BBQ / Smoking

timmeh

timmeh

timmeh

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Joined
20 May 2010
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Englishman in the USA
I've recently got a Kamado style grill (Char-griller Akorn) and fired it up for the first time at the weekend. It holds it's temperature perfectly for a full cook with very little adjustment even when it was 0c outside.

I decided to smoke an 8lb pork shoulder last weekend, it took between 8-10 hours @ 250F until the internal temp was 195F.

I used lumpwood charcoal with some hickory chunks mixed in. I didn't bother soaking the chunks, they don't really need it.

I probably needed to use some more rub and I should have put some yellow (American) mustard on first to help the rub stick but I'm pretty happy with how it turned out!

Pics:
pork-before.jpg

pork-after.jpg

pork-shredded.jpg

Has anyone here tried smoking any bbq before? Got any tips?

I'm going to try some ribs and creole turkey this weekend.
 
That looks really good - very nice bark :)

There's a yearly BBQ thread though so far this year we haven't had one:

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18593446

Looks like you've picked up a decent quality BBQ there too. I've used various ProQ drum smokers and more recently a Traeger Junior Elite pellet smoker. Despite what purists like to say, pellet smoking is pretty awesome.

Going even further from the traditionalist way of BBQing I'm experimenting more and more with combining sous vide with BBQ. So far the results have been excellent :)

Is there anything you're struggling with or have a particular question about? There are several knowledgeable people that post on here fairly regularly.
 
I hear the Pitt Cue Co recipe book is pretty good, it's very well reviewed on Amazon, I haven't had a chance to get a copy myself but it's on the list :)
 
Rich_L said:
I hear the Pitt Cue Co recipe book is pretty good, it's very well reviewed on Amazon, I haven't had a chance to get a copy myself but it's on the list :)
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It's pretty awesome though mainly for the spice/rub blends. In regards to cooking methods and such I think you can learn more online (though it's certainly not as easy to work through all the slightly dodgy information that's online versus the fairly good stuff you get in the book).
 
FrenchTart said:
That looks really good - very nice bark :)

There's a yearly BBQ thread though so far this year we haven't had one:

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18593446

Looks like you've picked up a decent quality BBQ there too. I've used various ProQ drum smokers and more recently a Traeger Junior Elite pellet smoker. Despite what purists like to say, pellet smoking is pretty awesome.

Going even further from the traditionalist way of BBQing I'm experimenting more and more with combining sous vide with BBQ. So far the results have been excellent :)

Is there anything you're struggling with or have a particular question about? There are several knowledgeable people that post on here fairly regularly.
Click to expand...

Thanks :)

I'll have a read through that thread and keep an eye out for this years!

Sous vide - a quick google says that cook times are up to 96hours, is that right?

I was mainly looking for any sort of cooking tips, prep tips, good places to get recipes, any good tried and tested recipes, etc.

Jolteh said:
That's a nice barbecue. Looks the same style as the Green Egg, but not as extortionately expensive?
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Yeah, this one isn't ceramic like the Egg but performs almost as good as considering the price difference.

Rich_L said:
I hear the Pitt Cue Co recipe book is pretty good, it's very well reviewed on Amazon, I haven't had a chance to get a copy myself but it's on the list :)
Click to expand...
I'll check that out!
 
timmeh said:
Thanks :)

I'll have a read through that thread and keep an eye out for this years!

Sous vide - a quick google says that cook times are up to 96hours, is that right?

I was mainly looking for any sort of cooking tips, prep tips, good places to get recipes, any good tried and tested recipes, etc.
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Yeah..with a sous vide pre-cook you'll often do something like 48 hours at ~60C and then finish the meat on the BBQ. There are other approaches/orders to do things in but they all often involve 12-96 hours (depending on the meat and result you're after). This isn't as bad as it sounds as when you sous vide something you basically leave it unattended in water bath/electrically heated place for the long cooking period. One of the advantages is that you can cook certain tough bits of meat to rare/medium-rare and still have them super tender. Alternatively you can make pulled pork require a lot less time with you monitoring the BBQ. Either way it is possible to end up with meat that retains more moisture as long as you learn your way around the foibles of sous vide cooking :)
 
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There are a number of us here that are into BBQ smoking, me included :) Last year I had a few goes, I did an amazing pork shoulder for 14 hours at 225F in my ProQ Excel. I'm looking forward to even more this year.

I have the following books:

Slow Fire by Ray "Dr BBQ" Lampe
Smoking Meat by Jeff Phillips
BBQ Bible by Steven Raichlen (both the normal and the sauces, rubs etc book)

All are excellent books, they go into detail about the art of smoking and have some really great recipes for rubs and also the various recipes for the meat you'll be smoking. The Slow Fire book also has some amazing side dishes toward the back.

Also, as Glaucus says, the TV show Primal Grill is awesome. It's presented by Steven Raichlen and is shown on UKTV.

