Ribs: Whaddaya think

[twistedcrankcammer]

Up north hear, we do whole hog inside roasters fabricated from old fuel oil furnace tanks.

250 pound hog, fill the rib cage with two turkeys, potatoes, onions, apples and herbs.

Most tender and flavorfull Turkey breast you will ever try.

As for Thermometers, have you used the radio kind that stays in the meat. The temperature the meat attains in the middle, controls how done or dried out it becomes. You set the temperature you want allerted too, and you have a digital read out on your waste that will beep when the meat is the temperature you want it to be inside. They can be had for $30 or less.

Roger

[fini]

You set the temperature you want allerted too, and you have a digital read out on your waste that will beep when the meat is the temperature you want it to be inside.

That sounds a little messy, but I guess it's better than having a waste readout on your digits...

Just messin' with ya, twisted! Yeah, I asked for one of those for Father's Day YEARS ago, but received a thermometer-on-a-fork gizmos instead. Hmm, maybe I should alert my kids...[*-)]

[Tom Adams]

This website has a lot of decent information about not just cooking but smokers & grills: www.amazingribs.com

And if my wife REALLY loved me she'd buy me a smoker from here: www.jambopits.com

And Randall is right about "meat not falling off the bone". That's a big no-no for competition BBQ. The goal is tenderness.

Randall - I love doing the pork thing too, but brisket is a good change-up and challenge. Next time I do a brisket, I'll send ya some.

As for grills.....I'm prejudice as he!! All those guys that cook competition using side mounted firebox, cross-flow smokers can't be all wrong. No doubt all those yuppie green Egg cookers work - just ain't seen them at any serious BBQ joint or restaurant or competition. I'd love to own a serious smoker pit, but my slightly modded Char-Griller does an amazing job. It requires more attention since it doesn't have the heat retention and temperature control that a serious smoker has, but once I "learned it", I've shocked more than a few BBQ experts.

Tom

[Cal Blacksmith]

And Randall is right about "meat not falling off the bone". That's a big no-no for competition BBQ. The goal is tenderness.

Tom

1+ to that, as a KCBS judge, I can tell you that if the meat falls off the bone, the ribs are over cooked. You want to be able to wiggle the bone but not have it fall out or pull free. When taking a bite, the meat should come off the bone cleanly, again tender is what you are after.

[Cal Blacksmith]

This is the smoker I have at home, in the back yard. I had to mod it a bit to get it to perform well and I think the fire box is too small but it is made from a heavy gauge sheet steel (but not heavy steel like our compition rig for sure) that tends to hold the heat fairly well.

SMOKER

I had to add a baffle between the fire box and the smoke chamber as the radiated heat from the fire would over cook the meat next to the fire box and I had extend the chimney down to the level of the grates with a bit of "dryer vent tubing" to get a better smoke on the product but all in all it is a good starting point for true offset smoke cooking

[jwwrs]

Cal,

THIS maybe my next smoker even though I'd have to get of my lazy @ss for a couple of weeks. For anyone who would like more than you want to know about BBQ, this page is a good one to START.

I've got a buddy in Illinois that built one after I showed the plans to him and it was outta sight...after a little bit of a learning curve. You would think anything that large and heavy would be hard to move around, but it was stolen about 6 months after he finished it...then again his nearest neighbor is about 3/4 miles away.

http://www.bbqsmokersite.com/tag/big-baby-smoker/

Anyway, the Big Baby Smoker is the one I want to build and this page has most if not all the info you need. But mainly, click on THE SMOKE RING at the bottom of the page. It will take you to all things BBQ.

http://www.thesmokering.com/

Pig Out, Yall,

Randall

[seti]

Not a smoker but a nice grill. Have you guys ever used a portable kitchen grill?

This will be my next grill.

[fini]

This website has a lot of decent information about not just cooking but smokers & grills: www.amazingribs.com

Thanks, Tom! That looks like a very useful site. I've got it bookmarked. They recommend a gizmo called the Smokinator which is now on my Father's Day list!

