Smoking Lamb V2

The last time I smoked some lamb it took me close to 2 hours of smoking and the lamb shoulders wasn't even cooked at all. This time I tried it again and I was much more prepared. The day before...

 

We bought and defrosted it and marinated the lamb shoulder the day before we wanted to smoke it. We used this marinate the first time and it tasted good so we used the same thing again. Quite simple using onion, lemon juice, salt, pepper and olive oil. So once that was done it went into the fridge for a day.

The next day, an hour before smoking I prepared the fire. This time I decided to be patient and also use more coal and starter fluid. I sprayed the thing till it was nicely soaked and lit it.....

This time the fire is burning nice and bright and it burnt for a good 30 minutes before the fire went out. I didn't even need to fan the thing at all and I decided to be patient to let it burn through. While the fire was being started, I took out the lamb to cool down to room temp...

 

and also soaked the wood chips....

I left the coal burning for one complete hour and then I packed the wood chips up...

 and dropped in into the fire...

Check out how this time the coal is nice and burning red not like the last time. Once I put in the smoking pack I felt good about this smoking session. Once the smoke pack was in the next thing to go on top is nothing but the lamb....

Now the waiting starts and I started it at 5pm so we had plenty of time to smoke before dinner. One hour after the first session of smoking, I touched the BBQ lid and it was still nice and warm which is a good sign. So I decided to turn the lamb around and let it slowly and nicely cook for another hour. In the end I allowed it to cook or another hour and 15 minutes and the results.....

Finally success!!!!! The lamb was finally cooked through but this time because I put the smoke pack on the side of the fire instead of on stop of the fire, the smoky-ness is not very strong. Maybe next time I should put the smoking chips direct on top of the fire instead of in a pouch. The only thing left after 30min is.....

This time it was a total success. I think I need to see how I can put more smoky-ness into the lamb.