Hardy Foods

For the past few months why would someone ever endure brutal sub zero temperatures in the Canadian tundra? What else than a meat smoker! It took blood, lots of effort, welding skills, power tools, and lots and lots of metal, but it’s finally finished and the tasty results justify the means. In this post I chronicle the smoker from it’s beginning stages as simple 55 gallon oil drums to the opulent backyard beast that it has become.

It should be noted that Hardy Foods will be having weekly late night BBQ at the intersection of College and Clinton (50 Clinton St.) every Friday and Saturday from 10 pm to late (3:30-4 AM) so make sure to stop by!

I find it 100% appropriate to exemplify the conditions in which this smoker was built.  Above is a picture of the well maintained and meticulously kept workshop of one Yannis Malveris.  Notice the lack of insulation, hole in the ceiling and car parts, lots of car parts.  When the weather was -10, it was -12 in here.0

Two hideous (but full of potential) Oil barrels. We had issues burning them out so decided on a much more costly method: sandblasting.  But more of that Later.

Make sure you’ve got your trusty 3k welder handy.

Cut a door in the side of your vertical barrel enough to fit the largest firelog you’d like to fit in there.

Take a strip of metal and bend around the door to re-inforce and make the firebox air tight.  Spot weld the metal onto the door piece.

Buy two large hinges and either weld or bolt onto the left side of the opening of the door.  The door should now be able to move quite freely while creating an air-tightish seal.

Fashion a handle out of something (the more bizarre the better) and weld onto the door to open/close as well as weld a latch system.  Here we used a simple L bracket mounted to the door and a clasp welded onto the frame so that the lid can close tight.

Hinge closeup- Look at those pretty spot welds.

Concerning the lid, make sure it fits (we kind of forgot that part).  Secondly, cut a hole the diameter size of the wood stove grade pipe that you’ve got.  We used a 7″ to 6″ piece so that the smoker was portable.  Make sure a bit of the bottom sticks out and cut into small vertical strips.

Flatten out these strips and use a grommlet to make sure they’re attached 100%

This should be close to the final product.  We made a 6″ base for the smoker to sit on which acts as a potential firewall (we don’t want to burn the ground, grass, etc. and start a massive fire).  Notice inside the firebox there is a grate- this was done so that one could just plop in wood and to allow for maximum air circulation in the firebox.  Notice the finished version of the lid.

Starting to resemble a smoker…..We were lucky and got our hands on a solid iron base that a date with the junkyard.  It was perfect for the support of the horizontal barrel as well as having enough space for an insert or two to hold meat etc.

Measuring the height that the horizontal barrel needed to be propped up.  The wood stove piping on the left is made of three pieces, one attached to the firebox lid (as earlier described), the second a corner piece and the third another 6″ to 5″ adjustment, to be permanently installed into the bottom of the wine barrel.  Essentially all I needed to do was take out the corner and the smoker could be broken down into pieces as you’ll see soon.

The base needed two pieces of angle iron along the entire to length to strengthen and reinforce it.  We decided that we needed to prop up the horizontal barrel so that the smoke entry point from the firebox was at the bottom and not the top, thereby allowing the smoke to really surround the meat entirely.  Here we cut more angle iron to prop up the final supports!

We essentially built another box, appropriately welded to the existing structure to further reinforce it- we knew the smoker would be holding a lot of meat!

My mona lisa..no really!

Welding the last bit of support- notice the darkness, yeah this took a while!

So a lot happened between this and the last photo.  An exhaust pipe was cut into the smokebox so as to let air out (same method as the lid)  Also, the intake for smoke on the horizontal smokebox was permanently installed (bottom right hand side)  You can’t see it in this photo but two pieces of angle iron were installed into the smokebox so a sliding grate could be easily thrown in and pulled out. Also ,a grate of proper width had to be found/made (we made ours).  We also installed two chokes on both the firebox lid and the exhaust of the smokebox to regulate air flow, smoke, etc. Finally, we got a place who normally sandblasted military equipment and huge multi-million dollar projects to sandblast ours- a smoker.  After a few minutes of laughing they actually took my request seriously.  These barrels are primed for a high-heath paint which we found in the form of wood stove grade spraypaint.  make sure you’ve got proper ventilation kids!

After their spraypaint- looking better!

FINALLY The smoker in its semi finished form.  We installed two thermometers just above the rack so we know what the temp is around the meat slabs.  We used applewood our first times and everything came out great!

The rack we built can hold aprox. 7 racks of ribs.  Delish!

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Pork Shoulder

So take a full Pork Butt (shoulder) NY style and put on your favorite dry rub

Meat ready to go!

Meat aprox. 3 hours in

Final product before pulled..fantastic!

Again, we’re having a late night BBQ menu at Langolinos (50 Clinton St.) on the corner of Clinton and College in Toronto, ON.  Come by and try everything out yourself!