Smoked Sausage & Hatch Chiles

We were in Western Sonoma County this weekend on the occasion of a friend's birthday. There was an incredible feast on Saturday, but there was quite a bit of stuff that didn't get cooked, like a whole bunch of sausage (roughly 8 varieties, ca. 4 lbs each), plus about 2.5 pounds of hatch chiles.

Mesquite chips soaking in water.

Starting the fire in the smoker. Very dried twigs really helped the mesquite charcoal get lit.

Our friend Bob brought a whole bunch of sausage from a butcher in Silicon Valley.

About 20-30 minutes into the smoking.

Leaving the little door slightly cracked seemed to work best with this smoker.

That's just the top shelf. The shelf below was closer to being grilled, being closer to the heat.

This tray was from the bottom shelf. Already everyone's had a good helping.

Here, I moved the top shelf franks & peppers down. Lid back on after this snapshot.

And finally, the thinner sausage and chiles. Nice smoke flavor. On the way home we stopped to do a bit of shopping, and heads were constantly turning in my direction, because there's no aroma more attractive to mammals than smoke heavy with meat juice.