Eggs By The Bay 2007

Hi. It's BBQ Bob with a report on my latest BBQ trip.

My plane left early on Thursday morning headed toward San Jose, California. I was headed to the Eggs By the Bay Eggfest and could not wait to get there! Thursday afternoon was uneventful being the first Egger at the hotel but once Friday came and the Egg crew marched in to the Sierra Suites Hotel, the fun began. Hanging out with Howell White(SkyRider), Bobby Q, John (Egret),Tom(TJV), Chubby (That Evan's Guy), Ann, The CBBQA guys and Celtic Wolf was a blast! They are all great cooks and great people. Smitty was a great host and I really want to thank him for the beautiful venue (Naperdak Hall) a Tree covered Pavillion area with plenty of bright green foliage surrounding the event.

When I was deciding on my menu, I went with a shopping cart full of fresh veggies and fruit such as bananas, apricots, tomatos, Jalapenos, sweet onions, bell peppers, basil, cilantro and Red Sweet corn.

Howel and I made Pizzas all day long with grilled veggies and three cheeses, fire roasted salsa with fresh basil and cilantro. We whipped up some Jalapeno/Apricot sausage cooked in our Hol-E-Smokes Grilling Mats that everyone seemed to love, we baked chocolate chip cookies on the XL and at the end of the day when all I had left was a bunch of bananas and some apricots, we finished with Banana and apricot halves grilled with turninado sugar and Jack Daniels!!!!

They were gooood!

Here is a link to some pics.

ProCom4 with a 50 CFM Wireless Fan in Drybox

We paired our high end wireless ProCom4 with a 50 CFM wireless, battery operated blower system contained in a dry box for easy to use, completely portable, waterproof control.

• Rechargable Wireless Power draft blower system
• Powerful 50 CFM of air for big wood burning BBQ pits
• Runs for days on one full charge
• Easily adapts to any style BBQ pit at firebox
• ProCom4 Wireless Control - Monitors and BBQ pits from up to 600 ft away
• Completely Portable - once charged, there is no power needed
• No connections between components
• Dry Box design is rain proof

BBQ Guru Chicken by BBQ Bob Trudnak

BBQ Guru Chicken Recipe
(published in Chile Pepper Magazine)

1 whole "Giant Brand" or "Perdue Oven Stuffer Roaster" chicken
olive oil
butter
Shotgun Freds Chipotle dry rub or your favorite seasoning

Thoroughly wash chicken and remove gizzard bag from inside.

Run your fingers between the skin and meat to seperate skin and make "pockets".

Thinly slice butter and sprinke with dry rub.

Place the butter slices in the "pockets" you have made under the skin.

Rub chicken with olive oil.

Generously cover the chicken with Shotgun Fred's dry rub. (inside and outside)

Place chicken on your preheated charcoal grill.

To Preheat Charcoal Grill:

Hook your BBQ Guru up to the draft inducer tube that is on the bottom of the grill.

Place your foil covered drip pan on the bottom grate
Pile a generous amount of charcoal next to the pan on the opposite side of the BBQ Guru.
Place your starter sticks into the charcoal and place a few briquettes on top of them.
Light starter sticks
After a few minutes close your grill lid (securely) and turn The BBQ Guru on.
Place the meat probe (long probe) in the chicken breast and clip the pit probe
to the grill grate on the opposite side of your charcoal pile.

BBQ Guru Set Points:

Meat Set Point: 170°F
Pit Set Point: 300°F

Cook for approx. 2 1/2 hours or until your Meat Set Point reaches 170°F

Pull the chicken of the grill and enjoy!

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BBQ Guru love letters

I did try to use the BBQ Guru this weekend and I have to say the results were fantastic. The Guru came through on the first try in very difficult conditions (windy, a hard rain, and an outside temperature drop of at least 20 degrees over the 4-hour cooking period and all on a leaky weber grill). Like a nervous parent, I would check the guage only to find the Guru keeping the temperature steady. The results were babyback ribs that were moist and smoky. Quite simply, the best I ever made. I can't wait to try to do more.
Thanks, David

I finally did my first cook on my new #7 "K"Good golly miss molly - can this thing cook. I fired up the Kamado and set the pit temperature for 225 deg. Man, did you catch that, I set the temperature. Talk about set it and forget it. I installed the BBQguru temperature controller on my rig and bingo, your "what's the fire doing worry days are over". Then I put a 6 pound boston butt with a dry rub on the rack with a heat deflector and drip pan underneath. 13 hours later I'm shedding the greatest pork butt I've every had. Tender, moist, falling off of the bone. Ok, so it was midnight when I was having that pork sandwich, but it was good. I'll need to work my timing.I can't rave enough about the temperature controller gizmo, for a low and slow bbq rookie like me this gadget levels the playing field with all the old timers.


