I want to try and break this down step by step so this might be a longer post with pictures etc.
First the back story. I decided to run to BJ's on Father's Day to grab some ribs to smoke on my recently picked up off marketplace OKJ Highland, I wanted to give it a first smoke run. While I was at BJ's I happened to see this Nexgrill 790 Pellet smoker that was $150 off and came in at $349! The floor sample felt really sturdy and well built. Being Father's Day and all I hulked up ignored the team lift warning on the box and threw that thing on a flat bed and proceeded to go grab my ribs. I said to myself, we are going to have a good ole fashion showdown! I knew from all my research that to make the Highland do long smokes would be a very hard thing to accomplish and with the summer coming and 3 little kids I want to have days where I can throw on some food, go off and comeback later and have respectable smoked meat. Other days I want to sit by my smoker, play with fire and come into the house smelling like I just burnt the neighborhood down! This is how I justified it to the wife anyhow!
The Prep:
I took both racks out of the cryovac, patted them down, ripped the skin off the back side. I hit them with some mustard binder and used the same Chargriller Rib rub that they sent me as a free gift when I bought my Akorn.
I wanted to keep both racks similarly seasoned to not skew the taste results at the end.
The Smoke:
So now that I had my ribs all ready to go I needed to go setup my equipment to smoke said ribs. My plan was to smoke each rack at 250 degrees, no foil for as long as needed. I started with the Nexgrill 790. I set the temp to 250, filled the hopper with Pitt Boss Competition blend pellets and I was done. All I needed to do was wait for it to dial in and I could set my ribs and go.
The OKJ Highland was a much different story. Get out the chimeny, light up a bunch of lump coal, waited 10 min for that to heat up dumped into the fire box with a split of cherry wood, once that was going well and seemed nice and hot I dropped on another split to keep it going...and then another split.. It took me about 45 minutes to get the fire to a good place where I felt the smoke wasn't dirty smoke. I had a temp prob at the grate and of course the lid thermometer. This is where my problems started. The lid thermometer would read 400 and the grate probe 200-225. It took a lot of fiddling around but after about 1 hour I felt 225 was as steady as I could get and it was getting late so I wanted to get the ribs on so I set both racks into each piece of equipment and we were off!
Within 15 min, my Thermo pro was beeping the alarm to let me know the grate tmep dropped below 205. Grab more wood threw it on but it wasn't lighting up well. I then needed to get out my propane torch and every split I put on going forward I hit with that to get it going. I had no room in the firebox to put pieces to preheat them. I used a piece to prop open the firebox door some, this helped get more airflow to keep the fire hotter. I had the pipe stack flap wide open and the side door wide open as well. I knew right away I needed maybe a baffle plate mod or something to get the exhaust to grate level and maybe some firebrick to insulate the firebox.
So at the 1 hour cook mark for each of these ribs this is what we were looking like:
This was the Nexgrill 790 ribs
This was the OKJ Highland ribs.
Not much difference look wise after 1 hour. The biggest issue as I mentioned above was battling the fluctuating temps of the OKJ throughout this entire cook. it would go from 225 drop down under 200 and when I put on more wood sometimes I could get it to hold 225-250 but at times it would jump up to 275-290. I tried to keep my logs cut to a similar size so that I could try and hope adding one would give me a similar temp result, it just didn't seem to work that way. I never got dirty smoke, so that was a plus it just with temps not holding steady, I don;t have to tell anyone here what that does.
When all was said and done I got to about 6 hours of total cook time on both sets of ribs. The last 25 min on each set I put a thin layer of some BBQ sauce. I didn;t want to lay it on thick and skew any taste results but I wanted a little sticky on my ribs at the end. The NextGrill 790 ribs were done at 250 and it stayed pretty consistent throughout the cook going from 245-255. The OKJ welp you read above how that went. So here is the final result of what they looked liked when I pulled them:
Can you tell which rack of ribs came off of which smoker????
.
.
.
.
The top rack was the Nexgrill 790 pellet grill. The bottom rack was the OKJ Highland. I have to say the eye test both looked pretty good to me and I was excited to eat! Just at this time my good buddy happened to stop by and brought me a case of beer and a Lobster Roll for Father's day! (what a good dude!) I couldn't not offer the man some ribs, so I sat him down and he got to be my blind taste tester...along with my wife and kids!
