This is a very quick entry. You're welcome.
Let’s talk about something foul. No, not chicken. That’s fowl. I’m talking about something incredibly foul. No, not like in baseball. Although last year, sitting in primo seats behind the Royals dugout, a high, spinning, vicious, angry, foul ball came right to me. I mean right to me. Sara got out of the way, much more concerned with the well-being of her Dippin’ Dots than with my opportunity to catch my first foul ball in god-knows-how-many big league games. I stood up, held my beer in my left hand, and watched it coming at my face. But as it came down from a good 90 stories in the air, I heard it scream something about hating Scots, so I let it bounce. And away did it bounce, laughing at me, joined by the fans watching at home, I’m sure. That was a very foul development. But that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about the single foulest job in barbecuing: cleaning the smoker.
We clean the hell out of it a couple times a year, and we semi-clean the smoker after every cook. Semi-clean means we get out any stray pieces of pork fat, lost chicken thighs, forgotten sausages or severed fingers, then we give it a good douse with Greased Lightnin’, hose it out, and burn off the grates. And, a couple times a year, we clean the livin’ shee-hit out of it. That’s what I got to do before we packed it away for the winter this year.
See, it takes a power washer. And when you clean something with a power washer, everything that you’re not cleaning gets dirty. I’m talking everything in the county gets dirty. I washed it in Marshall, Missouri; they found bits of last place brisket in Sedalia.
I love power washers. Our old deck is new and lovely thanks to a power washer. A power washer will clean anything. It’ll clean the stench of brimstone off of Dick Cheney, though probably not the blood off of his hands. And the power washer is the easiest, most effective way to clean the smoker. It’s cool, but every bit of gunk that leaves the smoker has to go somewhere. It gravitates towards me.
I think these are the first times I’ve posted pics of our smoker online. Note that this is before I was even done power-washing it. So it’s still a mess. See how black it is inside? That's not "seasoned," and it's not going to give it a "special flavor." It's foul and about half an hour after this picture was taken, most of that black goop was on me. But I wore it well.
That’s all.