BBQ Guru - Won't cook without it. This little commercial quality device gives you absolute control cooker temperatures. The draft door is super quality, seals well, and it allows you to take the BBQ Guru off the Kamado and use a piece of foil with a small slit to control the air if you want. You can see how big the hole is which for some of us is easier then judging how open the draft door is. It is very accurate. When I want 200 degrees at the grill I put the grill probe on the grill and set the dial to 200 degrees. As long as there is charcoal in the firebox the Kamado will stay at 200 degrees. And if you want to bump it up to 250 degrees all you have to do is turn the dial to 250 and walk away. When you turn it down it shuts off the air until the temp hit your goal. How simple can it be? The fire won’t go out because when the temp drops below set point the fan turns on and keeps the fire burning until all the charcoal is gone.Think about this: You want a beef roast ready when you get home from work. In the morning you put in the meat probe and set it to you desired internal meat temp. You then put the grill probe on the grill and set the cooker temp. When the meat internal gets close to the setting the BBQ Guru brings the cooker temp down to the meat internal temp and holds it until you get home.I now sleep at night and my Kamado’s cook all night - and they do it perfectly.
Thanks, Don

Guru Golf Club 5 In 1 BBQ Tool - Flame Spreader

No more chimmney to light your charcoal!

The Guru Golf Club is designed to be used with a standard propane torch. It uses the air and gas that have been mixed by the torch head and sends it to a flame spreader burner. The unit has a flexible hose that easily fits on to the torch head stem and a swivel connection at the other end. The swivel connection allows the user to easily position the flame spreader without twisting the hose connections.

To light the unit, open the valve on the torch and light the Guru Golf Club flame spreader. Next, nestle the club under the charcoal to be lit. You may also pile charcoal on top of the club burner. The club can be turned to any angle for lighting but should always be nestled under the charcoal for maximum effect. You don’t need to be gentle; it is almost impossible to snuff out the Guru Golf Club. It was designed for just this purpose."

"CAUTION: As with any gas appliance always use caution and never leave the unit burning unattended.

Hole-e Smokes Silicone Mats

Hole-e-Smokes silicone smoking and grilling mats are the answer to a sausage maker's dream!

Make your own sausage, meatloaf, hamburger mixture, etc. and roll it up in a Hole-e-Smokes silicone mat. There is no need for casings which can be difficult to use, time consuming and tough to eat! Also, Hole-e-Smokes mats can be used as flat mats to place cheese, fish, or anything delicate on your smoker with no mess to your cooking grates.

Dimensions are 7" x 7". These mats are safe to use up to 650° F. Do NOT expose to direct flame. Do not use on bottom grate of gas grills. They come in singles or packs of 4.

14 Hour Brisket by Shotgun Fred

Brisket represents the greatest challenge for most BBQ cooks. Place the probe at the center of mass at the large end or Point end of the brisket. Position the meat on the pit fat side up, so that the pit sensor is opposite the charcoal charge (indirect method). The meat should be placed over a pan on a rack or grill to catch the drippings (makes great Smokey gravy or meat sauce). Close the lid and set the meat control knob for 180-185 degrees. You may set the pit control high, say 275-350 for a fast heat up or say 225 for a slow heat up. Remember, the higher the temperature, the more the blower will run and the faster the fuel will be consumed.

You may need to add extra fuel and smoke wood for the long haul. If max smoke flavor is desired, keep up smoke wood until the internal temp. reaches 140. After that, the long haul will require only charcoal. Collagen (what makes meat tough) in a beef brisket will begin to break down and dissolve at about 155-165, and the meat temperature will want to plateau or level off at somewhere in the neighborhood of 180. This is good. When the meat done alarm goes off you can silence it and continue to cook to completion.

WARNING: This meat is likely to fall apart and may be so good that your foot may fall asleep.