Before I get to what they said here is a pic of each cut into and the smoke ring and look:
This is the OKJ Rib I cut from the center of the rack
This is what the Nexgrill rib looked like:
I am no expert but I thought that the OKJ def looked like it had a better smoke ring but I didn't think either one looked bad at all. I was quite impressed with the Nexgrill result as I heard all about how pellet grills get little to no smoke, it looked the part but what about taste?
Before I tasted each rib I did comment about how the OKJ rack actually looked to be a better rack of ribs, I felt the Nexgrill rack was skimpy and thin for Baby Back ribs and I guess with a 2 pack cryovac thems the breaks.
That being said I bit into the Nexgrill Rib and it had a nice smoke flavor! Good bite not fall of the bone mess, a good solid bite and chew! The entire bone was cleaned in a milisecond. It was a damn good rib!
I had to drink down a few slugs of my beer to cleanse my pallet before I dove into the OKJ rib. On first bite, boom! Smoke explosion, you def got a much heavier hit of smoke flavor. Not bad smoke, which I was gearing up for with all the temp problems and fluctuations, it was just a thicker more pronounced smokey flavor. The rib itself while juicy and packed with flavor felt tougher to bite into and pull off the bone. The best way I can describe it is that I had to fight more to get that meat off the bone compared to the Nexgrill rack but still it tasted great. If I knew nothing and blindly tasted I would have said the OKJ ribs needed about another hour or so and they would have really been perfect bite and pull.
My blind taste testers all couldn't stop eating and we all killed off both racks. Everyone chose the Nexgrill Ribs as their favorite for the exact same reason stating that it just felt more tender and had an easier bite but that the OKJ ribs really packed in the smoke flavor and juicyness, it just was a bit too firm of a bite, still delicious by all accounts.
So this was a great matchup! I had a great Father's Day doing this while the Nexgrill took the win in this first battle, I feel with a few mods and some more experience on my part the OKJ is going to comeback for a rematch!
Hope everyone enjoyed the read and I'd love to hear any comments, suggestions or feedback below! I look forward to doing more showdowns in the future so I cna have an excuse to drink beer and eat smoked meats!
First the back story. I decided to run to BJ's on Father's Day to grab some ribs to smoke on my recently picked up off marketplace OKJ Highland, I wanted to give it a first smoke run. While I was at BJ's I happened to see this Nexgrill 790 Pellet smoker that was $150 off and came in at $349! The floor sample felt really sturdy and well built. Being Father's Day and all I hulked up ignored the team lift warning on the box and threw that thing on a flat bed and proceeded to go grab my ribs. I said to myself, we are going to have a good ole fashion showdown! I knew from all my research that to make the Highland do long smokes would be a very hard thing to accomplish and with the summer coming and 3 little kids I want to have days where I can throw on some food, go off and comeback later and have respectable smoked meat. Other days I want to sit by my smoker, play with fire and come into the house smelling like I just burnt the neighborhood down! This is how I justified it to the wife anyhow!
The Prep:
I took both racks out of the cryovac, patted them down, ripped the skin off the back side. I hit them with some mustard binder and used the same Chargriller Rib rub that they sent me as a free gift when I bought my Akorn.
I wanted to keep both racks similarly seasoned to not skew the taste results at the end.
The Smoke:
So now that I had my ribs all ready to go I needed to go setup my equipment to smoke said ribs. My plan was to smoke each rack at 250 degrees, no foil for as long as needed. I started with the Nexgrill 790. I set the temp to 250, filled the hopper with Pitt Boss Competition blend pellets and I was done. All I needed to do was wait for it to dial in and I could set my ribs and go.
The OKJ Highland was a much different story. Get out the chimeny, light up a bunch of lump coal, waited 10 min for that to heat up dumped into the fire box with a split of cherry wood, once that was going well and seemed nice and hot I dropped on another split to keep it going...and then another split.. It took me about 45 minutes to get the fire to a good place where I felt the smoke wasn't dirty smoke. I had a temp prob at the grate and of course the lid thermometer. This is where my problems started. The lid thermometer would read 400 and the grate probe 200-225. It took a lot of fiddling around but after about 1 hour I felt 225 was as steady as I could get and it was getting late so I wanted to get the ribs on so I set both racks into each piece of equipment and we were off!
