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December 4th, 2014, 3:42 pm
#1
* Abilene ** Abilene *
  • Joined: December 2nd, 2014, 10:42 am
  • Posts: 4

I've been looking at pellet smokers for years, and finally pulled the trigger on the YS640 this week from a local dealer. Getting it delivered on Saturday! Wanted to get make sure I had everything lined up on what I should do to get it ready for some cooking!

Sounds like the first thing I need to do is the burn-in to get rid of all of the contaminates.

Second (if I have the time) is to season the grill. Cover the grates with Cooking Spray (Pam, or other high temp oil) and smoke for a while again. Do I also spray any of the inside (diffuser, etc)?

After that, what do you guys think of foiling the diffuser? Seems like most of the reading says to do it, but do it tight to avoid heat pockets. How about foiling of the rest of the inside?

And lastly, it's time to cook something!! I might try to do some maple and brown sugar bacon in the morning, just to give it a little "extra" seasoning. After that, I probably will only have 3 or 4 hours on Sunday afternoon to do my first real cook. What do you guys suggest? Any recipe suggestions for a couple hour cook would be appreciated (chicken, pork, beef).

Thanks everyone, and I'm excited to part of the Yoder Community!

December 5th, 2014, 12:11 am
#2
* Kingman ** Kingman *
  • Joined: September 3rd, 2014, 11:04 pm
  • Posts: 422

Okay, yes, season the grates with some oil. Vegetable oil is fine. No need to do anything else.

Foiling the diffuser? Yes. Cleanup is easy, no scraping fried fat chunks off the diffuser plate. Wide heavy duty Reynolds foil fits perfect over the surface. Perfect, like they made it for that. The key is, especially on the right side, you need to make sure it's 110% folded flat on the bottom of the diffuser. The heat needs to escape from the movable slide on the right. Look at it, you can see what I mean. 1" extra on the R/L sides is fine tucked under.

The key is to learn the smoker. Do the burn in like the manual mentions. Then check everything etc.

For temp tests you should get cheapo breakfast biscuits, bacon is expensive but it's fun. I did it after I did this: 4 bonk bonk biscuits, the ones in the round cylinder. Put some on top, some on the bottom. Cook them like the biscuit directions call for and see the diff. I did it twice.

You just need to learn the pit etc.

Your first cook should be chickens. Easy. 2-4 chickens. You will only need 2-3 hours to do it and you will learn about pit differences. No need for the top rack unless you been at this a while. Don't forget to rub veggie oil on the grill before you do the chickens.

Lastly, do you have a Maverick ET-372 yet? Nice tool. There are others, but this is pretty cheap and a great learning tool and a worthy addition to the Thermopen

December 5th, 2014, 12:12 am
#3
* Kingman ** Kingman *
  • Joined: September 3rd, 2014, 11:04 pm
  • Posts: 422

Lastly, there are some great forums about smoking and a few that really talk about the Yoder line. Might look them up.

December 5th, 2014, 11:55 pm
#4
* Abilene ** Abilene *
  • Joined: November 21st, 2014, 5:41 pm
  • Posts: 12

Congrats! I am also new to the YS640, and still in my own learning curve. This was my second smoker, but still surprised that it was significantly different than my other smoker.

For a first cook, I know the most common thing to smoke is bacon, and I did that myself. Doesn't take long. You will find those closest to the edge of the diffuser will cook faster than those in the middle of the grate, so watch it carefully. You will be looking into the smoker more often than you should, but that is to be expected on the initial cooks. You need to see how it is progressing. If you want to experiment a little bit, you can smoke some Prosciutto (get it cut somewhat thicker than "deli thin"), which only takes about 30 minutes at low temps. I find that this has a fantastic flavor, and is a hit with cream cheese and crackers.

Another thought is smoked baked beans. Very simple, multiple recipes abound to get that right amount of flavors, and pretty forgiving, perhaps two hours on the smoker. Cook them uncovered in some shallow pans. I used the smoked bacon and prosciutto in the beans to give it that extra smoky kick. From a different recipe I added sliced pineapples on the beans, which ended up with a sweet smoky flavor. The beans were as big of a hit as the smoked turkeys I made, maybe bigger.

Regarding foil, I use foil, my brother does not, and we argue which method is best, and neither of us will probably change. It does change how you approach cleanup. I think it is best as you can remove all traces of chicken/turkey drippings when changing meats, such as a leg of lamb, and not wanting to heat up those old drippings. Plus, I don't want cobblers and pies to smell like turkey. I have not experienced the temp issues by using foil, but keep it tight to the diffuser.

FYI, before I turned mine on, I read through this forum, and even watched a number of YouTube videos. There is a lot of good information out there.

Enjoy.

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