Simple - Fun - Delicious

Southern Pit BBQ - DIY

photo credit: Lang BBQ Smokers

My inspiration.

For some time now I’ve been thinking of making a southern style BBQ. A real southern BBQ is not like any grilling type BBQ that most of us are a custom to. Southern BBQ is, as they say, cooked low & slow with a generous amount of hardwood smoke. Well, the young adults in our parish are fund raising to go to World Youth Day in Spain this year. (http://www.madrid11.com/en) They were planning to do a pulled pork dinner cooked in slow cookers. I know this would have been a good meal but to do the whole history of pulled pork justice I made the commitment of helping them. This gave me the incentive, the catalyst to put my idea and longing to build a smoker to practical application.
The following is the whole process of the fabrication, seasoning and cooking in this incredible form of culinary equipment. I copied the basics of design from sources on the internet and conversations with other enthusiast of the cooking style. The overall dimensions are based on the material available for the body and fire box everything else is cut to suit that.
My 18 year old son helped and was in charge of the fire box design and fabrication. We had a great time and will use it for many, many exquisite meals.

The list of materials is as follows. All are plain carbon steel.
24” pipe with ¼” thk walls 54” long ( I know really heavy but should last until my 8 month old grandson takes up the cause; if not longer)
40 feet of 1” x 1” x 1/8” angle iron (yup just like it sounds 90 degree steel with 1” long legs on each side 1/8” thk)
20 feet of 1-1/2”w x 3/16”thk flat bar (yup just like is sounds)
1/8” thk checker plate (floor plate check out some of the photos)
1 pc 23” x 44” long
4 pc 24” diameter
Bits and pieces for leg bottoms and door latches
¾”x 9 Flattened expanded metal. (This a little hard to describe, you might have seen it used for security screens or pickup truck racks) Check out some of the photos.
2 pcs 23” x 24”
2 pcs 12” x 24”
2 pcs of 3/16” x 1-1/4” - 14” x 16”serrate bar grating.