, I have probably 15 bags up in the rafters of the barn:-):-)
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