Smokers (BBQ - not grilling)

[Bounce]

Ive been delinquent in both cooking and reporting what little I have cooked.

Me too. But with the heat, of late it's been in the Instant Pot. I did a double batch of beef stroganoff and a double batch of pinto beans and ham. Both were the best to date. I think I've nailed the mods to my daughter's bean recipe with less brown sugar and serrano peppers instead of jalapenos. Jalapenos are simply too variable in the heat from one batch to the next that I can't predict how much kick they'll add. Serranos, while hotter, are consistent so I can adjust quantity for consistent results.

 

[08FJR4ME]

I have one more meal of ribs in the freezer. So when it cools off a bit it will be time for another smoke. I will try to get a picture of my wood supply also.

Dave

 

[Fred W]

Wood supply? Oh yeah, I want to see that.

Ive just been scavenging from my cord wood for the fireplace. The maple pieces seems to work pretty well, though not too assertive. I think the red oak would be ok for a red meat but would be too strong for pork loin or poultry. I still need to go by one of the local orchards and try to get some apple and peach wood.

 

[Knifemaker]

Well here's one of them. Oddly one is about 12 degrees behind the other. No biggy, actually gave me time to pull this one, package it up and have dinner. So can only tell you this first one tasted great.

 

[Knifemaker]

Number two. Going to let it sit awhile before I pull it...

So, going to have a several month supply. Other than what I eat tonight, it's all getting divided up into sandwich bags and going into the freezer

 

[Fred W]

Mmmmm. Looks good.

 

[Knifemaker]

It was good

This is just what I pulled from the second butt. That's a 13x20 pan. Going to give about a pound bag to my neighbor that gave me the deer meat.

Edit - Postscript:

After cleaning out the UDS today, the bricks did seem to help with catching some fat. (And they smell really good now) Not sure how they did diffusing any direct heat, but will be using them again.

Wasn't sure how long the cook would go so pretty much just filled the fuel basket with a mix of lump, "natural" charcoal briquettes, fist sized chunks of Applewood and Hickory, along with several handfuls of applewood chips. Cook lasted from 7:00am to 6pm, and there was quite abit of fuel left. Could easily have gone 18 hours by looking at what was left to burn.

Had no problems maintaining a 225-240 degree target temperature. Although a few times I opened the cap on the other side of the drum to get the coals burning better. I think the fact that the basket was burning from one side (ball valve side) to the other makes me think I'll replace the pipe on the opposite side with another ball valve.

At six hours I went to flip the meat from fat side up to fat side down. Had to use a metal spatula to loosen the butts from the grate. Now making a mental note to grease the grate before the cook.

 

[08FJR4ME]

Wood supply? Oh yeah, I want to see that.
Ive just been scavenging from my cord wood for the fireplace. The maple pieces seems to work pretty well, though not too assertive. I think the red oak would be ok for a red meat but would be too strong for pork loin or poultry. I still need to go by one of the local orchards and try to get some apple and peach wood.

You could load up the side cases for a couple of smokes. I have enought for the next 3 to 4 years. (Applewood)

Dave

 

[Fred W]

Finally a semi-cool day. Global warming has been relentless on us up here in the upper right corner of the US. Cooked 5 full racks of Babies for a few upcoming occasions. 5 racks is about all I can fit on my little Highlander smoker. Time to get serious about a bigger pit I guess?

We ate about half of the first rack tonight (wife and MIL are BBQ lightweights). 2 racks plus leftovers from tonight to go to family pic-a-nic this weekend. The other 2 racks and any leftovers (not likely) will go with us to daughters when we drive to Michigan the following week.

These ribs were very nice looking in the package, but not cheap.

I cooked them on the OK Joe offset with straight hickory wood. Tried laying a light coating of Sweet Baby Ray's original sauce on them (just the meat side) for just the last 20 minutes. Did not slather much on. Flavor is quite fantastic.

Photographic evidence exists for a change:

 

[Auburn]

I have a bunch of racks to do on the RecTec Saturday

 

[Fred W]

I bet your pellet burner has multiple levels of cooking racks, right? The ones Ive seen always seem to have a lot of cooking space in a relatively compact package.

I probably need to make a second tier grille rack for expanding production. When you are going through the effort to tend a fire for 5-6 hours you want to maximize output.

 

[Knifemaker]

Ribs look great Fred.

Have you thought of buying or making a rib rack? I've noticed no real difference in taste smoking them flat or on edge, if anything, I'd say they come out better using the rack. (Less direct heat more smoke) Would make it more difficult if you wanted to sauce them, however.

I bet with a well designed rack you could fit another 3-4 (or more) slabs in there.

