Here's my smoker with today's treats: Bone-in Pork Country Style Ribs and Bone-in Boston Butt. Dry Rubbed for 36 hours (I'm a fan of Alton Brown's ratio for dry rub: 8 parts sweet/brown sugar, 3 parts salt, 3 parts spice, 1 part whatever you like. I tend to use cumin, ground mustard, allspice, nutmeg, cinnamon and a heaping helping of various pepper/chili powders for the 3 parts spice and 1 part whatever you like. The salt portion I use a mix of sea, kosher, onion, celery and garlic salts).
As for the Smoker Build:
2 20" Terra Cota Pots (Home Depot)-$43/pot
1 18" Weber Round Grill Plate (Home Depot)-$10
1 16" Vegetable Grill Plate (Can't see it in pictures)-$10 (Local Ace Hardware)
2 Weber Grill Thermometers-$10 (Local Ace Hardware)
Bolts, Nuts, Chain for a lifting handle-$2
1 Proctor Silex Hot Plate-$10 (Menards Hardware Store)
1 Charbroil Cast Iron Smoker Box (Home Depot)-$10 I ditch the lid. You can use any heavy pie pan you have lying around or get one of these. The idea is that a hot plate works on an on-off principle, it'll hit temp then shut off till it loses enough temp, then go back on. So, in the in-between periods, you want something that will maintain its heat, like cast iron or a heavy duty pie pan.
On the hot plate, as you can see, or rather can't see because I extended the control knob (a plastic bic pen cut to size and ink piece removed) so that I could control it outside the smoker (Easy to drill a hole with a masonry bit). I did the same thing for my Grill thermometer halfway up the smoker, simple hole with masonry bit.
This baby keeps temperature really well and with huge wood chunks (not chips), I only need to reload once over 12 hours.
