***** Official 2015 BBQ Thread - Sun is out, time to broil!! *****

D.P. said:

Pulled pork was really the best pulled pork I ever had.mi am hopefully for this ribs. Been going 6 hours now but I think they need another hour. . I know you aren't supposed to cook them until the bones fall out but the St. Louis ribs I get from costco always seem to have a load of the rib tips/cartilage which is nasty to chomp down on so I won't the meat easily separated from the cartilage. I always thought St. Louis had the cartridge removed and ribs with it in place were called spare ribs. Maybe Costco is lazy.

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I also thought this but i bought a St Louis cut of ribs recently and they had all of the cartilage in too, same as the spare ribs I made before.

That smoker looks pretty neat. I'd like to try one out to see how it compares to doing things on my grill. I know absolutely nothing about them, however.

My weekend involved a lot of bacon. Made a 4lb bacon wrapped pork loin, stuffed with cream cheese and jalapenos, and also some 'dragon claws'. They were Anaheim peppers stuffed with ground turkey and sausage meat, all wrapped in bacon.

The pork loin took about 3 hours @ ~300F and the peppers took about 1hr.

My 1st try on the new Cobb. 6 hour brisket. Check out my 1st pink ring!

Brisket is what i want to try next, maybe this weekend.

I've done two briskets in my Bradley and I have to say they turned out stunning. Both were about 7lb and took about 10 - 12 hours. One was smoked using Jim Beam bisquettes and the second using Hickory bisquettes.

I've placed the Bradley in the garage and have installed some ducting and an extractor, no matter what the weather is I'm able to smoke.

did a 10 hours brisket and 5 hour ribs last weekend first time i have done a proper long smoke, the brisket was better by far sooo nice

going to stick the BBQ on in a bit, bbq chicken drumsticks, chorizo whirls, chinese pork steak and bbq pork steak, jacket spud n salad nomnom

Guys, I need help. I just can't get it up.

Got my first charcoal BBQ today, don't have a chimney starter and I've gone through almost a packet of firelighters trying to get the BBQ going. Help!

Absolute bargain on the Barbie though. Weber Compact 47cm, a bag of long lasting Briquettes, tongues, fork, temp probe, tool holder, t-brush. £42. Homebase are selling their gear off cheap.

briquettes are a bugger to get going, try lumpwood next time

Only bought it because it was £3 for the bag (Weber Long Lasting). Seemed a bargain for what I assumed was good stuff. Wishing I'd bought instant lighting stuff now. Ah well, live and learn. Will try again in the week.

Not a help now but a chimney starter will.make them easy to get going.

Yeah, already ordered one.

Turns out they did light. I was just being impatient and expected flames. Returned half an hour later to grey briquettes and an orange glow emanating from underneath. I'd just finished cooking my dinner inside

Had my annual 'epic' BBQ yesterday which was fun - and a bit stressful!

Like last year I decided to do a lot of advanced meat prep to make life easier. Meat was ordered in the weekend before and everything was equilibrium brined in vac bags to give me control on when things were ready. Here's a breakdown of what I did

BBQ Pork ribs:


I did two rounds of these - full racks of belly ribs. The first batch were probably the best I've done so far, and the best ribs I've ever tasted.

I first equilibrium brined them for 3 days (salt plus spices) and then cooked them sous vide for 48hrs @60C. Combined with the brining, this gives them that perfect firmness - pulling off the bone rather than falling. My smoker was running at 70C so I finished them off on there with a coating of rub to give them the bark. I don't think they really missed the higher temperature you normally put ribs under as these were 'dry' ribs.

Beef Short ribs:


I've had issues before with short ribs as they have come out dry when cooking sous vide. These came out just as I wanted this year - the picture probably doesn't do them justice but they had a beautiful texture.

Like the pork ribs they were equilibrium brined and then cooked sous-vide for 72hrs @62C. I also took the cooking juice from all the vac bags and reduced it down, mixed in with some BBQ sauce and basted the ribs in it. Again with the smoker set low I could leave them on for several hours with a rub to get a nice bark.

Beef featherblade:


I was a bit unsure of how this would go - I have cooked featherblade a few times but not tried sous vide and ended up doing it exactly like the short ribs and it turned out brilliantly. The gelatinous strip in the middle became soft enough but the outside retained it's moisture

Pork butt & belly

Don't have a pic, but this was brined/cooked for 36hrs @62C. I was hoping to do 'pulled' pork but with the brining the texture doesn't really work. It does however still taste damn good!

Oven fried chicken wings with Korean sauce

No pic, these were done using the serious eats recipe, coating the wings in sodium carbonate/salt and leaving in the fridge overnight before roasting. I then coated them in the modernist cuisine @home korean wing sauce which is gojuchang based - spicy but really good!

For sides, I did the modernist cuisine mac & cheese, chef steps' pressure cooker baked beans, green slaw and I also made the chef steps brioche burger buns:


The buns were a lot of work with the long proving and having to rest the dough to get it cold enough to work with, but the results were pretty amazing

^^ looks ok if you like that kinda thing i suppose









looks great

Those beef ribs Utterly amazing looking.

(edit: It all looks great too but those are something else, especially interesting due to the sous-vide then smoke method)

Actually, what was the salt percentage (and sugar/other spices) with your EQ brine? I'm guessing you also used some pink #1? Did you just then cook it the bag with the brine or rinse it all off before vacuum sealing and cooking?

FrenchTart said:

Actually, what was the salt percentage (and sugar/other spices) with your EQ brine? I'm guessing you also used some pink #1? Did you just then cook it the bag with the brine or rinse it all off before vacuum sealing and cooking?

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I went for around 1-1.25% in the brine, can't remember the exact figure but I was fairly conservative - didn't use any curing salts, I don't think it's really needed unless you're going for a really long brine. After the brining I re-bagged/wiped off excess and rebagged before cooking

I just remembered I didn't mention the Galician fore rib I did as well

Fair enough /re the curing salts. I think I'd prefer to avoid them in this kind of cooking based on the experiences I've had with them changing the texture (though that could be just be more due to a longer cure and/or higher salt percentage). Did you factor in the bone weight with your EQ cure too? Apologies for all the questions. My experiences with combining sous-vide and BBQ haven't gone that well previously so your pictures have really intrigued me

The fore rib also sounds very interesting...

FrenchTart said:

Fair enough /re the curing salts. I think I'd prefer to avoid them in this kind of cooking based on the experiences I've had with them changing the texture (though that could be just be more due to a longer cure and/or higher salt percentage). Did you factor in the bone weight with your EQ cure too? Apologies for all the questions. My experiences with combining sous-vide and BBQ haven't gone that well previously so your pictures have really intrigued me

The fore rib also sounds very interesting...

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I did factor in bone weight but only roughly which is why I went conservative with numbers. I ended up with pork seasoned perfectly and beef slightly under but not the end of the world!

I don't think many people do sous vide + smoking as it seems there's a belief that you cant get a bark/proper smoke - you definitely can but you still need 3-4 hours of smoking and you need a smoker that can do low temperatures

Makes sense

Luckily I have access to a pellet smoker that can smoke at around 60-70C so I can give your technique a go. The ribs I absolutely have to try

edit: I think a lot of people are dismissive of sous-vide + smoke due to being traditionalists too. My personal believe is that if you can achieve the result you want then utilising different (and potentially easier) techniques is absolutely the way to go.