So yeah... thawed out some Costco lamb chops a week ago, and did up a marinade for them. Vacuum sealed them and put them in the fridge, and flipped them around for a day or 2. Then I totally forgot about them for 4-5 days. Fuck. Grilled them up tonight, and DAMN, they were tasty as hell. I was pleasantly surprised. Go me!
In Ontario we have this thing called a Cottage Roll. I haven't found it outside of Ontario, and I've been craving it for a while now. So yeah, I bought a big-ass pork shoulder and just put it into a brining/curing solution in the fridge where it will sit and turn pink for the next week or so, at which point I'll smoke it. SOOO looking forward to the results!
Well, yesterday was a fun day. At some point in the recent past, I forgot to put the cover on my Yoder, while it still had a bunch of pellets in it. Since then we've had huge rain, snow, freezing, etc., and I haven't used it in a few weeks. Not a big deal, right? HA! Went to fire it up yesterday, and the auger wouldn't turn. Fuck me. Dug out all the pellets (it was just over half full), and got to the auger ,which was just impacted with solid pellet dust. It's like water got into the bin and dissolved all the pellets at the bottom, allowing it all to flow into all the spaces within the auger, then reform into one, big, pellet from hell... stronger than it was before. It took me damn near an hour to try and chip and vacuum it all out, and it only came free when I took a rosebud burner to it and burned it all out. Lesson learned, I guess... be sure to cover the damn thing up when it cools down, or run all the pellets out of it.
Happened to me last year, and yeah... it's a bitch. That's probably my one and only con about the Yoder. No quick release for the pellets.
I have a battery powered dewalt vacuum that worked amazingly well to pull them out. It was clean so I could just throw them back into the pellet storage box for later reuse. But yeah, I agree it's a PITA that there's no built-in easy way to empty them.