[Cal Blacksmith]

Randall, that should work OK, my personal feeling about drums though is that they are too thin to do a good job. You need STEEL and LOTS OF IT so that the rig will be less affected by wind and other weather conditions that tend to cool the smoker.

I have one that I started making, well rather that I have about 75% of the parts to start making, the smoker it's self will be a 5 foot long, 4 foot in dia 1/4" thick steel pipe, the fire box is a 24" dia pipe also 5 feet long. I have not decided on the rack arrangement, weather or not to go with fixed racks or with a rotating set of racks inside the drum.

[jwwrs]

Randall, that should work OK, my personal feeling about drums though is that they are too thin to do a good job. You need STEEL and LOTS OF IT so that the rig will be less affected by wind and other weather conditions that tend to cool the smoker.

I have one that I started making, well rather that I have about 75% of the parts to start making, the smoker it's self will be a 5 foot long, 4 foot in dia 1/4" thick steel pipe, the fire box is a 24" dia pipe also 5 feet long. I have not decided on the rack arrangement, weather or not to go with fixed racks or with a rotating set of racks inside the drum.

This is true, we only used it during the summer. As far as fixed or rotating...if you're even considering the rotating ones, you have far more ambition than I do. Best of luck whichever way you go. And true, you have given me new food for thought. I do smoke in winter. Maybe I need to consider a smoke shack[um]

[Southern]

My favorite smoker for ribs is the Weber Smokey Mountain: http://www.virtualweberbullet.com/tour.html

It is porcelain coated steel and is built very well. Without adding coals I can obtain over a 6 hour burn while maintaining a 250 deg temperature.

I have the older 18 1/2" model and with the vents adjusted I can obtain a rock solid 250 Deg. for the entire 5 1/2 hour burn. For my ribs I use only a dry rub and Jack Daniels wood chips for the smoke.

[Tom Adams]

At a recent BBQ event I was admiring a smoker when a this nice old black man behind me says, "She sho 'nuff can cook as good as she looks" and I said, "Yeah - it sure looks that way. One day I'd like to have something like that. Is it yours?" He said yes and then proceeded to tell me that it wasn't so expensive to make as long as I had some cuttin' torches and knew how to weld. Well.....sadly.....I'm batting zero on both counts. Anyhow.....

He told me that he went to a propane company and asked if he could buy one of their small tanks that they were taking out of service. They sold him one and that became the basis of his smoker. He fab'd a heavy steel plate firebox and welded that on one end, sand blasted the whole thing, and then painted it. Made me wanna run out and buy a MillerMatic welder and a torch.

Tom

[rplace]

I took a quick look through all the posts and did not see one mention of a Big Green Egg. Simply cannot be beat for minimal fuel usage, ease of use and quality of product produced. I will never own a metal smoker again. Bonus that it can get to 700 degrees to make a fine grill for burgers and steaks. Will last two lifetimes too, not rust out like so many others do.

Google BGE and head to the store this weekend.[]

[Southern]

I took a quick look through all the posts and did not see one mention of a Big Green Egg. Simply cannot be beat for minimal fuel usage, ease of use and quality of product produced. I will never own a metal smoker again. Bonus that it can get to 700 degrees to make a fine grill for burgers and steaks. Will last two lifetimes too, not rust out like so many others do.

The two downsides of the Big Green Egg are the price and limited space for food.

Edit: I see that they have a new XL model with a 24" cooking grid, damn at over 200 lbs it won't walk away.

[thebigonion]

Texas Smoker in Uvalde makes excellent smokers. I have the 20" grill w/ firebox.

http://texassmoker.org/

They are made by the fabricator who used to make Lyfe Tyme smokers. They are pretty much identical to the Lyfe Tyme smokers but cost way less.

http://www.trampolinesales.com/bbqsmokers.shtml

[rplace]

The two downsides of the Big Green Egg are the price and limited space for food.