As for web resources, sign up at www.bbbqs.com. It's the British BBQ Society website and the forum there is one of the best resources around. Various smokers from the US BBQ circuit post there (Ray "Dr BBQ" Lampe and Harry Soo to name a few). www.amazingribs.com is also fantastic. Meathead really knows the mechanics of smoking and BBQ and has some very interesting articles up on that site, as well as recipes and methods for all sorts of food. For interesting ideas, have a look at Harry Soo's site, http://www.slapyodaddybbq.com/. There are some amazing recipes there, from the simple to the complex. His bacon wrapped mozzarella recipe is definitely something I'll be doing this year! (http://www.slapyodaddybbq.com/2014/05/bacon-wrapped-pineapple-mozzarella-rings-2/)

Finally, for YouTube channels, I personally love the BBQ Pit Boys just for their hilarious videos. Glaucus has already mentioned them, they're BarbecueWeb.

That should be a good start on your journey to smoking meat. It's an amazing way to cook food, especially on a lazy weekend! There's nothing better than having some friends around and having a lovely pork shoulder smoking away with little to no input from yourself. You can just kick back and enjoy the beers and sunshine! Assuming we get a summer this year like last year, I'm gonna be smoking every weekend to make the most of it!
 
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As for smoking a pork shoulder, the cut of meat is particularly important as you want to get the one that the Americans call pork butt. a lot of the time the pork shoulder that you buy here in the UK isn't usually right unless you specifically ask for the right cut. I watched a YouTube video where a professional US smoker was showing a UK butcher the exact part to cut. I then asked for this at my local butcher, and I told him that it was the shoulder, neck end, bone in and he got me the right piece.

For the rub, I haven't ever applied mustard to any meat before I've put a dry rub on, but I have put the rub on at least the night before, if not a bit longer, and left it to sit in the fridge. At least an hour before smoking, I then take the meat out and let it come up to room temperature. If the rub has sugar in it, that should break down and cause the rest of the rub to stick to the meat anyway.

If you're doing ribs, try the 3-2-1 method. It is apparently one of the best for smoking. You can find an example of it at http://www.smoking-meat.com/smoked-rib-recipe.

Happy smoking!
 
Thanks Glaucus and Chokka! I watched a few of the bbqwithfranklin videos last night, they're pretty good.

I'm out in Tennessee now so I feel I have to learn how to BBQ properly otherwise I'll just get laughed at! :p

I've been looking forward to getting the bbq going all week, in fact I'm trying to think of something that I can throw on tonight and have done in a few hours.

I've got a 3 day weekend and the house to myself, I think the BBQ is going to be going non-stop :D
 
I love ribs, always have them in the freezer, however I can not find decent sized ribs. Dona't matter where I buy them, not big enough and not meaty enough. Was thinking if trying these, but it means buying 10kilos worth, which isn't a huge problem unless they are rubbish. Anyone had these or know somewhere else to get big ribs. Also I don't relay like buying foreign meat due to welfare.

http://www.meatpacks.co.uk/Pork/FribinMeatyBellyRibs
 
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Even places like Tesco have larger ribs but you'll need to ask at the counter for a rack of uncut spare ribs. Obviously the meat quality isn't the best though.
 
FrenchTart said:
Even places like Tesco have larger ribs but you'll need to ask at the counter for a rack of uncut spare ribs. Obviously the meat quality isn't the best though.
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These aren't big. I mean proper American style massive ribs. The ones in the link say they are 2kilos a rack. Where generally you see between 600g-1k pretty much everywhere in uk.
 
Glaucus said:
These aren't big. I mean proper American style massive ribs. The ones in the link say they are 2kilos a rack. Where generally you see between 600g-1k pretty much everywhere in uk.
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I've had a full rack of decent sized ribs from the butcher before and they weren't substantially larger than the ones I managed to get from behind the counter at Tesco. Perhaps they just happened to have larger ribs in that day though.
 
My local tesco (extra) sell whole racks of spares which are huge. Still have some of the belly attached biggest ones I've bought were around 1.7-2kg.

I trim them down to a St. Louis style cut and cook the rib tips for myself!
 
Beef rib, pork rib and pork shoulder on the smoker. Sous-vided first so I'm really interested to see how it all turns out. The jus from the beef ribs tastes amazing.
 
Just tried a bit of the beef rib. It's very different to the times I've just smoked it all the way through but very nice. Once it's finished I'll be adding the jus to make it a little more moist (issue with trimming it as much as I have is that there's very little connective tissue to brake down to provide collagen). Verdict is still out on it :p

Pork ribs have been marinaded which is currently setting. Pulled pork is just smoking away. Random bits of chicken peri confit seem to be doing nicely too.

Moses said:
I can get a big barrel/drum for free. It'd be completely unused, so clean, etc. What should I do with it? Googling 'oil drum cold smoker'/'oil drum smoker'/'oil drum BBQ'/etc brings up a range of things, as you'd expect.

I guess given I can sous vide stuff, I want something that'll give me the absolutely best results from ribs/brisket/whatever. But I also like the idea of cold smoking stuff in general. Has anyone seen any interesting projects/tried anything like this themselves?
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A UDS will give you great results but building one is a lot of work. Given that you can sous vide first if you have a half-decent (i.e. big) kettle BBQ I'd consider just using that to do the finishing smoke using the two-zone method.

edit: I think there's a good guide for building a UDS on Amazing Ribs. Have a look around that site. For cold smoking I'd get a ProQ Cold Smoke Generator or the A-Maze-N. You can use these with the UDS, a kettle BBQ or even just a cardboard box.
 
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