My offset is not long, but wider than most. I can get 4 slabs of baby backs in there laying them flat. Being a "reverse" there is an opening at the far end, which I usually avoid putting meat directly over. So perhaps I could fit another rack in that spot, just haven't tried.

The rack I made actually will hold 11 slabs of ribs. I sacrificed the center slot to put in a handle, so dropped that to 10. However, I usually only cook 6, as I like having a large empty space between each rack for maximum smoke flow. During my last cook I did some measurements and figured I could build one to hold 9 racks of ribs, with adequate space between each rack, if I used flat metal instead of the threaded rod I used, and built the handle differently. That design would require it to be welded, and not having a welder at my disposal negates me building it.

Not a big thing, as 6 slabs of ribs is still a lot for the three of us, and going out to cook more is something I always enjoy doing anyway.

 

[Auburn]

I bet your pellet burner has multiple levels of cooking racks, right? The ones Ive seen always seem to have a lot of cooking space in a relatively compact package.
I probably need to make a second tier grille rack for expanding production. When you are going through the effort to tend a fire for 5-6 hours you want to maximize output.

I have a second rack that I can put in. It will hold 3 racks of baby backs on it. Can get 6 racks below it.

Baby backs on the grill for 3 hours of smoking on the LOW temp setting which is about 180 degrees. Using Hickory pellets

3 hours in, pull off to foil.

Back on for 1 mores hour at 225 degrees foiled.

The RecTec really holds temp very well. won't very more than 1 degree +/- while in use

Foil off, back on for one more hour, sweet baby rays in the last 30 minutes

almost forgot to do a finished product photo. Very tasty

 

[Blind Squirrel]

https://video.klru.tv/video/bbq-franklin-episode-1-brisket/

*Edit* Here is the entire series on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/BBQwithFranklin/videos

 

[biknflyfisher]

I now have this incurable urge for brisket........

 

[Fred W]

I’m a subscriber of Aaron Franklin’s YT channel. Learned a lot about fire management and cooking brisket. The guy is the Texas Brisket King.

 

[Blind Squirrel]

I now have this incurable urge for brisket........

Me too. To me they are a pain in the @ss because of how long they take to cook.

 

[Fred W]

If you just want to cook the flat you can speed things up quite a bit and get pretty spectacular results. It's how Ive done my last few flats and intend to keep doing them this way:

I use only Dalmatian rub (Kosher salt and course black pepper) on briskets. Smoke however you normally do, but at a cooking temp of about 275F-300 instead off 225F. In my case the temps swing around between 250 and 300 as I add sticks of wood and they burn down.

After about 6-7 hours it should be well smoked and the internal temp will probably be in the 160-165F stall zone. Take it off and wrap it in foil with about a cup or so of liquid beef broth, and put that onto your gas grille, set low, with indirect heat if possible. I have an old Weber Genesis Silver (2 of them actually) that has the 3 burners running side to side. I can run the front burner on lowest setting and push the wrapped brisket all the way to the back. The broth will boil inside the package which braises the meat and tenderizes it greatly while retaining a lot of moisture.

When the internal reaches 205F (usually takes less than an hour) I unwrap the meat and toss it back on the smoker to firm up the bark. Retain the Au Jus from the foil pack as that is the best tasting sauce you could ever ask for.

This technique cuts the cooking time down to a manageable 7-8 hours instead of 12-16.

 

[Blind Squirrel]

If you just want to cook the flat you can speed things up quite a bit and get pretty spectacular results. It's how Ive done my last few flats and intend to keep doing them this way:
I use only Dalmatian rub (Kosher salt and course black pepper) on briskets. Smoke however you normally do, but at a cooking temp of about 275F-300 instead off 225F. In my case the temps swing around between 250 and 300 as I add sticks of wood and they burn down.

After about 6-7 hours it should be well smoked and the internal temp will probably be in the 160-165F stall zone. Take it off and wrap it in foil with about a cup or so of liquid beef broth, and put that onto your gas grille, set low, with indirect heat if possible. I have an old Weber Genesis Silver (2 of them actually) that has the 3 burners running side to side. I can run the front burner on lowest setting and push the wrapped brisket all the way to the back. The broth will boil inside the package which braises the meat and tenderizes it greatly while retaining a lot of moisture.

When the internal reaches 205F (usually takes less than an hour) I unwrap the meat and toss it back on the smoker to firm up the bark. Retain the Au Jus from the foil pack as that is the best tasting sauce you could ever ask for.

This technique cuts the cooking time down to a manageable 7-8 hours instead of 12-16.

How long, and at what temp?

 

[BigOgre]

Take it off and wrap it in foil with about a cup or so of liquid beef broth, and put that onto your gas grill. . . . When the internal reaches 205F . . . .

And just leave the probe sticking out of the foil? With a full cup of broth?