Hickory Prime Rib and Beef Ribs with Qview

Demosthenes9 said:

Yeah, we like the edge to edge color and fortunately enough, everyone here like Mid-Rare as well.   For those occassional people wanting Mid thru Well, I put their's in an au jus bath on the stove to bring it up to temp.  I'm careful not to have the au jus boiling, as it changes the texture of the meat and makes it tough. 

Before this cook, I had two theories regarding the edge to edge color.  First one is what you mentioned, cooking in a temp range of 220 to 230 or thereabouts.  The other is that I usually allow my meats to get close to room temperature before putting them on the smoker/grill/oven.   The thought was that if the entire roast was at a uniform temp, then it would cook more evenly, opposed to the outside cooking faster since it was at a higher starting temp.

Pretty sure that this cook shot a hole in that second theory as the IT's of the two probes were under 40 when this Prime went in the Smoker.  Then again, my chamber temps were all over the place (even if I assume one of the probes was faulty) so I have to question the temp range theory as well.

In reality, I'd love to say  "I did XYZ and that is why this PR turned out so great", but it's quite the opposite.  I'm actually kind of surprised and confused as to why it turned out the way that it did.

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Demosthenes9 said:

Bear,

I'd already seen your PR threads and was duly impressed as they all looked great 

Was kind of funny as I was surprised by your cook times to some degree.  Then I realized that you were doing standing ribs where I go without the bone.   Thought here is to sacrifice the "bone in" flavor in favor of better smoke penetration throughout the loin.     I think I might have to reconsider and give a standing rib a try.

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Demosthenes9 said:

Hahah, you remind me of me.   :)   My uncle is a butcher at a local grocery store so I get a heads up when things are going on sale.  He''ll give me a call, tell me what the item is and ask how many I want.    Once, he called and said that someone had ordered too many Boston Butts so they were running a Manager's Special on them for something like 88 cents per pound.  When he asked me how many I wanted, my reply was "As many as you have".

I ended up walking out of the grocery store with 24 of them.    I usually have more than enough freezer space as I have full sized fridges in the kitchen, the basement and the garage, as well as a 20+ cubic ft upright freezer in the garage as well, but this was too much meat even for me.  I had to get on the phone and call some relatives to find freezer space for everything.  

As for the PR's, now I'm going to have to go back and take a closer look and figure out why our cook times are so different.  I pull mine at a slightly lower temp than you do, but that shouldn't account for such a big variance in time.  Regardless of the number of bones, I"ve never had one take more than 3 hours.

Maybe it's a result of cooking at the upper end of the "low and slow" temp range, coupled with pulling at about 127 degrees ?

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