The Great Water Pan Debate by Shotgun Fred

This short Q&A is intended to demonstrate why it is not necessary or even desirable to use a water pan when using a BBQ Guru® or Pitminder E-temp Temperature Control.I would be the first to admit that a lot of great BBQ has been cooked while using a water pan, but not for the reasons that many people believe.

Questions and answers

Question: Will a water pan add moisture to your meat while you cook?

Answer: No, the only simple way to add moisture or liquid is to brine your meat before you start cooking.

Question: Will a water pan keep my meat from drying out?

Answer: Yes, to some extent, but meat can dry out even while a water pan is in use. The water pan is an aid to keep temperatures low so that drying out doesn’t occur.

Question: Why?

Answer: All living tissue is made up of a good quantity of water. Water boils at 212ºF and vaporizes or evaporates at even lower temperatures. This is true whether the water is in your water pan or in your meat. Get your meat hot enough inside and this moisture will turn to vapor or steam and go up the stack along with water vaporizing in your water pan.

Question: Will steaming or boiling add moisture to meat.

Answer: No, in fact you can boil or steam meat until it is tough as a boot! When you poach meat in a broth, it is important not to exceed about 140ºF liquid temperature to prevent this liquid loss from happening and making your meat tough.

Question: If this is true, then why do I need a water pan at all?

Answer: When you use a water pan, it will do several things for you. First and foremost, it is a simple and rudimentary temperature control. The water heats up early on in the cooking process and becomes a thermal mass. This makes damper adjustments less critical. If your fire gets too hot, more water vaporizes which cools the heated air rising toward the stack of your cooker. If the fire is losing heat, the thermal mass of the water maintains the temperature in the cooking chamber for a while. Second, moist vapors carry heat to the food product being cooked at a faster rate than just heated air alone would. This is why you steam vegetables to cook them quickly. The bottom line in a BBQ pit is that the water pan makes the temperature more stable around an ideal low and slow cooking temperature.

Question: This sounds like the Ideal solution to BBQ cooking!

Answer: Many people think so and millions of cooks have been carried out using this age-old method. I have done it myself more times than I could count in the 40 + years I have cooked BBQ. This method does have a few down sides. First, it can be dangerous. Any time you deal with a quantity of very hot water you are at risk of scalding. I have read many accounts of people who have had either minor or serious injuries in their own back yards as a result of tending their water pan smokers. Some times the water pan falls or is tipped over into the fire causing instant flash steam burns. Yes, I have also had an incident, which made me far more cautious. Second, a water pan consumes a large amount of fuel. It takes energy to heat water. You may think charcoal is cheap, but just think how many fewer dollars worth of gas or electricity it takes to cook the same amount of meat mass in your kitchen oven. Good charcoal is not so cheap anymore and not always so easy to come by in many locations.

Question: I don’t care what the charcoal costs so what’s the big deal.

Answer: If you’re asking this question, then you’ve probably never stayed up all night feeding “the beast”, when you would really rather be sleeping. You know that you should only add a few lumps at a time every couple of hours. This keeps the temperature up, but not too high. On a low and slow cook, your water pan is sucking up energy like a locomotive boiler. By the way, you are also topping off your water pan with “ hot water” to keep your temperature up and save fuel on these all night vigils. You do this because you know that if you don’t, your temperature will go too high or too low and ruin your otherwise fantastic cook. This is not much fun unless you are young and partying all night anyway.Is this really “being in control”?

Question: How about if I replace the water pan with a pan full of sand? Isn’t this mass that won’t boil away?

Answer: Correct, it won’t boil away, but it will absorb a large quantity of heat on start up. It may, however, overshoot your target temperature anyway and take a long time to cool down unless you can be there to anticipate when to throttle back your dampers.

Question: Is there a better way to cooking without these thermal mass devices?

Answer: Yes, the name of the game is control. If you stay close to your pit for as many hours as it takes to cook your food, you can, with a little practice, build your fire right and control your dampers so that your pit will run at an even temperature for some time. This time depends on a number of factors, the most important of which is the rate that fuel needs to burn to maintain a given temperature. Well-insulated or massive pits are always at an advantage here because the rate of burning is slower and therefore easier to control.The lower the temperature that you try to maintain, the easier it is for your fire to go out. This is because at lower temperatures draft control is more difficult. There is just less air moving through the dampers and the pit is cooling. Natural draft dies as the fire dies. This affect is then compounded and the fire goes out.Another way to skin this cat is to build a very small, but active, fire and add small amounts of fuel every few minutes, so that the heat output matches the need for heat.The key words here are “ every few minutes”. If you feel the need to “ride herd” on your pit to this extent, you will get fantastic results every time. You will be able to do cold smoking, jerky making, or pepper drying of the first order.If you are not inclined to devote this level of attention, then you are a candidate for at least some type of automation. There are such things as pellet feeding cookers that feed just enough fuel to hold a low temperature, but they are expensive and require substantial power input.

