bbqbabe, sometimes learning something new can be easy, and other times tuff, but patience and persistence will pay off. That especially applies to cooking and smoking meat, the winners will be your family if you keep working at it, and eventually you will be getting great compliments about your smoking Q.
You need to really get familiar with your smoker, how many chips produce what kind of smoke? How fast it heats up and recovers, the taste produced by different kinds of wood/chips/pellets. Frankly I think most learn best by initially using the MES the way it was designed, using water pan, wood chips, and some simple recipes. After a couple of smokes that produced good tasting Q, start slowly making changes, (meat is expensive) so you don't want to deviate too far and ruin some good meat. Everyone is pushing the
AMNPS ( I just bought one too), but what do you do if you can't keep it lit, or the whole thing ignites, you better know how to keep smoke going without the
AMNPS via your chip tray so you still get a good meal. So learn the basics. You say you bought the owner of
Masterbuilt's cook book, I haven't read it so I don't know what he is telling you, as the others above have provided good help I will attempt to add my two cents. I apologize for redundancy if stating something already stated.
1st stage of a good smoke, is meat preparation, either dry rubs, marinades, wet rubs, etc.
You don't need to buy rubs, there are thousands of simple rub recipes online, instead buy bulk sizes of spices so you can make your own. Generally I apply rubs to beef & pork the night before then wrap and place in the fridge until an hour before smoke, sometimes I reapply a light coating of the rub when I bring the meat out to allow it to achieve room temp. Believe it or not two easy things to smoke are BB ribs and pork butt, they are very forgiving and you can miss the timing and temp by a considerable margin and still have a decent product. So these two items are a good place to start your smoking experience. Chicken in the MES is another thing, some have had good success, but it is a learning process to successfully produce good tasting chicken with the right texture for the skin from the MES. Personally I don't smoke chicken in my MES, I prefer it grilled and so does my family, if I want to do whole smoked chicken I use my
weber kettle.
Getting you smoker ready for a smoke is important process too so here are some helpful tips that are the result of imput from 6 years of participating on this electric forum:
MES New Owner Tips:
• Season it. (Many spray the inside with PAM)
• No extension cords, unless it is 12 ga or heavier
• Spray your racks with PAM prior to smoke (makes cleanup easier).
• Use alum foil on the water pan and drain pan, again for easier cleanup.
• Manual says preheating isn't necessary, I preheat, it will make getting up to initial set temp faster, and temp recovery when opening hatch faster. I preheat to 270º. Cold ambient 45º and lower 2 hours, 1 hour for warmer temps and as little as 30 min. in summer.
• Add boiling hot water to pan, this will allow you to get up to set temp faster.
• Start the smoke with a few wood chips. The manual says 1 cup max, you will find a hand full is almost too much. 1st chip dump just a few chips, 5-10 min later a little more chips, 20-30 min even more chips. At this point you will have a bed of hot chips and ash, and chip combustion should be good. Your goal is TBS (thin blue smoke). When its right you can smell the sweet smoke, it won't smell bitter or be cloudy white. Dark smoke is nothing but awful.
• Do not adjust vent leave it wide open. (Unless using a AMNS or
AMNPS then follow their product instructions).
• Use external probe for sensing meat internal temp, you can run the probe cord through the exhaust vent. *You may want to run 2nd probe inserted into a wood block or potato with 2 to 3" tip exposed to verify the internal MES cooking temp.
• Once your meat is loaded, avoid opening the hatch. New models can recover to set temp faster, but every time you open the door you extend the cooking time. Thus spritzing isn't really necessary in a MES due to the water pan keeping the smoking environment moist enough to not dry out the meat.
• If you do have to open your MES plan your moves so you can keep door open time to a minimum.
• When your done cooking, the proper way to shut the MES down is to turn off the controller then unplug.
• If your MES seems to struggle getting to either the preheat temp of 270º or is taking extraordinary long times to raise to cooking temps after meat is loaded try doing a RESET..
Proper RESET = cycle the MES off with the controller, unplug electrical cord, count to 10, replug elect. cord, turn on MES with on/off, reset temps.
If you tried a reset, and 20-30 minutes later there is little change do the reset again.
• Cleanup is easy with a Brillo pad to scrub the tough stuff, and throw grates, water & drain pan into dishwasher. Some have complained about the spot welds on the drain pan rusting, I hit those spots with a touch of PAM then store the cleaned stuff back in the MES.
You do not need to clean the inside cabinet, most experienced smokers consider that just seasoning. With a hot wet rag, wipe out the inside bottom and any excessive gunk on the walls. Again with hot damp cloth, wipe the door gasket, and the door frames (for better seal).
• If your new MES does not work properly simply call
Masterbuilt, their customer service is generally excellent.
Some MES Mods are
shown here.
During your smoke, smoke control is generally the number one factor, since the MES handles heat control for you. How much wood chips, pellets, sawdust, etc should you use. It has already been said that "Thin Blue Smoke" is what you are after, heavy white smoke is not "thin blue smoke", yet generally you will get some heavy white smoke when your chips ignite, but that will dissipate and be replaced by thin blue smoke, unless you have too much wood chips. Dark smoke is awful and will give your meat a bitter creosote flavor, so avoid dark smoke, note you might get smoke dark smoke when you first add wood, but if you are not using too many chips it will quickly turn to TBS.
So if you have prepared your meat properly, maintained the correct heat, managed your smoke properly, when the smoke is done you should have some great Q. The last stage is finishing your Q so it looks and tastes great. For ribs some like to finish on a BBQ and while on the grill brush them with BBQ sauce, others do the last hour in the MES with their ribs foil packets open and the ribs brushed with sauce. Some just like dry ribs and simply add a few more squirts of apple juice or something else to keep them slightly moist. Before they serve. Pork Butt if you used 90 minutes per pound as a general rule, most of the fat and connective tissue should be broke down and after you let your pork shoulder rest 30 minutes, start pulling or slicing. Personally I pull and mix a spice sauce with the pulled meat ( I don't saturate it is just flavoring amount), I put bottles of sweet, regular, spicy BBQ sauce so those eating the pulled pork can add whatever sauce and the amount they want.
If you would like some recipes that absolutely work, which I use for BBQ feeds where I have cooked MES Q for up to 50+, PM me and I am happy to share them.
