A very Chinese Smoker

Hmmmm…..

What could I mean by a "very Chinese smoker"???????  It could very well mean people smoking cigarettes- as sadly many Chinese people do smoke.

But that's not what I'm talking about…..I'm talking about smoking meat!!!!  Mmmmm….tasty smoked ribs!!!!!!! (apologies to any vegans or vegetarians out there.  We clearly aren't.)

Several of Mark's Chinese co-workers went to the USA on business travel and fell in love with the smoked ribs.  Who wouldn't????  Mark said that if they could help him get a smoker built here in Tianjin we could smoke ribs for them.  

They said yes!  Yay!!!!  

They researched several smoker styles and decided to go with this stainless steel barrel smoker.  

June 27, 2012-

On the day the girls and I visited the Beijing Zoo and Aquarium…

After work, Mark's friends and himself went to a "shop" not too far away from his work to get started building the smoker.  Well, it wasn't in fact a shop- but a guy with tools on the street.  Mark attracted quite the crowd when he started to get to work.  It almost seemed as if the Chinese have never seen a white person actually doing manual labor!!!  I can't imagine what they think of us.

A man with some tools. Gloves? Eye protection? safety boots? Ear plugs? What are those things????? I'm not sure this worker has heard of such things! (or maybe he has and he thinks that all that safety gear is nonsense! LOL!!!)

I think that's Lynn in the pink shirt, David in the green shirt (they are Mark's coworkers), don't know who the guy with the black and red shirt and the man with the gray shirt is the shop worker in the above photo. You can get a better view of his shoes.

The smoker building team worked late into the night.  I had assumed they would stop working on the project at a convenient stopping point and continue with it later.  Nope!  They kept on plugging away- grinding, welding, cutting, building….until it was completed!  Lynn and David kindly drove Mark home that night (remember our driver had been on duty all day taking us to the zoo). It's amazing what you can accomplish when you have a team to help you!!!!

Shiiiiiiiiny!!!!  New!!!

Up close and personal with the fire box.

First set of ribs! Trial run on July 7….had to make sure we knew what we were doing before inviting our friends (David and Lynn) over for them!!!

 Several weeks and sets of ribs later:

Check out the bag of wood chips we found at Metro:

Any body else think it's hilarious that the wood chips we're using in our smoker come from the USA??? *sigh* Gone are the days when we could walk into our woods and cut down a sapling to use for smoking.