Question: Is there another way to do this on my pit? And can I maintain both low and high temperatures?

Answer: Yes there is, and I am glad you ask that question. It is called The BBQ Guru. The BBQ Guru is an industrial strength temperature controller that will retrofit any design of pit, grill or smoker that burns charcoal and or wood.The BBQ Guru will help you start your fire, control your fire, and change your temperature at the turn of a dial. Not only that, you will always know exactly:
What your pit temperature is
What your meat temperature is
How your meat is cooking regardless of time or number of pounds
How many degrees from done you are
What your cooking rate and doneness areYou will also be able to easily:
Cold smoke cheese, fish and meats
Dry and smoke jerky, peppers or fruit
Dry spices and herbs to make your own rubs
Bake bread
Make pizza, casseroles and cobbler
Make stuffed apples, peppers and cabbage
Barbecue pork, brisket, ribs, chicken, etc.
Grill steaks, burgers, vegetables, fish
Sear meats at high temperatures
Cook and hold meats at low temperatures
Put out your fire to save charcoal for your next cookAll this without a water or sand pan. In the words of one of our recent customers, “This is one awesome little gizmo.”

Just One Final Question: Can I use the Guru and a water pan?

Answer: It is not a good idea. The water pan will fool the Guru. The cooler water vapor in the cooking chamber or dome makes the controller call for more heat. The actual fire then becomes too hot, and the temperature of your pit will bounce up and down.The water pan will actually buck the controller. You simply don’t need a primitive control when you have a real modern day electronic control on the job.You can load all the charcoal fuel you want at the start of the cook and not worry about it getting out of control if you want to go about your life; sleep, party, play golf, mow the grass, or go fishing.

Now you’re in control!

Gorgonzola Smoked Bacon Sausage by BBQ Bob Trudnak

To make 5 lbs:

5 lbs. Ground pork sausage

2 containers of crumbled gorgonzola cheese

2 cups of crispy chopped bacon (or real bacon bits)

Dizzy Pig Cowlick to taste

1 handful chopped Cilantro

1 handful chopped parsley

1 tsp Black pepper

Salt to taste

2 cups of cold water

Mix all ingredients well in a large bowl. Let mixture sit for 24 hours and roll into Hole-e Smokes Silicone Cooking Mats, make patties or case in sausage casings. If you plan on smoking the sausage at low temperatures (140° F), use Tender quick or an alternative cure to preserve meat and insure freshness.Cook at 300° F until internal temp. reaches 170° F using Cherry smoke wood. Baste with BBQ sauce.

When ya eat um yer gonna say: Holy Smokes!

Caldera Three Bay Caterer

Imagine a heavy duty, stainless steel three bay catering system that knocks down and stores into a very small space. If that is not cool enough, imagine that it runs on sterno or CHARCOAL !

The Caldera Three Bay Caterer Features:

• Doubles as a 3 basin heater sink (wash station)
• Panelized System knocks down and stacks for easy storage.
• Assembles and disassembles in just seconds with no tools required
• Uses charcoal or sterno to keep food at serving temperature (140° F -212°F)
• Easy to control for food warming, cooking or wash up.
• One small bag of charcoal will operate the Three Bay Caterer for days.
• Fuel drawers make it easy to load and reload fuel whenever necessary.
• Custom, heavy duty, removable handle allows for safe and easy access to all three fuel drawers. (Custom tool/handle has built in bottle opener)
• Stainless Steel construction allows for an easy clean up.
• Uses standard size, NSF approved steam pans.
• Designed with opening in back of drawer for easy ash dumping and allows airflow to charcoal.
• Comes with fire grate in each fuel drawer for maximum air flow and ash management.
• Hold up to 6 different food items at perfect serving temperatures as long as you need to.
• Serve food hot or warm

Special Feature: Also use as a three bay, charcoal powered, washing station for cook-offs and events without having to use propane or electricity. It fills the Health Dept. requirements for having a 3 basin heated sink for serving the public.

