I built a small smoker over the winter for our cabin at the lake of the Ozarks. While I had tested it a few times on small things, burgers, brauts, fatties, chicken pieces, abt's, I'd never did a long smoke. We had nine people going this weekend, 4 adults and 5 teenagers, we figured we'd better cook 6 slabs of ribs.
Of course, to fit that many ribs on my smoker, I had to build a custom rib rack. It worked OK, but I made the tines a bit close together and the didn't have enough support in the middle so I had to coil a couple. A little more engineering, I think my rack will work, but never the less...
First off, a couple pictures of my smoker...
with movable work surface. :D
Here's my 6 slabs of baby backs...I used the brown sugar glaze that I read about on here recently. Works pretty good.
Can't live on just meat, so I cooked some campfire taters. Nothing special, just gold taters, yellow onion, butter and montreal steak seasoning.
Smoked/cooked some baked beans on the kettle grill...
The ribs were good. Cooked with cherry wood at 225* for 5 hours. I had marinated them in wine and apple juice and applied a brown sugar glaze. They were the texture I prefer, clean pull from the bone, but not mushy soft.
As for the smoker, it performed great. I used a decent handful of cold charcoal and one full chimney of lit charcoal (minion method'ish) and over the course of the 5 hours, it only took 2 small handfuls of unlit coals to keep a solid 225* temp the whole time. Very little mucking with the air inlet, I even took a couple half hour fishing trips around our cove, when I came back, it was still rock solid. We even had a 45 minute shower that didn't affect it too much, just let in a little more air. It also recovers temps very quickly (of course I had to peak every couple of hours, bad habit that's hard to break), and within 10 minutes or so, it had recovered.
Thanks for looking, I hope everyone had a fun and safe independence day!
Of course, to fit that many ribs on my smoker, I had to build a custom rib rack. It worked OK, but I made the tines a bit close together and the didn't have enough support in the middle so I had to coil a couple. A little more engineering, I think my rack will work, but never the less...
First off, a couple pictures of my smoker...
with movable work surface. :D
Here's my 6 slabs of baby backs...I used the brown sugar glaze that I read about on here recently. Works pretty good.
Can't live on just meat, so I cooked some campfire taters. Nothing special, just gold taters, yellow onion, butter and montreal steak seasoning.
Smoked/cooked some baked beans on the kettle grill...
The ribs were good. Cooked with cherry wood at 225* for 5 hours. I had marinated them in wine and apple juice and applied a brown sugar glaze. They were the texture I prefer, clean pull from the bone, but not mushy soft.
As for the smoker, it performed great. I used a decent handful of cold charcoal and one full chimney of lit charcoal (minion method'ish) and over the course of the 5 hours, it only took 2 small handfuls of unlit coals to keep a solid 225* temp the whole time. Very little mucking with the air inlet, I even took a couple half hour fishing trips around our cove, when I came back, it was still rock solid. We even had a 45 minute shower that didn't affect it too much, just let in a little more air. It also recovers temps very quickly (of course I had to peak every couple of hours, bad habit that's hard to break), and within 10 minutes or so, it had recovered.
Thanks for looking, I hope everyone had a fun and safe independence day!
