BBQ Pro Deluxe Dome Smoker Grill

Smokedog · Newbie Joined: 29 Jun 2007 Posts: 92

Anybody ever heard or used this smoker?

Sold at sears for 69.

http://www.sears.com/shc/s/p_10153_12605_07115883000P

necron 99 · Posted: Jun 09 2008 Post subject:

I bought one for $64 during Sears 20% off Memorial Day sale. I have 4 racks of pork loin back ribs on it right now for my first cook with it, they should be done in an hour or so.

http://www.thesmokering.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=17679

OkieJay, sleecjr, and nes_matt have been using these longer than I have, you can do a 'search' for more of their posts.

http://www.thesmokering.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=17566

http://www.thesmokering.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=17244
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Smokedog · Newbie Joined: 29 Jun 2007 Posts: 92

How was your first cook? Any trouble holding temperatures?

sleecjr · Posted: Jun 09 2008 Post subject:

None at all. what kind of charcoal are you using?
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nes_matt · BBQ Fan Joined: 04 Jun 2008 Posts: 266

necron 99 · Posted: Jun 09 2008 Post subject:

I had zero problem holding temperatures - mine was the opposite experience, but everything worked out. I've detailed that further down in this post.

I'd already performed 3 mods before I used the cooker.

First mod was on the door knobs - the tabs that hold them to the latch are crimped exactly opposite of how they need to be crimped. My wife took some slip joint pliers and needle nose pliers and remedied that for now, and I called the help number in the manual. They're shipping me 2 replacement door assemblies, no cost to me, and were very helpful folks on the phone.

Second I put two layers of foil tape on the 3 door edges like Okiejay showed he'd done. One door is still a bit leaky though.

Third, I bought a 14" replacement grate (Outdoor Gourmet brand) at Academy for $2.99, placed it in the charcoal basket with the grate slats at 90 degrees to the basket grate, and my wife tied them together using some of her picture frame hanging wire.

For my first cook, I put one layer of OCC Rancher in the basket with 3 fist-sized chunks of pecan heartwood, topped that with some B&B Oak lump, then put about 10 lit briquets on top of this. This turned out to be 200%+ the amount of fuel I needed for 4 racks of BB ribs!

I did not use water in the water pan, and I find the water pan that comes with this cooker very shallow. I'll bet it's a shared part with their ECB equivalent sold at KMart, and that cooker's design probably requires a shallow pan (I'm guessing). I have an old Brinkmann Gourmet water pan that had a hole in it, so I took that, wadded up 3 balls of aluminum foil about the size of my fist, put them in my empty old Brinkmann pan, then foiled both sides of that pan. This tip I got from looking through mods on the Texas BBQ site - from Burnt Food Dude.

http://www.texasbbqforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=4016

We had some wind here today. I wound up closing the bottom port that faced the wind completely, and leaving the downwind bottom port barely cracked (about 15% open). I checked the dome thermometer, it ran about 30 degrees warmer than my Maverick showed at the 2 cooking grates. The dome thermometer showed about 275 degrees F for most of my cook.

Ribs were done in 5 hours, the charcoal pan was still pretty full, so I dumped the lit coals from it in my Bar-B-Chef where I was smoking a brisket today.

Lessons for me:

1. I don't need to use lump charcoal in this cooker to get a decent cooking temperature with the water pan approach I used. OCC Rancher or Nature's Hardwood briquets will work fine, at least for cooks of 6 hours or less duration.

2. The water pan approach I used had the 2 cooking grates within 5 degrees F of each other, often less, without having something hot and sloshy (and heavy in the deeper water pan from the Gourmet) to fiddle with. The Brinkmann Gourmet water pan is the ECB charcoal pan and can be found at Bass Pro for a few bucks. Academy had only had the ECB water pans in stock, which are not large enough in diameter for the Gourmet, but I think I saw some ECB charcoal pans there for the first time (for me) last week.

3. I have one leaky door, even after modding, which I'll replace when the replacement doors arrive. The top & bottom domes sealed pretty well. One of the 2 can sections sealed well, the other less so, right where the seam line is. Some foil tape can most likely fix this, and it wasn't a big deal for me in any event.

Now, it's time for supper - ribs while the brisket rests. Brisket trimming and slicing is still a job for me to finish tonight.

edit - had to fix my reference for the water pan technique

The ribs came out great BTW, the wife fixed ratatouille (sp?) with some fresh squash our neighbors gave us.