Within 15 min, my Thermo pro was beeping the alarm to let me know the grate tmep dropped below 205. Grab more wood threw it on but it wasn't lighting up well. I then needed to get out my propane torch and every split I put on going forward I hit with that to get it going. I had no room in the firebox to put pieces to preheat them. I used a piece to prop open the firebox door some, this helped get more airflow to keep the fire hotter. I had the pipe stack flap wide open and the side door wide open as well. I knew right away I needed maybe a baffle plate mod or something to get the exhaust to grate level and maybe some firebrick to insulate the firebox.
So at the 1 hour cook mark for each of these ribs this is what we were looking like:
This was the Nexgrill 790 ribs
This was the OKJ Highland ribs.
Not much difference look wise after 1 hour. The biggest issue as I mentioned above was battling the fluctuating temps of the OKJ throughout this entire cook. it would go from 225 drop down under 200 and when I put on more wood sometimes I could get it to hold 225-250 but at times it would jump up to 275-290. I tried to keep my logs cut to a similar size so that I could try and hope adding one would give me a similar temp result, it just didn't seem to work that way. I never got dirty smoke, so that was a plus it just with temps not holding steady, I don;t have to tell anyone here what that does.
When all was said and done I got to about 6 hours of total cook time on both sets of ribs. The last 25 min on each set I put a thin layer of some BBQ sauce. I didn;t want to lay it on thick and skew any taste results but I wanted a little sticky on my ribs at the end. The NextGrill 790 ribs were done at 250 and it stayed pretty consistent throughout the cook going from 245-255. The OKJ welp you read above how that went. So here is the final result of what they looked liked when I pulled them:
Can you tell which rack of ribs came off of which smoker????
.
.
.
.
The top rack was the Nexgrill 790 pellet grill. The bottom rack was the OKJ Highland. I have to say the eye test both looked pretty good to me and I was excited to eat! Just at this time my good buddy happened to stop by and brought me a case of beer and a Lobster Roll for Father's day! (what a good dude!) I couldn't not offer the man some ribs, so I sat him down and he got to be my blind taste tester...along with my wife and kids!
Before I get to what they said here is a pic of each cut into and the smoke ring and look:
This is the OKJ Rib I cut from the center of the rack
This is what the Nexgrill rib looked like:
I am no expert but I thought that the OKJ def looked like it had a better smoke ring but I didn't think either one looked bad at all. I was quite impressed with the Nexgrill result as I heard all about how pellet grills get little to no smoke, it looked the part but what about taste?
Before I tasted each rib I did comment about how the OKJ rack actually looked to be a better rack of ribs, I felt the Nexgrill rack was skimpy and thin for Baby Back ribs and I guess with a 2 pack cryovac thems the breaks.
That being said I bit into the Nexgrill Rib and it had a nice smoke flavor! Good bite not fall of the bone mess, a good solid bite and chew! The entire bone was cleaned in a milisecond. It was a damn good rib!
I had to drink down a few slugs of my beer to cleanse my pallet before I dove into the OKJ rib. On first bite, boom! Smoke explosion, you def got a much heavier hit of smoke flavor. Not bad smoke, which I was gearing up for with all the temp problems and fluctuations, it was just a thicker more pronounced smokey flavor. The rib itself while juicy and packed with flavor felt tougher to bite into and pull off the bone. The best way I can describe it is that I had to fight more to get that meat off the bone compared to the Nexgrill rack but still it tasted great. If I knew nothing and blindly tasted I would have said the OKJ ribs needed about another hour or so and they would have really been perfect bite and pull.
My blind taste testers all couldn't stop eating and we all killed off both racks. Everyone chose the Nexgrill Ribs as their favorite for the exact same reason stating that it just felt more tender and had an easier bite but that the OKJ ribs really packed in the smoke flavor and juicyness, it just was a bit too firm of a bite, still delicious by all accounts.
So this was a great matchup! I had a great Father's Day doing this while the Nexgrill took the win in this first battle, I feel with a few mods and some more experience on my part the OKJ is going to comeback for a rematch!
Hope everyone enjoyed the read and I'd love to hear any comments, suggestions or feedback below! I look forward to doing more showdowns in the future so I cna have an excuse to drink beer and eat smoked meats!
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