Smitty's barbque

Smittys
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwWok-nzPr4

At :50 you can see the wood burned in a hole in the concrete with the gases being drafted horizontally.   There no excessive smell of smoke in the room.  The chimney is in the corner.  There is another bank of the smoker on the other shared wall that uses the same chimney. Sausage is smoked on that side.    Smitty's smoker is based on an old German indirect heat tradition that typifies Texas barbque.  There are several similar establishments in the central Texas area.   At Smitty's you walk by the open flame as you enter the back door - nobody uses the front door.  Lockhart is near Austin in case you're in the area.

Cool.  Looks like they are heating up long red brick bells. I'm thinking it would have to be really hot in that building to create the draft.

they are using the old roman underfloor heating method for the bbq

Seems like a brick trough. Similar to a sideways bell. I built a mini trough last year. The brick will retain the heat from the fire and help to smoke the food. The same concept as clay pot cooking. Used the trough to grill on as well.

Lockhart is a small city located near where several of the 19th century cattle drives originated.   The local price of beef was then low, especially cuts like brisket.   The local food markets had a butcher shop.  Lacking refrigeration the markets smoked the cuts that didn't sell quickly.  The workers purchased the smoked meat and ate without plates.  The smokers were based on the Czech and German indirect heat cooking tradition that did not dry out the meat.   Technically its not barbque.  Now many people come to Lockhart from Houston on Saturdays to eat at these old markets.  Many of the markets in central Texas use post oak as the fuel.  Kreutz Market in Lockhart is operated by the same extended family, this is a larger building.  Smitty's is not as warm as you might expect in the summer, but Kreutz has its smokers in a separate large room and it gets warm in there.

These wood smokers were the impetus for me to learn about heating with wood

I am going back to this and building a mini pit. Thanks for the inspiration.

I used to travel the U.S. for work and I found a place in, I think it was Phoenix that had a troph system about like this except fire was outside in a blocked off section. It had picnic tables around the inside with cement floor. You would order your meat fresh from bbq and get your sides that were hot or cold in styrofoam containers in heaters or coolers and pay for your food at the end of the production line. At the end of the day, they just power washed the whole interior of the restraunt. I always thought this to be the way to open a restraunt as it would not take much man power to operate.

Central texas smoked meat is not barbeque. Memphis or Kansas City have good barbeque. Central Texas is dry smoked with indirect heat. The term barbeque is used as a matter of convenience. There will be some that prefer a different type of cooking. The method originated with Czech and German immigrants who used a similar method in Europe. The smoked brisket is most tasty when you arrive in peak serving hours as the dry cooked meat can sometimes be a little dried when it sits around. There is no sauce used during cooking, nothing but beef. Some of the restaurants in Lockhart use post oak instead of mesquite. The sausage is juicy, some places sell pork as well, which I really like. I actually like Rudy's, its served in gas stations in the south and central Texas area. You can cook just as good brisket at home, no doubt about that. The potato salad and other items can be just as tasty prepared at home. The dining atmosphere ? Typically the meat is served on brown butcher paper, which is the way that the field workers would have received it a century ago.

With all the population growth in the Austin area, Lockhart remains much the small picturesque town that it was fifty years ago. The Wal-Mart is the older type with narrow spaces, like most stores used to be. The town square has been used for movie scenes in the past. Smittys and Kreutz Market are owned by the same extended family. These eating places used to be general markets, the beef being only one food items that they would have sold. City Market in Luling is good as well. Elgin Texas is also known for brisket. But you can cook the brisket just as tasty at home.

Stumbled across this while looking up pit plans.  You guys!  Now I am hooked on bbq cooking.   

La Caja China

I cooked professionally for a large BBQ company for three years...did several gigs, often cooking 300 to 500 pounds of BBQ at once, including World Pork Expo in Des Moines, Iowa a couple years ( I also cooked for the Minnesota Vikings twice, several Iowa State Cyclone tailgating parties, including the President of the college) and we used a Jedmaster roticery type smoker. I think the boss had like five or six of them. They had several shelfs in them that would turn above a charcoal fired box that had a spiral in it so you would start the charcoal in the middle of this box and as it burned, it would spiral to the outside so two and a half bags, maybe three would last for several hours. Added pecon for flavor and smoke. Hickory is too harsh and mesquet(sp) still too strong. I use them once in a while as pecon only grows down south but pick it up when I am down in Missouri. In this way, I could BBQ or smoke large quanities of meat with little fuel. I now have a Brinkman or Brinks smoker, actually two, and we smoke hogs but it will only hold one medium sized hog and takes a couple bags of charcoal to do it without roticery. I have wanted to make a smoker that is a little more effiecient..something that the cooker in this video is not. I just bought a bag of charcoal this last weekend and it was like 11 or 12 bucks. I also judged several BBQ competions and best meat always came from the guys who cheated and marinated their meat with rub and seasoning the day or two before, which is against most of the events' rules. I also would often cook ribs the day before I was to serve, let them rest after cooking in the refrig for a day...always better the second day as the marrow(sp) from the bone helps flavor and tenderize the meat. Anyway, I smoked so much meat I couldn't eat it for two or three years and often had an orange pigmantaion to my own skin from doing it so much.

nice find there hitchhiker the box looks like a mix between checker plate for top plate and stainless steel inners for reflection of the heat

bbqs here are boring but ive had some biggish partys saying that my bbq is only 4ft wide by 2ft and its 13 years old next month

something like this

http://www.homebase.co.uk/en/homebaseuk/deluxe-rectangle-steel-party-charcoal-bbq-131508

One of these will cook about the same amount of food that one of my smokers will cook except I can do it with about 1/4 of the charcoal or fuel and being that my fire box is on the side of the smoker, the heat isn't directly under the meat so I don't have to worry about flare up and it doesn't need constant supervision and babysitting(we often load it and leave it to go canoeing). Typically, I will throw on about ten potatoes, 5 sweet potatoes, 5 stuffed peppers, a pack of hotdogs, a chicken, a turkey, a beef brisket, a couple of pork loins, and some sausage. The firebox is round as well as the smoker so I welded a flat peice of 1/4 inch steel on top of it so I can put a large pot on and usually have beans, corn or potatoes in it. I think you can buy one for about 100-150 bucks, although I found mine on second hand market..one of them came with a gas set up so you don't have to use charcoal lighter to get charcoal going. They are both made out of 11 gauge I think and they both work well but again would like to make one that is more efficient. I also have cut the legs off one and mounted it on my kayak trailer and on the same trailer, I have a truck tire rim with a swivel type grate that can probably cook for another 30 -40 people.

have you any photos of it jeff ? as i would like to see this one of yours just maybe worth a build of it

When I build one of these, I'm going to double wall and insulate the firebox and smoker, making both of them smaller to make up for some of the weight and found I don't need quite that big of a smoker...stainless would be nice..also could incorporate rocket stove technology to ignite fuel instead of using propane or fluid. On the two that I have, I also put a small 6 X 10 X 1/4" plate directly over the smoker intake as to not let the heat from the firebox cook anything close to it, too fast, and help disperce the heat more evenly. A catch-can catches the grease and moisture on the opposite side. These work very well for a group of people but are, again, too large for me sometimes.

You have quite the background, Jeff. Look forward to you sharing photos of your smoker and more cooking tips.