Caldera Del Fuego Cooker

Why you should buy a Caldera Del Fuego Charcoal and Wood Cooker?

Caldera is the name for the steamy crater at the top of a volcano. Literally translated, caldera is Spanish for “boiler”. Del is Spanish for “of the”. Fuego is “fire”. Caldera Del Fuego is “boiler of the fire”. This, we think, is an appropriate name for this amazing southwestern style portable smokehouse and BBQ cooker.

Not only is the Caldera an amazingly robust, sturdy, panelized, portable cooker and smokehouse, it is also a very efficient temperature controlled convection oven that will cook and brown as much as 30% faster, if desired.

Because of its precision temperature control and convection cooking capability, the Caldera can literally do it all. This means anything from light smoking and drying to a full load of, real, full flavored, Southwestern style Barbecue. The Caldera enables you to cook in any style you choose, using charcoal and wood with more precision and control than you ever dreamed possible.

It is legal to use for competition, and a joy to use for catering, vending, tailgating, backyard parties, or serving a large group of people in a short time. The Caldera can do one rib, or a full load of ribs, chicken, pork loin, pork butts, or briskets with equal ease. The profit on one load of jerkyor ribs alone will pay for the Caldera and power draft control!

As a drying oven, it has a huge capacity and can dry, very large quantities of jerky, peppers, vegetables, or smoked cheese in one load. You can also do a complete KCBS, or similar, cook off competition on one Caldera. You can then pack it up in the trunk of you car, if you like.

For price versus internal volume, precise temperature control, sturdiness and versatility, nothing compares to the Caldera. Nothing even comes close. Fully equipped, the Caldera will cost about half as much as other cookers of the same volume that are not equipped with a temperature control, a convection fan or select hardware accessories. This is possible because the Caldera is a very high quality, stainless steel and powder coated steel cooker that is precision, laser cut and assembled in minutes by the user.

All Guru controls and Caldera smokers are manufactured and serviced by us in our 25,000 sq. ft. plant in Warminster, PA. This allows us to keep the cost low.

When the Caldera is used with the Wireless Guru ProCom4, it becomes a remote, radio controlled and location free BBQ cooker, convection oven, smoker, and dryer. You can monitor and control any cooking temperature or any low and slow smoking or drying temperature as long as you have fuel to feed into the cooker’s firebox. Typical run times for one load of charcoal
and smoke wood will be from twenty to forty hours.

Imagine, sitting at your computer getting things done on a really cold winter day or reaching out to your night stand for your remote control on a cold night and checking your cook, then adjusting your pit temperature without even throwing back the covers. The possibilities are
endless.

The Competitor, Pit Minder and Pit Boss controls even further reduce the cost of owning the Caldera without sacrificing precision control. Individual, independent lids and large, cool to the touch, wooden handles make it a breeze to access the cooking chamber and the firebox. The lids can be completely removed to aid in loading and unloading.

The Caldera is insulated where it counts most. Since heat rises, most heat tries to escape at the top of a cooker. Two inches of insulation in the lids keep them cool to the touch. The heavily insulated lids also reflect and retain heat in the cooking chamber where it is needed. Their 34-inch height from the ground makes them perfect counter height for food preparation or just hanging out with friends and a drink while you are cooking.

The hanging rack system makes for a totally flexible cooking space. The cooking chamber can truly be arranged in an infinite numbers of ways. Multiple position rack hangers allow for hanging meat or shelving meat or both at the same time. Support rods span the width of the cooking chamber to hold meat hooks on our laser cut meat racks/ shelves/grills. They can be located at any height to allow for speedy loading and even faster unloading.

The drip pans are standard disposable aluminum steam table trays that lift right out. You can catch all your drippings in pristine condition for sauces and gravies. The combination of rack hangers, support rods, meat hooks, meat racks and drip pans allow all the meat drippings to fall straight down into the trays. This really makes clean up a breeze. The sides and the bottom of the cooker stay clean.

The firebox is an incredible stainless steel marvel. It has a huge capacity that will cook all night and all the next day and be perfectly temperature controlled while you sleep or tend to other tasks.