Typical of what you hear from most that have not tried one, perhaps you have.

First as to pirce, like many things in life you get what you pay for. $600 over 20+ years of the best food you have every eaten and just about zero maintenance is pretty darn cheap in my book. I have a Ducane gas grill that was more than that and after only three seasons one of the burners broke spewing a huge flame from that area all the time. Knobs, hoses, grates, burners have all failed on every gas girll I have owned. Ceramic smokers are well built and last forever. I know a few people that have had barrel and bullet smokers replacing them every few years due to rusting out AND when they smoke for 12+ hours at a time they are constantly opening it up to refuel the darn things. With the thick ceramic on these types (BGE/Kamado/Primo/Komado, etc) you can easily go 20 hours with a set it and forget it simplicity.

As for space, I had my doubts about the girlling space but opted for the large as the XL seemed overkill and many I knew had the Large and were more then happy with it. How big is the army you are feeding? This past weekend I smoked two pork shoulders totaling 14 pounds along with one rack of spare ribs and two racks of baby backs. You can easily do 6-8 steaks or 10-12 burgers at a time. I think when I have done ribs only it has been about 7-8 full racks at a time. Three whole chickens are no problem and every year at thanksgiving I do a 20-ish pound turkey with room for a few fatties. Mmmmmm fatties![H] Check out some of the models from Primo if you need more surface.

A huge part of the success is that the design have been around for over 300 years. I don't think the pig shaped tow behind your pick-up versions can make that claim.[] IIRC BGE will take them back if you are not happy with them. Now you want to worry about price check these crazy things out and the BGE will seam like a gift. I want one of these when I grow up. http://www.kamado.com/spring_sale.htm

[Southern]

Typical of what you hear from most that have not tried one, perhaps you have.

First as to pirce, like many things in life you get what you pay for. $600 over 20+ years of the best food you have every eaten and just about zero maintenance is pretty darn cheap in my book.

I stand corrected again. When I was pricing the Big Green Egg several years ago they were over $1000, The price must have come down within the last year or two. At $600 I consider that a bargin. Now you got me thinking about getting a Big Green Egg.

I have a Ducane gas grill that was more than that
and after only three seasons one of the burners broke spewing a huge
flame from that area all the time. Knobs, hoses, grates, burners have
all failed on every gas girll I have owned.

My Weber smokey mountain is built with porcelin coated steel and as with other Weber products, the hardware is heavy duty.With 2 full chimany starters full of charcoal, I can get over a 6 hour burn without re-fueling.

How big is the army you are feeding? This past
weekend I smoked two pork shoulders totaling 14 pounds along with one
rack of spare ribs and two racks of baby backs. You can easily do 6-8
steaks or 10-12 burgers at a time. I think when I have done ribs only
it has been about 7-8 full racks at a time.

I usually smoke 6 full racks of ribs at a time. With dual 18 1/2" racks I have room left over. Due you have stacking grates to get that much food in your Big Green Egg?

[oldtimer]

Are green eggs allowed at bbq cook-offs?

[fini]

I'm still in bargain mode, and having a Webber, I think the Smokinator is a good deal. I was at the junk yard (Bataeff Salvage in Santa Rosa, CA, the ultimate man "store" ), looking around for a hunk of bent stainless to make my own. Of course not having regular employment weighs heavily on my bbq decisions...*

*I'd gladly purchase a Big Green Egg if someone offered me a suitable job...32 years as a carpenter, BA in art, bad back, good heart, slightly* sick mind...

*definition debatable

[jwwrs]

Are green eggs allowed at bbq cook-offs?

Oldtimer,

If it is fired by charcoal, wood, or horsechips, it's allowed. I know electric is not allowed and I don't know if gas is. I will defer to Cal on this one since he is a KCBS judge.

Randall