- May 10, 2017
- 17
- 18
It was bright and sunny in Santa Fe NM when I woke up and I congratulated myself on picking the RIGHT DAY to do my very first cook on my brand new Yoder YS640. I figured I would keep it simple and get used to my new cooker by experimenting with a few racks of baby backs. I dry-brined them with Kosher salt for two hours and then applied a "please everyone" rub (based on Meathead's Memphis Dust recipe, with a few personal tweaks). Naturally, by the time these babies had been cooking for 90 mins (second pic), we had 60 mph winds, storm clouds, and the beginnings of rain.
Anyone else experience weather jinx? I have a record of all my cooks dating back to 2006. In a whopping 72% the weather turns bad. If I cook brisket, snow is virtually inevitable!
I'll post the end results of today's "Stormy Ribs' in due course!
I added eggplants and apples to my cook - the smoked eggplant makes awesome baba ganoush. Here's how everything looked after 3.5 hours.
And finally, some good eating!
How it went:
I cooked at 225 all the way, using the BBQ Delight Hickory pellets that came with the smoker. It took an hour longer than I was used to - (mostly ribs on my WSM were ready at 5 hours, using Wicked Good lump). On the YS640 at 5 hours the meat temp - best estimate using Thermopen and tong-test - was 180 degrees. I decided to wrap as I needed to serve in an hour's time and they had to get perfectly cooked by then.
At 6 hours they were ready - came cleanly away from the bone at a slight tug, fat fully rendered, and some really tasty great-color bark. At 3.5 hours, I had swapped them around because the chamber temp was a little different left-to-right (probably had the damper set wrong - some learning to do in that department!) - this was a good move. One rack would have been cooked before the others if I had not done that.
Flavorwise, I deliberately made my rub mild, so I could assess the pellet smoke flavor and see how the meat tasted without a lot of spice or heat. The result was a very smooth flavor. The smoke was present and definite, but did not overtake the pork - really nice flavor balance, although I can see how some folk would prefer a heavier smoke presence on ribs. I'm going to use CookinPellets Perfect Mix for my next cook to compare.
My take-home, in addition to a fine meal, is that I now know how much heat to add to my rub to get a nice kick in the back end without overpowering the "baseline" smoke and pork flavor the YS640 produces. One big difference I noticed between these ribs and my typical WSM cook is that the YS640 ribs were not as greasy - the fat was fully rendered but didn't saturate the meat as much, overall. I use mostly the same ribs for my cooks (Sprouts 3 rack vacu-pack, usually around $2.99 per pound). These can be greasy, but the YS640 made them taste like the more pricey ribs I sometimes buy from Wholefoods.
For a first cook, I learned a lot and was really pleased with the results!
Anyone else experience weather jinx? I have a record of all my cooks dating back to 2006. In a whopping 72% the weather turns bad. If I cook brisket, snow is virtually inevitable!
I'll post the end results of today's "Stormy Ribs' in due course!
I added eggplants and apples to my cook - the smoked eggplant makes awesome baba ganoush. Here's how everything looked after 3.5 hours.
And finally, some good eating!
How it went:
I cooked at 225 all the way, using the BBQ Delight Hickory pellets that came with the smoker. It took an hour longer than I was used to - (mostly ribs on my WSM were ready at 5 hours, using Wicked Good lump). On the YS640 at 5 hours the meat temp - best estimate using Thermopen and tong-test - was 180 degrees. I decided to wrap as I needed to serve in an hour's time and they had to get perfectly cooked by then.
At 6 hours they were ready - came cleanly away from the bone at a slight tug, fat fully rendered, and some really tasty great-color bark. At 3.5 hours, I had swapped them around because the chamber temp was a little different left-to-right (probably had the damper set wrong - some learning to do in that department!) - this was a good move. One rack would have been cooked before the others if I had not done that.
Flavorwise, I deliberately made my rub mild, so I could assess the pellet smoke flavor and see how the meat tasted without a lot of spice or heat. The result was a very smooth flavor. The smoke was present and definite, but did not overtake the pork - really nice flavor balance, although I can see how some folk would prefer a heavier smoke presence on ribs. I'm going to use CookinPellets Perfect Mix for my next cook to compare.
My take-home, in addition to a fine meal, is that I now know how much heat to add to my rub to get a nice kick in the back end without overpowering the "baseline" smoke and pork flavor the YS640 produces. One big difference I noticed between these ribs and my typical WSM cook is that the YS640 ribs were not as greasy - the fat was fully rendered but didn't saturate the meat as much, overall. I use mostly the same ribs for my cooks (Sprouts 3 rack vacu-pack, usually around $2.99 per pound). These can be greasy, but the YS640 made them taste like the more pricey ribs I sometimes buy from Wholefoods.
For a first cook, I learned a lot and was really pleased with the results!
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