As far as the wind? Or just cold in general? The cold without wind generally just means you will burn more fuel to keep a sustained temp than you normally would. If your having problems with the wind buy two sheets of 1/2 inch plywood and 6 sturdy hinges. Cut the plywood so that you have two equal 4 foot pieces and use three hinges to hold each sheet together. Then you can position them around your cook area to deflect the wind from your cooker.
Someday, I will have one of those Big Green Eggs. Just plain cold in general. I can find spots in the backyard that are naturally shielded from wind (or could build something like you suggest), but it's combating slow cooking times without inadvertently scorching stuff that can be challenging. Seems way harder to keep the temp consistent, like it'll take twice as long to get back up to temp if you ever open the lid.
I'm looking at building out my own smoker in the next few weeks, now that summer-like weather is upon us (it's a balmy 14°C and sunny today), and am thinking of utilizing a sand/plaster-of-paris mixture as an insulating layer between an outer shell and inner lining. This is a really interesting video that goes over how to make a small, backyard foundry: I figure if I make a typical smoker, line it with a 2-3" waterproof metal skin, then fill it with that plaster/sand/water mixture, it'd give me all the insulating benefits of the fancy ceramic cookers at a fraction of the cost.
FYI, for any of you that are also browsers of Reddit, I've been a subscriber to the /r/smoking subreddit for a while now. They often have posts for people looking to build their own smokers or different techniques to use on different setups.
Just put a rack of ribs in the fridge to sit overnight. I decided to go "tejano trash" on them: - spare ribs - coated first in Whataburger mustard (Whataburger sells all their proprietary sauces at HEB) - seasoned with Fiesta Pork Rub - after about 4-5 hours, I'll finish it off with Sweet Baby Ray's
Stubbs is the shit. A buddy of mine makes some pretty good bbq sauce too... But only for his restaurant.
Seriously, making your own sauce isn't hard. You've got hours of waiting/drinking while your food smokes, take a half hour and build a quick sauce. My go to sauce is either a bourbon molasses sweet sauce my buddy and I came up with or a coffee habanero sauce for when I want something a little bit spicier. If anybody wants either recipe, I'll try and post them when I'm not on my phone. That being said, I agree that if you're going to use a pre-made commercial sauce, Stubbs is well and above Sweet Baby Ray's. If you can find it your area, Salt Lick brand of sauce is pretty good as well.
I modified Steven Raichlen's sauce (BBQ author) to make a nice chipotle sauce. You can add anything to it. Espresso, cocoa powder, stout, root beer, hot peppers. Thin it out with beef broth, makes good TX style. 1/2 onion diced small 2 garlic cloves minced 1 chipotle and adobo, chopped 2 cups ketchup 1/4 cup cider vinegar 1/4 cup Worcestershire 1/4 cup brown sugar 2 tblspns molasses 2 tblspns brown mustard 1 tblspn dry rub 1 tblspn hot sauce 2 teaspoons liquid smoke 1 teaspoon black pepper Sautee the onions in some oil until brown, hit it with the garlic for 30 seconds, then the chipotle. Add the rest of the ingredients and simmer for about 20 minutes. Simmer longer if adding beer, soda, broth, etc.
Making some pastrami today since it was requested for St. Patty's day. Picked up a small (2 1/2lb) pre-corned brisket yesterday. Normally I would corn my own, but since this was kind of a last minute request I didn't have time to do my own corning. Soaked it overnight to try and leach out some of the saltiness from the corning liquid, then rinsed it off and let it dry out for an hour. Then put my usual brisket rub on it and let it sit for another 30 minutes. Currently sitting on the smoker at 225 with some cherry going on it. Going to let it go for about 5 hours or so unless it starts getting to hot too fast. I'll post some more pics once I pull it off.
Here's the final product after about 6 hours on the smoker. It's not... terrible, but it's not my best effort either. Definitely need to either work with a larger piece of starting brisket, or corn it myself. Either way, it tastes more like a spicy smoked brisket than traditional pastrami. Oh well. At least I still have a bunch of good beer to wash it down with.
Too bad brisket has become so damned expensive. You better get it right out of the gate or you're out $100.
Truth. I haven't cooked anything but chicken in so long I can't even remember when I last did a brisket.
My wife has caught a couple briskets in the manager's special area of Kroger's, otherwise I wouldn't have brisket in the freezer. She also caught whole ribeyes on sale and came home with 14 1.5" thick ribeye steaks for just under $85.
We did ribs yesterday and they came out great. I tried the bbq sauce that I listed earlier. Too much tomato. I think I'll sub 1/2 as much ketchup for tomato purée next time. It also needed some more vinegar and granulated garlic. If you want bbq beef without the volume or expense of brisket, dino bones are awesome. They're either the rib section off of a chuck roast or an English short rib cut, which is basically three or four sections of 10" short ribs before they get cut down. Rub them down and run it at 250 until they are done. There is so much fat to render that you can just let them roll.
A couple of hunting buddies and myself are working on clearing our freezers of last years' wild game. I was happy to volunteer smoking some of it, so there's half a dozen birds brining in my fridge at the moment- half a turkey, two pheasants, and three ducks (a mallard and two tiny little buffleheads). I tweaked the brine recipe a bit with the addition of some sage, thyme, and rosemary in addition to the tarragon and added a touch of maple syrup to the brown sugar too. Otherwise it has plain and pink salt (altogether about 1:1 with the amount of brown sugar), chopped garlic, bay leaf, and black pepper to taste. It smelled great on the stove, that's for sure. Anyone smoked ducks before? I don't see them being too different than the turkey or pheasants on the grill, but will find out either way.
I'm completely speculating here, but I'm thinking you're going to need to smoke the duck at a higher temp since it has way more fat than other birds.
Would you smoke at a higher temp, or just longer? The fat will have roughly the same rendering temp, but there's just more of it, so you'd have to smoke it longer, I'd think. Totally guessing. It's not comforting to know that most of my Google searches on the subject point to Cancer Foundation websites.
If in doubt I think I'd go for longer cook time while holding at lower temps because in my experience with cooking waterfowl, turning up the heat typically means turning it into shoe leather. Not sure if the fat is supposed to be rendered or not, and there isn't much to begin with (wild birds) but I think I'd just keep it on the grill until it reaches temperature (probably shooting for 140) and see what happens. Only one duck is a decent sized mallard- the two buffleheads are smaller than a softball so I don't think it'll take long at all for those little birds to cook.