I have been making some amazing meals on a compact bullet smoker.

After my first try with the super cheap bullet smoker, I decided to go for a Santa Maria tri-tip. It worked out beautifully.

I loaded up the fire ring of the Dynoglo smoker I was using with lots of wood chunks and charcoal, essentially using the same 'Minion' Method of leaving the center of the ring empty, and filling it with hot coals. The coals slowly burn their way out to the center, while also smoldering the wood. Smoke ensues, food cooks.

I read a ton of online forum advice and went for a 90 minute smoke at around 225. I had gone to Trader Joe's and picked up a marinated chunk of meat. It went straight from the bag on to the top grill.

At the end of the 90 minutes, I took the center portion of the smoker off and moved one of the cooking grills directly above the fire ring. I seared the tri-tip on the super high heat for a couple of minutes. Less time down there is more, and I would have gone with 60 seconds less per side than I thought I needed.

The DynoGlo smoker, however, completely came apart during this smoke. Previously the paint would heat up, run a little, and stick to stuff. This time the paint totally bubbled and started to peel, crack and break. The metal looked a bit fatigued on the inside of the smoker as well. Read the rest

Smoking my dinner is the latest in slow 'n low cooking for me.

My brother, the actual bonafide chef in the family, got me addicted to smoking meat. While I've long been an enthusiast of sous-vide cooking, Brother Ben swears by his offset smoker. After visiting with his family for a bit, and eating a lot of barbeque, I was sold.

Smoking uses the same principles as sous-vide and also imparts a smokey flavor to your food. Thick, tangy and overpowering smoke, or just very delicate -- the choice is yours, sort of. Rather than immersing your food in a temperature monitored water bath, ala sous vide, smoking surrounds the food in warm smoke. You can find temperate controlled systems to make it a lot easier but that removes the fun of playing with fire for hours and hours.

Sous vide is easy, however, you plug in a circulator, put your meat in a plastic bag and away you go. Can smoking meat be as easy? After eating a few delicious meals of smoked salmon, turkey, pork and beef at my brother's, I wanted to spend my long days hanging around a campsite, living la vida Vanagon, smoking meat.

Offset, upright, pellet, gas, electric? What kind of smoker was the right one for me? My brother and I started watching lots of YouTube videos and it looked like a 'bullet smoker' also known as a 'water smoker' was the right way to go, for me. Bullet smokers have a fire right at the bottom, a water bath in the middle and a smoke/cooking chamber up top. Read the rest

After all the hoopla surrounding the new and creepy Cats movie trailer, this delightful 1986 PSA from the American Lung Association may provide some relief. Read the rest

Juul -- infused with billions by the company that owns Marlboro -- attained its $12.8B valuation by growing faster than any other vaping company, thanks in large part to the children who bought its products, reversing decades of progress in getting teens off nicotine products while simultaneously monopolizing the market for vaping products Read the rest

For two decades, adolescent smoking has been on the decline, but thanks to vaping products like Juul (which has 75% of the market), teen smoking just jumped by levels not seen for 43 years. Read the rest

Photographer unknown. (via r/mildlyinteresting) Read the rest

From the 1920s to the 1980s, the United States was the most smoking country in the developed world. In the 1960s, consumption peaked over 10 a day, per capita. But now it's near the bottom of the chart—only Britain smokes less, among rich western countries.

Don't fret for the health of the Tobacco business, though: China's taking up the slack. Read the rest

DIYer Chris Notap filtered a pack's worth of cigarette smoke through a bag of cotton balls. They turned brown. He's upset by how much his tools and components stink now. Read the rest

Miami lawyer Stephen Gutierrez was in court defending an alleged arsonist when his pants literally caught on fire. However, please don't assume that Gutierrez is a liar, liar. Apparently he had been playing with an e-cigarette in his pocket. From the Miami Herald:

Stephen Gutierrez, who was arguing that his client’s car spontaneously combusted and was not intentionally set on fire, had been fiddling in his pocket as he was about to address jurors when smoke began billowing out his right pocket, witnesses told the Miami Herald.

He rushed out of the Miami courtroom, leaving spectators stunned. After jurors were ushered out, Gutierrez returned unharmed, with a singed pocket, and insisted it wasn’t a staged defense demonstration gone wrong, observers said.

Read the rest

If you walk past this bus shelter ad in Stockholm while smoking, the model on the screen starts to cough. Next, the display shows smoking cessation products sold by pharmacy chain Apotek Hjartat, the sponsor of the ad. From CNN:

Akestam Holst, the agency behind the campaign, created the effect by attaching smoke detectors to the digital advertising screen. They chose a location where people often smoke -- Stockholm's Odenplan square -- and let the coughing begin.

The agency filmed the reactions of smokers -- some express surprise, others react with laughter.

Read the rest

German sculptor Daniel Kühn created the "Light & Cigarette Machine," which plays Candide while lighting and extending a cigarette; it was later owned by Leonard Bernstein, and was auctioned off to a German collector after his death. Read the rest

Stanford historian Robert Proctor amassed a remarkable collection of candy cigarette packaging in Golden Holocaust, like this candy cig marketed as "Just Like Daddy!" Yes, they were evil, but sometimes the best things in life are. Read the rest

Here's a 10-minute video on how to impress your stoner friends next time you're smoking that pot and bad-mouthing America. Six easy tricks: Read the rest

If you were a head in 1974 who happened to enjoy the smell and taste of smoking marijuana but didn't want to get high or busted by the fuzz, or you simply wanted to prank the police, you could light up a Zateeva cigarette! From the April 20 (4/20!), 1974 edition of Florida Today:

The pack of Zateeva says it's "An exclusive smoke that captures the heady flavor and grass-like aroma of Cannabis Sativa. All natural ingredients, non-psychoactive, no tobacco or nicotine..."

"I never heard of it before. If it's a drug that's a close likeness of marijuana, it could pose problems," said Inspector Theo York, commander of the sheriff's headquarters squad.

"It is a problem for law enforcement officers, in that we have to know or be pretty well sure that the substance we have to make an arrest for contains an illegal drug."

More at Weird Universe: "Zateeva Smokes" Read the rest

According to an Australian survey, the shit brown color seen above (Pantone 448C, or "Opaque Couché") is the ugliest hue around, reminding respondents of dirt and death. To deter smoking, Australian officials required Opaque Couché to be the main color and cigarette packages and now the UK is following suit. Apparently, Australian officials first referred to the color as "olive green" but the Australian Olive Association was none-too-pleased. Now, Pantone is grumpy about the choice of Opaque Couché.

"At the Pantone Color Institute, we consider all colours equally,” Pantone's exec director Leatrice Eiseman told The Guardian. "(There's no such thing as the ugliest color."

The new UK regulations also ban the use of logos, requiring a plain font on the packs.

More at Smithsonian: "The World’s "Ugliest" Color Could Help People Quit Smoking" Read the rest

It looks like the Australian government hired rotten.com to design their cigarette packages. [image NSFL] Read the rest

Deal with it. Read the rest