A power draft blower feeds pulses of air when the controller calls for heat. Air is fed in under the stainless steel fire grate that rests on four stainless steel stays that also reinforce the firebox. This means no more guess work when building or banking a fire and no more out of control
fires, temperature spikes or dieing fires.

The firebox is an “inset offset” box that is contained inside of the cooking chamber. Any and all heat that leaves the firebox escapes directly into the cooking chamber, where it is needed to do the cooking or drying.

At the end of a cook, you can lift the firebox out of the cooker with the built in handles so that you can dump the burning charcoal and get out of Dodge quick! If you choose to kill the fire and save the charcoal, you can shut it down in only a few minutes with our novel “Fire Kill
System”. You can then get rid of the ashes and save the lump with our “Save The Lump System”.

While you are cooking, you can also grill steaks or chicken etc. right on top of the firebox. You can even do this while you are doing a low and slow if you like. You can also place a griddle right over the firebox and cook breakfast, make coffee, bake biskets, cook hash browns,
make cookies etc.

The convection fan is a BBQ dream come true! Expensive kitchen ovens have convection fans, but you can’t smoke meat in them. With a convection fan in your barbecue cooker, you can. You can even do a low and slow in less time with less fuel. The convection fan draws in air behind the firebox and accelerates it toward the lid. Hot air, that tends to collect in the top of the cooker, is displaced and creates a gentle breeze in a downward direction throughout the cooking chamber.

This hot air then mixes with cooler air to create a very even, average temperature in the cooking chamber. A wind wiping effect, caused by the moving air, removes the thin layer of steam vapor that normally surrounds the cooking meat. In a conventional cooker, this thin layer of steam vapor insulates the meat and slows down heat transfer into the meat. Stirred air from the convection fan reverses this process and speeds up cooking, keeping the meat tender and juicy. You can also choose to cook at a lower temperature and keep cooking time extended. You
can even turn off the convection fan and cook at four different temperatures from top to bottom.

The BBQ Guru control has proven itself in cooking competitions, commercial operations and back yards everywhere. The Caldera was designed to work hand in hand with the Guru control. Now you can cook and smoke with charcoal and wood more accurately than you can with
gas or electricity in your own kitchen oven. Turn the temperature up and it goes up. Turn the temperature down and it goes down. Take total charge or let the control automatically cook your meat to perfection. It’s your choice.

The Caldera, controlled by the BBQ Guru, is without a doubt the best bang for the buck for the cook who desires a level of precision and versatility that simply hasn’t existed until now.

Good cooking and Even Temps, Shotgun Fred

Caldera Del Fuego

The Caldera Del Fuego is a knock down cooker that can be assembled by one person in a matter of minutes with no tools. The cooker can be easily transported flat for space saving. The Caldera comes standard with a convection fan, stainless steel insulated lid and a removable firebox capable of holding up to 30 lbs of charcoal.

The firebox is BBQ GURU blower ready for precise temperature control. The Caldera can be loaded from the front or the top with up to 200lbs of meat. The meat can be positioned in the cooker on 4 cooking racks with 9 shelf positions or loaded onto 8 meat hooks. The Caldera has 4 pit thermometers and 4 stainless steel damper doors. The Caldera is powder coated black for easy clean up.

Caldera Tallboy Knockdown Smoker

The new Caldera San Antonio Tallboy Smoker is here at last! This vertical, knockdown cooker uses state of the art cooking technology and is engineered to be a BBQ cooks delight in every way. We designed this versatile smoker with cook-off teams, caterers, event vendors and backyard BBQ enthusiasts in mind. With any of the three BBQ Guru controls, your Tallboy can be controlled from about 90° F to 400° F with the turn of a dial or press of a button. The double wall construction, patented air flow system make this cooker a breeze to cook and hold food for any occasion or circumstance. With 13"x22" shelves and 17 shelf positions, The Tallboy allows full and half steam table catering pans to fit exactly in the cooking shelf tracks. There are many ways to configure your set up with the cooking racks and catering pans.

BBQ Guru ProCom 4

The ProCom4 Wireless is the newest addition to the BBQ GURU control line-up. The ProCom4 unit consists of a stationary base station and a hand held pendent. The hand held pendent is capable of 2-way digital communication up to 600ft line of sight range. The pendent features a 16 character back lit LCD display with audible alarms, real time status updates, and mulitple screen layouts for individual user preference. The unit comes with an easel stand and belt clip for the pendent and a table/wall mount for the base station.

