2Q16 by KRJ

[krj]

I'm gonna try not only cooking more often this year, but also try and be better at qview. Always seem to forget pictures because in the heat of the moment, the last thing I wanna do is grab a pic. But alas, I'm gonna try and document the year here.

4-16: Maiden voyage of my PBC, ribs and chicken. Pretty good for taking it out of the box and firing it up.

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• krj
• May 4, 2016

4-24: Simple 3.5lb bone out pork butt, cooked on the PBC. This was its third voyage and these were the leftovers.

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• krj
• May 4, 2016

5-4: May the fourth be with you! And it was for the first half of my day. I had some errands to run in KC, so I decided to stock up on rub spices at Sam's Club. Against my better judgement I took along a cooler. Suffice it to say, I not only brought home spices, but about 60lbs of meat.

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• krj
• May 4, 2016

From there, my journey following the path of the light quickly grew twisted and dark. When I reached my parents home to pick up my 170lb worthless Great Dane, he absolutely refused to leave. Hell he refused to stand up. After fighting with him for 5 minutes I got him loaded, only to discover at some point since I had arrived at my folk's house I cut a slit in a tire. Fast forward and hour and a half of fighting with a flat, and my fun adventures with the mutt. Three more times to get out, in another truck, and the out again. Finally got the tire fixed, put back on the truck and everything put away. Still feeling the darkside...

 

[GaryHibbert]

Hey KRJ. Those are real nice looking smokes especially on a new smoker. Now that you're in pic mode you gotta do some before and after cooking too. Some times and Temps go a long way to making a good qview.

Your day started out great, but sure went downhill fast. Sometimes that just happens.

Gary

 

[SmokinAl]

Glad to see were going to get some more great q-view!

Sounds like a tough day, I would have been in the beer cooler about halfway through that fiasco.

Al

 

[krj]

Did up a pair of 8lb bone in butts for the guys today in the PBC. Went pretty smooth, was the first time running a probe for my grate temperature. Temperatures were extremely high even with the air intake closed as far as possible and the rib rods. I pulled the rods and used some refrigerator magnets to cover them. This really seemed to help, and brought the temperature down to more appropriate levels. I'll play around with this more on future cooks. I'll post my cook times and notes below, and later some pictures of the final product.

11:45pm - 52
12:45am - 77
1:45am - 111
2:45am - 140
3:45am - 158
4:00am - 160 Wrapped
4:45am - 176
Fell Sleep
7:05am - 192, Cooker temp was down to 152 coals were mostly spent, opened up airflow
7:30am - 190, got cooker back up to 237, and added small chimney of fresh lit coals and readjusted vents
Fell Asleep Again, I was exhausted
9:15am - 210, towel and cooler

Well I only remembered to get one picture, and a bad one at that, after both had been wrapped and set in a cooler, and one had been shredded and ate. Everyone in the clan loved it, so we had leftovers the next day, and I gave some friends the remainder of what was left, which was like 3/4s of a butt. They loved it too, so I guess that's a good thing.

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• krj
• May 27, 2016

 

[krj]

Got the craving for some chicken last night, so I set out a package of thighs I had stashed away. Just got them on 15 minutes or so ago, some still had a little frost on them, so I'm gonna watch their temps pretty closely. Goal here is to work on keeping the PBC between 225 and 250, and then open her up to crisp the skin in the home stretch. We've got some storms moving in, so I'm hoping to have this wrapped up by the time they make it to me.

Couple starter shot's for a change. Cook times/temps/finished product photos will be posted after I'm done, barring that I remember.

Photo May 27, 1 53 21 PM.jpg

• krj
• May 27, 2016

Photo May 27, 1 54 51 PM.jpg

• krj
• May 27, 2016

Photo May 27, 3 00 12 PM.jpg

• krj
• May 27, 2016

Photo May 27, 3 29 49 PM.jpg

• krj
• May 27, 2016

Photo May 27, 3 31 34 PM.jpg

• krj
• May 27, 2016

Turned out pretty good, took too long ramping up temperature so the skin didn't crisp up all the way but it was starting to crisp when i pulled them. Didn't want to dry out the chicken so i decided to call it before total crisp.

Time - IT - ST

1:55 - 45 - 228
2:25 - 120 - 255
2:55 - 162 - 223 Opened up vents and cracked lid to crisp skin
3:25 - 189 - 284 Pulled off cooker.

Side note, been using the Weber compact chimney starter the last 3-4 times I've lit the smoker. I hate it, I think it's a piece of junk. I have the full size version and it works great, one piece of newspaper and up and blazing are the coals. There hasn't been a single use of the compact that I haven't had to go back out a second time(or third) with another piece of paper and relight it. I bought it so I could easily dump coals into the PBC, but since then I have added a loop to the top of my charcoal basket and I have a long handled hook to raise/lower. Now I add my hot coals into my unlit in the basket outside the PBC, and with my hook I drop it in. Soooo much better, and I think I'm going to stop using the compact period.

 

[krj]

Well I got to fire up the big old smoker today. My goal was to do a test run with chicken leg quarters and turkey legs, to get my timing somewhat figured out for when I serve concessions at my towns 4th of July. I also had three slabs of baby backs that I threw in as well to feed a crew of guys I know. It took me a bit to get back into working that old gal, I probably haven't used it myself in 7 years. When I finally got my temp up and meat on, she held at between 250-260 for a little over and hour, I let it drop back to 230ish and added more fuel. As I expected the chicken and turkey were right at temp at 2 hours, had great color and were ready to be pulled off. I also wrapped my ribs at the when I pulled the poultry off, and moved them to the shelves where the bird was.

Left the ribs on for about another hour and twenty, and would have liked to have gave them another half hour to get them to the tenderness point I want. But I was running short on time, so I pulled them off and threw them in a toweled cooler and hit the road to feed the crew. The ribs were good, tender but not quite what I look for. They cut really well and had a nice smoke ring, and were very tasty. I think there was 8 or 9 guys that ate other than me. Everyone seemed to enjoy it, and I managed to snag two ribs after I let everyone else eat. Honestly it was really to hot to be eating smoked food, and definitely too hot to stuff yourself and then go back out and work in the heat.

I was pretty pleased how the cook went, and it gave me my times and numbers to be ready for the 4th. I'll probably do one more test pass, just to see how the temperature variances are. I will say I was not at all happy with the turkey legs. They looked beautiful, they were done to temperature, but the one we tried was horrible. It was tough and chewy, the flavor of the meat was wrong. I'm not sure what went wrong. I picked up those legs the same time and place I got the quarters at a grocery meat counter. It honestly put me off so badly, that I've decided at least for this event, and until I can figure out what went wrong, I won't be serving turkey legs.

And once again I didn't take any pictures because I'm a dummy. I had actually went to a late showing of a movie Thursday night, so I managed to get about 4 and a half hours of sleep before I got up to get the smoker rolling. So between being tired, and being a little rushed to try and get ribs done for lunch I didn't take the time to snap pictures.

 

[gearjammer]

Hey KRJ, nice pictures and temps.

I always swear I'm going to do better, but I usually forget.

I will do better, I will, I will, I will.

        Ed