Being on holidays, I want to do as much smoking as I can. The night before I marinated some slices of round steak with DL Jardine Steak Seasoning, soy sauce and a little bit of water. The next morning, I took them out of fridge and dried them with paper towels.

At 8:15am, the chimney on and ten minutes later, the pit was lit. I grabbed a big chunk of Plum wood for the smoke source. I had to create an alfoil basket for all the small chunks of charcoal I had. In fact, most of what I bought were small chunks and would fall through the grate. I think I prefer heat beads as they tend to hold their heat longer and of course, are a uniform size compared to charcoal. Sure, lump charcoal smells great but I've found I end up using more.

I started this off with 2 of the vents at half and 1 open fully. At 8:40am, it was sitting nicely at 160F. About 10 minutes later, the rangehood temperature was starting to rise higher, so I closed off one of the vents. I want to try and keep it as low as possible for the jerky cook.

At 9:40am, the rangehood temp was 160F with just one of the vents opened. At 10:30am, the jerky was looking real good. I took a piece off to try and it tasted pretty damn good, just like store bought jerky without the extra toughness (yet). I was very pretty impressed.

At 11:30am, I tried another piece and it had a nice flavour and felt touch; snapped too. My wife said they tasted a little salty but honestly, I didn't pick up on that, probably because I'm use to jerky.

So, for my first attempt. It turned out great. I'm definitely going to do this again. I'll try a different marinade next time for sure.

After having steaks for lunch, it was time to turn my attention to the silverside. As my wife isn't a fan of chilli or spicy foods, I toned down the amount of DL Jardine Steak Seasoning, I used which was rubbed in with olive oil. I used the sweet and subtle flavour of apple chunks as the smoke source.

At 2:25pm, I fired up a new chimney and 20 minutes later, the meat was on. The rangehood temperature was already sitting at 250F from the previous cook. The internal temperature of the corned beef was 8C.

At 3:20pm, I closed off one of the vents as the temperature had risen to 300F. At 3:45pm, the internal temperature was 41C and the rangehood had dropped to 250F. Looks like I picked the right vents to close :)

At 3:50pm, believe it or not, but it started to rain. I put my umbrella over smoker and opened the vent back up as the rangehood temperature had dropped to 240F. 15 minutes later and it had dropped to 200F. I then decided to add more charcoal and another apple chunk.

At 4:45pm, the internal temperature was 64C and the rangehood temperature was 240F. At 5:10pm, the rangehood temperature was 210F, so I added a couple more chunks of charcoal. Charcoal definitely burns out quicker than heat beads and so needs a little more monitoring.

At 5:30pm, the rangehood temperature dropped to 150F and the internal temperature stalled at 71C. I then wrapped the meat in foil and added more charcoal. This rain is making the cook a little more difficult but I managed to feed the charcoal through the stacker door with no dramas (whilst wearing gloves and using tongs, of course).

15 minutes later and the rangehood temperature was back up to 200F, the the internal temperature was still sitting at 71C.

It was 6:30pm and the internal temperature was 77C - cooked but as there was no rush for dinner, this was a great time to let it just rest.

I must say I prefer smoked corned beef / silverside than the traditional boiled way that my wife prefers. Still she liked this too.