A barbecue adventure, the saga unfolds.

Those ribs look nice and meaty. My preference is for a thicker layer of rub. But that's a personal preference.

I'm still planning to do some ribs, butts, and other assorted animal parts later this week. Probably Thursday.
 
Matthew said:
Those ribs look nice and meaty. My preference is for a thicker layer of rub. But that's a personal preference.

I'm still planning to do some ribs, butts, and other assorted animal parts later this week. Probably Thursday.
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They weigh in at about four pounds a rack, so that's about twelve pounds total. I cut them in to half racks so they would fit in to the vertical smoker. Three up, three down.
 
Fired up the charcoal then dove in the pool for a while. Ribeyes are now on the grill and I’m dripping on the patio and enjoying the aroma. Will add a salad and baked potato plus a dark beer in a half hour or so.
 
Half Fast said:
Fired up the charcoal then dove in the pool for a while. Ribeyes are now on the grill and I’m dripping on the patio and enjoying the aroma. Will add a salad and baked potato plus a dark beer in a half hour or so.
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On my way!
 
Looks good, Sac! Just add beans, slaw, and beer.

(And of course some nanner puddin for desert.)
 
Did a whole pig for Sunday's party. I have a lot of meat left over. Margy just foodsavered a lot of it.
 
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The Kinder’s is for the turkey. The John Henry is for the corned beef.

I picked up the Heath Riles comp rub today, I’ll use it on the ribs. I haven’t tried it before so this will be a good experiment.

The JDQ sweet is my go-to for pork and ribs, so it’s going on the butts.

Only two more sleeps!

Edit: on closer look I see one of the John Henry rubs is expired. I do have another bottle in the pantry.
 
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Like flyingron, did a whole pig. Here's a before and after pic,

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Prepping for tomorrow morning. The butts are loaded with rub so they can get all sweaty and sloppy overnight. I peeled the ribs, they get rub in the morning. The turkey looks pretty good, it gets seasoned in the morning, too. My neighbor will be bringing over corned beef sometime soon, I hope, that also goes on in the morning. Most will be finished midday, the butts will go all day. I will toss on a pack of hotdogs for lunch.
 

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Matthew said:
Prepping for tomorrow morning. The butts are loaded with rub so they can get all sweaty and sloppy overnight. I peeled the ribs, they get rub in the morning. The turkey looks pretty good, it gets seasoned in the morning, too. My neighbor will be bringing over corned beef sometime soon, I hope, that also goes on in the morning. Most will be finished midday, the butts will go all day. I will toss on a pack of hotdogs for lunch.
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Have you posted pictures of the smoker? That is quite the capacity seemingly.
 
masloki said:
Have you posted pictures of the smoker? That is quite the capacity seemingly.
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Neighbor needed to change his shorts after seeing the price of corned beef so he picked up a couple of pork tenderloins and a small pork butt.

As far as smoker space: I have 2 Weber smokers “Weber Smokey Mountain”, AKA “bullets”. 18.5” racks, 2 each. So I’ll put my two pork butts on a lower rack, then my neighbor’s butt and tenderloins on the top. On the other smoker the the turkey will go on the bottom and the ribs, standing on edge, will go on top. I’ll figure out the timing logistics later. The turkey will take about 4 hrs, and the ribs might be close to done about then, too. The tenderloins will take about an hour. As things finish I can rearrange the butts.

And there are always cracks that can be filled in with hotdogs, brats, or Italian sausage.

If really need space I can use the team smoker. A couple weekends ago we got 40 (?) slabs of ribs on it.
 
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Getting ready to go in.

Ribs are set and the fires are about 20-30 min away. Just started a pot of coffee that’s very likely to be Irish.

Life is good.
 

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I’ll add a little foil under the ends of the slabs for a little heat protection. Neighbor got a 4lb (half butt) and 2 preseasoned tenderloins. The tenderloins should be done in maybe an hour. They’ll get pulled and the temp probe will get moved to the small butt. I’ll add some lunch hotdogs later.
 

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The other slab looks even better. I can’t get a picture that looks as good as the ribs.

They have a bit of scoliosis from where I had to get them to fit.

Turkey is done, so just waiting on the butts to reach 165 so I can wrap them and finally get cleaned up and take a nap.


Edit:

They came out perfect. The meat pulls cleanly off the bone, not falling off the bone.

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I did a simple cook tonight--butterflied a 2.5 lb pork loin, dusted with a homemade rub inside and out, and spread apple pie filling inside. Closed it up and covered it in a bacon wrap. I cooked it for 3 hours at 225F, using hickory for the smoke wood, sauced it with warm Blues Hog during the last 30 minutes, and pulled it when the internal temp hit 150F.

I threw a few potatoes on the smoker for a slightly smokey side, and sautéed some spinach to go with it. The leftover pie filling went into a ramekin with crushed graham crackers topping it. Mmmm.

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Mmm…

Yesterday’s ribs made a great lunch today.

The darker piece came from an end that had a little too much heat, pretty normal. The other pieces came from the center of the slab and look much prettier.


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No pics. Ribeye and scallops. Grilled peach vinaigrette for the salad, roasted Brussel sprouts & bacon.
 
I packed up the leftovers into vacuum seal bags. Into the freezer and now I don’t have to cook dinner for however many bags I got.
 
Another day, another cook. We're prepping for a cross-country move late this month (I should probably post about that), and I've got a chest freezer full of meat to use up. Prime rib today!

The rub was a paste I made using a Memphis rib dry rub as the base, with a lot of minced garlic, minced fresh rosemary, a bit of dried thyme all mixed with EVOO. This went on a 6.7 lb (choice) prime rib, and an hour later I put it on the smoker at 225F, using hickory wood with a touch of mesquite. It took a little under three hours to get to an internal temp of 130, at which point I moved it to a preheated grill for a quick reverse sear. I pulled it to rest at about 138F.

It turned out great...rare to medium rare, thin layer of bark which was wonderful. We made garlic mashed potatoes and caprese salad as sides. We'll have leftovers for the next two days.

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Air fryer salmon four ways. BBQ sauce on one gets me an entry in this thread.

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asicer said:
Which one was the winner and which one was the loser?
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NO losers but I think the mayo took the prize quite honestly. They were all cooked absolutely perfectly but the mayo with some light herbs/spices was dang tasty. And all were super easy.
 
My neighbor used her Treager yesterday. Apparently she’s had it for several years but hasn’t really used it. She asked me for some tips and ideas, then she jumped in with 3 slabs of baby backs. She brought some samples over today for feedback. I told her, “Whatever your process was, don’t change a thing!” They really were excellent.

I do think that pellet grills burn a little cleaner than other smokers. One criticism I had today was that the smoke flavor was a little mild. It was there, but it just was a little too subtle.

I have a bag of a different brand and flavor mix of pellets I’m going to let her try next time to see what happens.
 
Didn’t think to snap a pic, but ran the gravity smoker up to 450 and did wood fired pizza for the first time on this contraption. It actually turned out really good.

I’m not sure adding the dedicated pizza oven ‘hat’ would significantly change the outcome since I can run the gratel temp up to 700* anyways.

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Momma says she thinks we’re going to stay put in this house for the foreseeable future and we need go do a dedicated outdoor kitchen next year, so the planning gets started soon.

We already have a natural gas stub, so it looks like we’ll put in a NG griddle, grill, sear station, a double burner and a spot for the current smoker and maybe a kamado or kettle.

We’ll see how this evolves.
 
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