The Competitor

The BBQ GURU Competitor is a microprocessor-controlled draft system that monitors and controls the temperature of your BBQ pit through the use of a power draft fan. This system is an excellent choice for small to medium bbq grills/smokers. The BBQ GURU Competitor is actually four instruments in one box. It contains two temperature controllers and two temperature indicators coordinated by a microprocessor. Temperature of the pit and the meat is measured through two precision thermocouple probes. The ever-vigilant GURU "checks" the temperature of both meat and pit many times every second, and is programmed to provide the proper amount of draft air needed to raise or lower the pit temperature to precisely the point you have set.

Anyone would agree that a hot pit cooks quicker than a cold pit. The problem is that when the internal meat temperature over-shoots or goes too high, the meat becomes dry, tough or both. The BBQ GURU Competitor uses a microprocessor chip to calculate and control your pit temperature via the Turbo Power Draft Fan , so that the selected meat temperature is NEVER exceeded.

How does The BBQ GURU Competitor do this?
Simply put, as the meat temperature naturally increases or “ramps up” The BBQ GURU Competitor decreases or “ramps down” the pit temperature at a proportional rate using controlled power draft. Once the intitial ramping is complete, the Guru maintains the pit temperature throughout the cook to ensure a consistent and effective cook. Once you use The BBQ Guru Competitor, you simply will NOT want to cook without it!

The Pit Minder

The BBQ GURU Pit Minder is a microprocessor-controlled draft system that monitors and controls the temperature of your BBQ pit through the use of a power draft fan. We offer a wide selection of control and blower choices to fit your individual needs.

The Pit Minder is an entry level power draft controller that monitors and controls the temperature of your BBQ pit through the use of a power draft fan. The new Stainless Steel Pit Minder E-Temp Pit control is so easy to use!

This unit was designed to control the temperature of the pit only (no meat control). The advantage is that it controls temperatures from 90° F to 370° F which makes cold smoking, cheese smoking, jerky making, pepper drying and low & slow bbq nothing short of effortless. Of course there is still plenty of stradegy to put forth in making sauces, glazes, rubs and marinades while temperature selection and cooking times are yours for the choosing.

First and foremost, we are “BBQ Fanatics”!

The BBQ Guru™ is manufactured by Therm-Omega-Tech, Inc., an industry leader in industrial temperature control. TOT was founded in 1982 by Shotgun Fred Pirkle. Over the course of 21 years, Fred has patented 18 products and has 5 patent pending products. We consider ourselves specialty manufacturers and have extensive research & development capabilities that include the latest in temperature measurement, control instrumentation, and testing facilities.
At our factory in Warminster, PA, we develop and manufacture control devices for fuel cells, medical equipment, the process industry and personal cooling apparel for hospital operating rooms and other high heat situations.

While in the midst of maturing our EMPC (Electronically Modulated Position Control) project, we realized that the circuitry of this control resembled what would be needed to control a charcoal fire. By this time, the Pitminder™ (an all mechanical smoker control) had already been built and tested in our facilities and we came to the conclusion that an electronic microprocessor based control would be versatile enough to provide temperature control for everything from “low & slow” barbequing to jerky making, pepper drying and cold smoking.

Development of The BBQ Guru

Imagine putting a large brisket or pork shoulder on your charcoal grill before you go to work in the morning, and after work, as the guests are arriving, your meal is cooked to perfection.
To make this a reality, we took on the challenge of interfacing two controls, one for the meat and the other for the pit or grill. We needed this control to ramp the pit temperature down and hold it, as the meat temperature approached the desired “done” temperature. We knew this would be AWESOME!

Next, we needed a probe that sensed the meat temperature as well as the surrounding pit temperature. It needed to withstand the heat at peak cooking temperatures as well.
All of this had to be incorporated into a control, which could provide the user with 4 full time displays to indicate both set temperatures and actual temperatures.

The BIG Question: “ How could both high and low temperatures be selected on the control so that the fire would never go out at low temps., and higher temps. could be achieved without a raging fire”?
The Answer: A small but powerful turbo power blower system that is intelligently turned on and off by the microprocessor’s embedded control algorithm.

Please check out our website at www.thebbqguru.com !

You can also contact us at 1-800288-4878 or by e-mail: Shotgun Fred Pirkle or BBQ Bob Trudnak.