I can definitely see using this cooker with lump for overnight cooks of pork butt and / or smaller briskets
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Smo-Ken · Posted: Jun 15 2008 Post subject:

I caved and bought one of these yesterday, put it together last night, seasoned it this morning and just pulled a rack of ribs and a 3-1/2 lb boneless butt off a few minutes ago. I have to say that I am impressed with the performance! I have never used a WSM or a ProQ, but have experience with a variety of smokers and grills and this does serve it's purpose. I decided to get one to see if I liked the bullet-types instead of spending $200 or more on one only to find that they really aren't as great as they are supposed to be. I remeber using my ECB many years ago and it was a P.I.T.A. I have since settled on Weber kettles and my offset but since I have the bug now and one can never have enough toys, I fugured I'd give it a shot.

Long story short, while it is not quite what you would call "air-tight", it held rock steady temps for me all day long with minimal tending. I had no prob running it up to 325 or keeping it down to 225. Once the majority of the charcoal (I used Kingsford which I usually don't use but it is consistent so I felt it would be one "controlled" aspect of the evaluation) burned off the temp started to drop, but I attribute my difficulty to the fact taht this was my first burn with a bullet and after reading up I did not use enough of a charcoal load to start with. (My first attempt at a "Minion" burn!)

All in all, the ribs were fantastic and were gone in an instant with the butt being scarfed in sammy mode right after that.

This smoker was of much higher quality than I expected for the price, and I think with some minor tweaking will be a great addition to my ever-growing stable of smokers and will hold me over until the bigger ProQ's become available!
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necron 99 · Posted: Jun 15 2008 Post subject:

For under $100, this cooker has to be the best deal out there right now. While on sale anyway, it's right at the same price range out of the box as buying a Brinkmann Gourmet from Lowe's and applying mods based on the recent threads for that cooker. My OCC Rancher stockpile will stretch quite a bit longer using my BBQ Pro smoker for ribs & poultry instead of my small horizontal offset Bar-B-Chef. My BBQ Pro cooker is sized such that food grates from my Brinkmann Gourmet smoker are the same size as the food grates in my BBQ Pro model, so I'm confident other Brinkmann accessories for the ECB and Gourmet models will work well in my BBQ Pro smoker.

Recently, I've seen this BBQ Pro model pop up on the Shopzilla ad banner here at The Smoke Ring on various occassions when I come to this site. If I'd seen that before I bought mine, I would have clicked on that link so Garry would get some credit for the sale. Sears is pretty cool about buying on-line for in-store pickup, that's how I bought mine. Rather than make a special trip to Sears in my area (a 30+ mile drive in any direction for us), I just set my pickup at the store nearest to my Houston work site when I bought mine on-line during the Memorial Day 20% off sale, picked it up one evening after work, and brought it back home with me at the end of that week - no special extra trip needed!

The admin assistant at my Houston office is buying baby back ribs this week while they're on sale at Kroger and HEB there for me to pick up and bring back cooked for her. Cool

I'm set to find some Brinkmann Rib Racks this week at Academy (they're around $10 at Academy vs. $20 on-line) - I figure I can get 7 racks in my BBQ Pro smoker if I work it right.

Four racks of ribs would be bent into U-shapes in the two rib racks to make a larger S shape (see pic middle of this page).

http://www.amazingribs.com/tips_and_technique/bullet_smoker_setup.html

Then, I can set three racks of ribs cut in half in the cooker with four halves going in the remaining rib rack slots and one rack (two halves) laying bone-side down on my Brinkmann step-up grill from my Brinkmann Gourmet, hanging my step-up grill under my top food grate.

Brinkmann Step-up Grill
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nes_matt · BBQ Fan Joined: 04 Jun 2008 Posts: 266

Burbs · BBQ Fan Joined: 31 Oct 2008 Posts: 363

Did Sears discontinue this? I can't find it on their website anymore.
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NaughtyNurse · Posted: Dec 28 2008 Post subject:

I don't have your answer Burbs, was just gonna throw in that I could not find them on K-Marts website either. It's not looking good.
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allsmokenofire · Posted: Dec 28 2008 Post subject:

Probably a seasonal item. I'd look for it in the spring and wouldn't be at all surprised if they offered it in a 20" model instead of the 18".
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ProBBQ · Posted: Dec 30 2008 Post subject:

Alien BBQ · Posted: Dec 31 2008 Post subject:

This is what I did with mine............

http://www.thesmokering.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=21187&highlight=wsm
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BBQMAN · Posted: Dec 31 2008 Post subject:

ProBBQ · Posted: Dec 31 2008 Post subject:

BBQMAN · Posted: Dec 31 2008 Post subject:

My catering would be a lot busier if people didn't go the "cheap and nasty route". Laughing

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smoke51 · Posted: Jan 01 2009 Post subject:

maldito2 · Joined: 12 Dec 2008 Posts: 1

Alien BBQ · Posted: Jan 01 2009 Post subject: